Guido De Giorgio, in his first article for Julius Evola’s La Torre, writes of modern man as a worm, covered in worms, and a worshipper of worms. It is a withering assault that makes Evola’s and Guenon’s critiques seem gentle and mild by comparison. He draws his morbid poetic imagery from Dante’s Inferno, Canto III, a.k.a. “Hell’s Vestibule”:

These wretched ones, who never were alive,
went naked and were stung again, again
by horseflies and by wasps that circled them.

The insects streaked their faces with their blood,
which, mingled with their tears, fell at their feet,
where it was gathered up by sickening worms.

While De Giorgio focuses on the social and cultural dimensions of Dante’s symbolism, there is an inner level to this which is even deeper, the dimension that Dante termed Anagogical. Unlike the Literal, Allegorical, and Moral interpretations, the Anagogical sense is that of a real inner experience. Understood anagogically, the Divine Comedy is not merely a literal story, or allegory, or moral exposition, rather, it is an initiatory roadmap of actual inner states and experiences.

Canto III is, of course, at the very beginning of this initiation. As Gornahoor has pointed out, the first spiritual exercises involve detached self-observation. Now, the souls that Dante sees in the Vestibule are the eternally restless ones, without a true guiding light or direction, who chase illusory banners, are harassed and prodded along by bee stings, and whose vital substance is consumed by worms, etc. This state of perpetual agitation does not refer only to society at large, but to the state of fallen man’s own inner life: blindly moved by forces outside himself, he is dominated by disorderly thoughts, volitions, and desires.

In his Key to the Divine Comedy, Luigi Valli corresponds the Vestibule of Dante’s Hell to the infirmity caused by Original Sin, which consists of:

• Ignorantia, the defect of Intellect
• Difficultas, the defect of Will

The Vestibule specifically corresponds to difficultas. In the preceding Canto, Dante describes his experience of difficultas in a different way:

Even as he who glories while he gains
will, when the time has come to tally loss,
lament with every thought and turn despondent,

And just as he who unwills what he wills
and shifts what he intends to seek new ends
so that he’s drawn from what he had begun,

so was I in the midst of that dark land,
because, with all my thinking, I annulled
the task I had so quickly undertaken.

Inferno, Canto II

The difference between Cantos II and III lies in Dante’s state of consciousness. In Canto II, before beginning the initiatic quest, he experiences difficultas passively and unconsciously, as a state where his gnomic will undoes all of his intentions and keeps him running in circles. With the help of his master Virgil, he passes on to the state represented by the Vestibule, where he is able instead to detach and observe this state in himself and others.

Overcoming Difficultas

After describing the each state of being, the Divine Comedy provides instructions for advancing from one state to the next. To pass from the state of unconscious difficultas to the consciousness of difficultas, Dante’s instruction is to submit the gnomic will to Virgil (allegorically, Reason):

You, with your words, have so disposed my heart
to longing for this journey—I return
to what I was at first prepared to do.
Now go; a single will fills both of us:
you are my guide, my governor, my master.

Having achieved the state of conscious perception of difficultas, Virgil’s next instruction is to observe the thoughts, emotions, and desires of the fallen inner state, but without engaging with them. Of course, similar teachings are found in Buddhism (and every other authentic tradition of prayer and meditation):

Here sighs and lamentations and loud cries
were echoing across the starless air,
so that, as soon as I set out, I wept.

Strange utterances, horrible pronouncements,
accents of anger, words of suffering,
and voices shrill and faint, and beating hands…

…Both justice and compassion must disdain them;
let us not talk of them, but look and pass.

For Luigi Valli, the Vestibule corresponds in Purgatorio to the terrace of the Indolent. The Purgatorio is also a series of spiritual exercises, which lead to a more advanced level of mastery of the analogous states explored in the Inferno:

Follow my steps, though all such whisper of you:
be as a tower of stone, its lofty crown unswayed
by anything the winds may do.

For when a man lets his attention range
toward every wisp, he loses true direction,
sapping his mind’s force with continual change.

Purgatorio, Canto V

The exercise from the Inferno (of observing and passing on from unruly thoughts and emotions) eventually develops the mind into this tower of stone, unmoved by wind and storm.

Finally, the Paradiso, in the Sphere of the Moon (again, for Valli corresponding to the Vestibule) teaches the ultimate state, the union of the contingent will with the Absolute, or True Will:

Absolute will does not concur in wrong;
but the contingent will, through fear that its
resistance might bring greater harm, consents…

…Had their will been as whole as that which held
Lawrence fast to the grate and that which made
Mucius thrust his hand into the fire, then

once freed, they would have willed to find the faith
from which they had been dragged; but it is all
too seldom that a will is so intact.

Paradiso, Canto V

Guido De Giorgio’s full article from La Torre can be read at Gornahoor Press.

Luigi Valli’s Key to the Divine Comedy will be available later this year.