If Virgil represents the ancient tradition and Beatrice the new tradition and if, at the threshold of the Terrestrial Paradise, Virgil disappears before Beatrice, Beatrice also disappears when the divine mystery is grasped by Dante in its immediate realization and what then remains, above and beyond the two traditions unified forever is, climactically, Rome.<\/p>\n
Virgil guides the poet through the world of Forms and Rhythms, in the two spheres of bodies and shadows, that he knows perfectly because he belongs to a tradition in which these two domains particularly were meticulously observed and studied, domains that constitute the subterranean and sublunar underworld whose secrets are fully treated in the three Virgilian works “sotto il velame delli versi strani<\/i>” [\u201cunder the veil of strange verses\u201d]. In hell, we are present at the extreme concretion of these unchained forces and, so to speak, precipitated in the closed vortex of ignorance, while in Purgatary, we catch sight of them liberated from the formal element in their spontaneous structure of the subtle body, the shadow. Virgil guides his disciple with \u201cart\u201d up to the threshold of the Terrestrial Paradise from which ascent will begin at the paradisiacal levels, i.e., at the higher states that are forbidden to them because they realize only by means of Revealed Science, Beatrice.<\/p>\n Up to this point the two traditions remain separate even though the one is resolved in the other, that indicates Dante\u2019s dismay at Virgil\u2019s disappearance in the face of the vision of Beatrice. In the Terrestrial Paradise we have the explanation of the traditional integration, after the theory that leads the symbolic cart in front of the central tree which revives, discovering the reigns of the Silence where only the ascension to the divine states is accomplished. In other words, the second tradition is not opposed to but reveals the first, and completes it, bringing it back to the invisible centre from which everything emanates and to which everything returns as long as it is stripped bare to its original essence.<\/p>\n What in the first tradition is the Imperium<\/em> [empire], is the Regnum<\/em> [kingdom] in the second, while separately they indicate respectively temporal power and spiritual authority, there is an absolute seat in which while converging they merge into each other, and this seat, materially, symbolically, and actually is Rome. So that, while the second tradition illumines and reveals the first, the first precedes, prepares, and exists only for the affirmation of the second; there is an initial necessary opposition that is resolved only in Rome when, i.e., a unifying centre is found that is at the same time the neutral point where the traditional quarrel ends.<\/p>\n ⇐ Previous<\/a> Next ⇒<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If Virgil represents the ancient tradition and Beatrice the new tradition and if, at the threshold of the Terrestrial Paradise, Virgil disappears before Beatrice, Beatrice also disappears when the divine mystery is grasped by Dante in its immediate realization and what then remains, above and beyond the two traditions unified … Continue reading
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\nThe ancient Roman tradition attached great importance to the knowledge of the immediate and psychic world governed by laws of internal, occult order, that embrace the totality of beings and things considered always with reference to the forces whose expression they are. The so called \u201cconcreteness\u201d of the Romans was based exactly on the precise meaning of these forces that act most visibly in the existence of man inserting there a hidden network of which the events, especially \u201cchance\u201d events, as the common people believe, are the most significant effects: these forces are either propitiated, dominated, or determined. Virgil represents in the Comedy<\/cite> the knowledge of the two subterrestrial and superterrestrial worlds, the latter term however meant in the much more precise sense that must be given to the third element, the air, which symbolically corresponds to the subtle elements, the Rhythms, more through their \u201cdiffusivity\u201d than for their nature.<\/p>\n
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