The Comedy’s esotericism
By: Giovanni Lombardo
Man holds Dante’s Comedy as the greatest work of Middle-Ages literature, strongly supported by an esoteric structure. The allegory sets the narration on symbols, on the hidden meaning beyond the images’ appearance. The Comedy is construed on the Ptolemaic system, that is, Earth is at the Universe’s centre. Dante’s allegoric journey through the netherworld represents the human being’s quest of the Divine, from down to top, alike an alchemic becoming towards perfection. Dante cannot take such a journey without a guide. His first guide is the Latin poet Virgilius, who is symbol of morality. By his help Dante will not only travel across difficult geographical places, but he will also understand the symbols which are within the human soul. In the essay On The Comedy’s Mysticism, Gabriele Rossetti interprets the Comedy’s structure as grounded on the clash between Good and Evil. He also thinks the Comedy contains many hints at the Masonic initiation. René Guénon agrees on it, as well. He points at the Inferno’s verses:
O you possessed of sturdy intellects, observe the teaching that is hidden here beneath the veil of verses so obscure.
Guénon thinks Dante urges the reader to pass the veil, so to find the real meaning of his work. Dante was surely initiated. He was an adept of Fedeli d’Amore, a secret society active in the South of France and in northern Italy. In Vienna’s museum there is a coin: on the one side there is Dante’s face, while on the other side man can read the following letters: F. S. K. I. P. F. T. Guénon explains them as follows: Fidei Sanctæ Kadosh, Imperialis Principatus, FraterTemplarius. Dante was a Knight (kadosh) of the Holy Faith; a Templar Frater fighting to realize the Universal Empire. However, man should not assign a mere political sense: in Dante’s idea politics and religion are closely tied. The Universal Empire can be settled only if humankind has grasped the Holy Faith, which is not any particular religion, but, rather, pure metaphysics. Albert Pike wrote: “Commentaries and studies have been multiplied upon the Divine Comedy, the work of Dante, and yet no one, so far as we know, has pointed out its especial character. The work of the great Ghibellin is a declaration of war against the Papacy, by bold revelations of the Mysteries. The Epic of Dante is Johannite and Gnostic, an audacious application, like that of the Apocalypse, of the figures and numbers of the Kabalah to the Christian dogmas, and a secret negation of every thing absolute in these dogmas. His journey through the supernatural worlds is accomplished like the initiation into the Mysteries of Eleusis and Thebes. He escapes from that gulf of Hell over the gate of which the sentence of despair was written, by reversing the positions of his head and feet, that is to say, by accepting the direct opposite of the Catholic dogma; and then he reascends to the light, by using the Devil himself as a monstrous ladder. Faust ascends to Heaven, by stepping on the head of the vanquished Mephistopheles. Hell is impassable for those only who know not how to turn back from it. We free ourselves from its bondage by audacity.” Dante’s close relationship with Knights Templar makes the Comedy even more esoteric. The morphology itself hints at a rite of passage, well known to the initatic tradition: Inferno, the pagan world; Purgatorio, where man is initiated; Paradiso, or the place of perfection. In alchemy man can regard such three phases as the three elements – sulphur, mercury, salt – which allow alchemists to reach a higher state of conscience by either separating or fusing them. The alchemic trio was often deemed to match the founding elements of any human being, that is, spirit, soul and body, respectively. The Comedy contains all the symbols of the hermetic Christianity: the cross, the rose, the eagle, the ladder of the seven liberal arts, the pelican. We know Freemasonry adopted most of them. Man can think about a true war machine against the Catholic church, which is severely blamed by the Poet for the alliance with Philip the Fair against the Templars:
Just like a fortress set on a steep slope, securely seated there, ungirt, a whore, whose eyes were quick to rove, appeared to me; and I saw at her side, erect, a giant, who seemed to serve as her custodian; and they-again, again-embraced each other.
The Giant is Philip, who was actually a tall man, while the whore is the Church. Dante’s verses are based on the Revelation’s Prostitute who fornicated with powerful men. In La Vita Nuova – The New Life – which Dante wrote before the Comedy, man reads that the vital spirit lives in the most secret chamber of the heart. Any initiate who is aware of this truth will therefore search after God within himself, free from dogmas and superstitions which separate men from one another and hinder to erect the Temple of universal brotherhood and love. |
