(8) I shall not be driven back from it (the gate); its walls of burning coals show the way in Restau. I have soothed the pain of Osiris, when he supports him who balances his pedestal, when he arrives from the great valley. I have made my way to the light of Osiris

(6) Upon this side he fell down out of heaven; And all the land, that whilom here emerged, For fear of him made of the sea a veil, And came to our hemisphere; and peradventure To flee from him, what on this side appears Left the place vacant here, and back recoiled." A place there is below, from Beelzebub As far receding as the tomb extends, Which not by sight is known, but by the sound Of a small rivulet, that there descendeth Through chasm within the stone, which it has gnawed With course that winds about and slightly falls. The Guide and I into that hidden road Now entered, to return to the bright world; And without care of having any rest We mounted up, he first and I the second, Till I beheld through a round aperture Some of the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear; Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.

(4) Now follow me, and mind thou do not place As yet thy feet upon the burning sand, But always keep them close unto the wood." Speaking no word, we came to where there gushes Forth from the wood a little rivulet, Whose redness makes my hair still stand on end. As from the Bulicame springs the brooklet, The sinful women later share among them, So downward through the sand it went its way. The bottom of it, and both sloping banks, Were made of stone, and the margins at the side; Whence I perceived that there the passage was. "In all the rest which I have shown to thee Since we have entered in within the gate Whose threshold unto no one is denied, Nothing has been discovered by thine eyes So notable as is the present river, Which all the little flames above it quenches." These words were of my Leader; whence I prayed him That he would give me largess of the food, For which he had given me largess of desire. "In the mid-sea there sits a wasted land," Said he thereafterward, "whose name is Crete, Under whose king the world of old was chaste.

(5) It was not any palace corridor There where we were, but dungeon natural, With floor uneven and unease of light. "Ere from the abyss I tear myself away, My Master," said I when I had arisen, "To draw me from an error speak a little; Where is the ice? and how is this one fixed Thus upside down? and how in such short time From eve to morn has the sun made his transit?" And he to me: "Thou still imaginest Thou art beyond the centre, where I grasped The hair of the fell worm, who mines the world. That side thou wast, so long as I descended; When round I turned me, thou didst pass the point To which things heavy draw from every side, And now beneath the hemisphere art come Opposite that which overhangs the vast Dry-land, and 'neath whose cope was put to death The Man who without sin was born and lived. Thou hast thy feet upon the little sphere Which makes the other face of the Judecca. Here it is morn when it is evening there; And he who with his hair a stairway made us Still fixed remaineth as he was before.

(2) His tail was wholly quivering in the void, Contorting upwards the envenomed fork, That in the guise of scorpion armed its point. The Guide said: "Now perforce must turn aside Our way a little, even to that beast Malevolent, that yonder coucheth him." We therefore on the right side descended, And made ten steps upon the outer verge, Completely to avoid the sand and flame; And after we are come to him, I see A little farther off upon the sand A people sitting near the hollow place. Then said to me the Master: "So that full Experience of this round thou bear away, Now go and see what their condition is. There let thy conversation be concise; Till thou returnest I will speak with him, That he concede to us his stalwart shoulders." Thus farther still upon the outermost Head of that seventh circle all alone I went, where sat the melancholy folk. Out of their eyes was gushing forth their woe; This way, that way, they helped them with their hands Now from the flames and now from the hot soil.

(3) "Pity us! We shall not see the dawn here, when the sun rises and lights the face of the earth," they said at leaving. But they left some people on the road which they followed so that they would keep watch. Each of the tribes kept getting up to see the star which was the herald of the sun. This sign of the dawn they carried in their hearts when they came from the East, and with the same hope they left there, from that great distance, according to what their songs now say.

(23) This Chapter does not properly belong to the Book of the Dead. It is part of a book engraved at the entrance of nearly all the tombs of the kings, the so-called “Litany of the Sun.” This chapter is taken from the end of the book. The various paragraphs are not always in the same order as in the monumental text. There are abridgments and many omissions, which in the translation have been filled up from the text in the tombs

(4) He laid fast hold upon the shaggy sides; From fell to fell descended downward then Between the thick hair and the frozen crust. When we were come to where the thigh revolves Exactly on the thickness of the haunch, The Guide, with labour and with hard-drawn breath, Turned round his head where he had had his legs, And grappled to the hair, as one who mounts, So that to Hell I thought we were returning. "Keep fast thy hold, for by such stairs as these," The Master said, panting as one fatigued, "Must we perforce depart from so much evil." Then through the opening of a rock he issued, And down upon the margin seated me; Then tow'rds me he outstretched his wary step. I lifted up mine eyes and thought to see Lucifer in the same way I had left him; And I beheld him upward hold his legs. And if I then became disquieted, Let stolid people think who do not see What the point is beyond which I had passed. "Rise up," the Master said, "upon thy feet; The way is long, and difficult the road, And now the sun to middle-tierce returns."

(15) And at its north side two rivers flowed out, and went one to the east and one to the west; they are the Arag river and the Vêh river; as it is said thus: 'Through those finger-breadth tricklings do thou pour and draw forth two such waters, O Aûharmazd!'

(34) "There is a mountain situated in the midst of the earth, or center of the world, which is both small and great. It is soft, also above measure hard and stony. It is far off, and near at hand, but by the providence of God, invisible. In it are hidden most ample treasures, which the world is not able to value. This mountain by envy of the devil, who always opposeth the glory of God and the happiness of man, is compassed about with very cruel beasts and other [sic] ravenous birds, which make the way thither both difficult and dangerous; and therefore hitherto, because the time is not yet come, the way thither could not be sought after nor found out. But now at last the way is to be found by those that are worthy, but notwithstanding by every man's self-labor and endeavors.

(1) I know that Eastern Gate of Heaven (the South of it is by the lake of Cha-ru, and the north of it by the stream of Reu), from whence Rā saileth with favouring gales

(3) "How is this?" was the answer; "should one wish To mount by night would he prevented be By others? or mayhap would not have power?" And on the ground the good Sordello drew His finger, saying, "See, this line alone Thou couldst not pass after the sun is gone; Not that aught else would hindrance give, however, To going up, save the nocturnal darkness; This with the want of power the will perplexes. We might indeed therewith return below, And, wandering, walk the hill-side round about, While the horizon holds the day imprisoned." Thereon my Lord, as if in wonder, said: "Do thou conduct us thither, where thou sayest That we can take delight in tarrying." Little had we withdrawn us from that place, When I perceived the mount was hollowed out In fashion as the valleys here are hollowed. "Thitherward," said that shade, "will we repair, Where of itself the hill-side makes a lap, And there for the new day will we await." 'Twixt hill and plain there was a winding path Which led us to the margin of that dell, Where dies the border more than half away.

(32) And thence I went over the summits of ⌈all⌉ these mountains, far towards the east ⌈of the earth⌉, and passed above the Erythraean sea and went far from it, and passed over ⌈⌈the angel⌉⌉ Zotîêl.

(9) Now these two Gates are in one another; the nethermost goes into the Abyss, and the uppermost goes into Paradise; and a third Gate comes to these two, out of the Element with its four Productions, and presses in together with the Fire, Air, Water, and Earth; and their Kingdom is the Sun and Stars, which qualify with the first Will; and their Desire is to be filled, to swell, and to be great. These draw into them, and fill the Chamber of the Deep, [viz.] the free and naked Will in the Mind; they bring the Glimpse [or Glance] of the Stars into the Gate of the Mind, and qualify with the Sharpness of the Glimpse [or Flash;] they fill the broken Gates of the Darkness with Flesh, and wrestle continually with the first Will (from whence they are gone forth) for the Kingdom [or Dominion,] and yield themselves up to the first Will, as to their Father, which willingly receives their Region [or Dominion.] For he is obscure and dark, and they are rough and sour, also bitter and cold; and their Life is a seething Source of Fire, wherewith they govern in the Mind, in the Gall, Heart, Lungs, and Liver, and in all Members [or Parts] of the whole Body, and Man is their own; the Spirit which stands in the Flash brings the Constellation into the Tincture of its Property, and infects the Thoughts, according to the Dominion of the Stars; they take the Body and tame it, and bring their bitter Roughness into it.

(614) and they told him that he was to be the messenger who would carry the report of the other world to men, and they bade him hear and see all that was to be heard and seen in that place. Then he beheld and saw on one side the souls departing at either opening of heaven and earth when sentence had been given on them; and at the two other openings other souls, some ascending out of the earth dusty and worn with travel, some descending out of heaven clean and bright. And arriving ever and anon they seemed to have come from a long journey, and they went forth with gladness into the meadow, where they encamped as at a festival; and those who knew one another embraced and conversed, the souls which came from earth curiously enquiring about the things above, and the souls which came from heaven about the things beneath. And they told one another of what had happened by the way, those from below weeping and sorrowing at the remembrance of the things which they had endured and seen in their journey beneath the earth (now the journey lasted a thousand years), while those from above were describing heavenly delights and visions of inconceivable beauty. The story, Glaucon, would take too long to tell; but the sum was this:— He said that for every wrong which they had done to any one they suffered tenfold; or once in a hundred years—such being reckoned to be the length

(6) I think in sooth that it my Leader pleased, With such contented lip he listened ever Unto the sound of the true words expressed. Therefore with both his arms he took me up, And when he had me all upon his breast, Remounted by the way where he descended. Nor did he tire to have me clasped to him; But bore me to the summit of the arch Which from the fourth dike to the fifth is passage. There tenderly he laid his burden down, Tenderly on the crag uneven and steep, That would have been hard passage for the goats: Thence was unveiled to me another valley.

(46) Buthe was not able to enter, for another, a new king, had become king of Egypt, and he was stronger than he, and he returned to the land of Canaan, and the gates of Egypt were closed, and none went out and none came into Egypt.

(48) "But this cave was adorned with the signs of the zodiac, Cancer and Capricorn. The summer and winter solstices were chiefly conspicuous, as the gates of souls descending into this life, or passing out of it in their ascent to the Gods; Cancer being the gate of descent, and Capricorn of ascent. These are the two avenues of the immortals passing up and down from earth to heaven, and from heaven to earth."

(2) Opened be the gates of Heaven; opened be the gates of Earth; opened be the gates of the East; opened be the gates of the West; opened be the gates of the Southern and of the Northern sanctuaries

(4) At the next round, and let us descend the wall; For as from hence I hear and understand not, So I look down and nothing I distinguish." "Other response," he said, "I make thee not, Except the doing; for the modest asking Ought to be followed by the deed in silence." We from the bridge descended at its head, Where it connects itself with the eighth bank, And then was manifest to me the Bolgia; And I beheld therein a terrible throng Of serpents, and of such a monstrous kind, That the remembrance still congeals my blood Let Libya boast no longer with her sand; For if Chelydri, Jaculi, and Phareae She breeds, with Cenchri and with Amphisbaena, Neither so many plagues nor so malignant E'er showed she with all Ethiopia, Nor with whatever on the Red Sea is! Among this cruel and most dismal throng People were running naked and affrighted. Without the hope of hole or heliotrope. They had their hands with serpents bound behind them; These riveted upon their reins the tail And head, and were in front of them entwined.