(69) Besides, the Kingdom of Hell, and of [fierce] Wrath, always gape after the Soul, and set their Jaws wide open to devour the captive Soul; which is held fast fettered with two strong Chains; the one of the Kingdom of Hell; the other of the Kingdom of this World; and it is continually led by the heavy, lumpish, bestial, and sickly Body, as a Thief who is often led to the Place of Execution, and still by a Petition reprieved, and laid in Prison again, and the poor Soul must lie thus in Prison the whole Time of the Body; where the Devil on the one Side very suddenly rushes upon it with his devouring Fierceness, Wrath, and Malice, and would carry it into the Abyss. Then instantly [it is beat upon by] the glistering [flattering] World, with Pomp, Bravery, Covetousness, and Voluptuousness of Perdition; presenting [again come upon it] Sickness and Fear, and it is continually trembling and quaking; and when Man goes but in the Dark, how is it amazed, and continually afraid that the Executioner will take it, and tdo Execution upon it! The Gate [or Explanation] of the great Sin, and Contrariety of Will against God, in Man.

(115) But here is no help, their torment increaseth and becometh but the greater; the more they bewail it, the more does the hellish fierceness or wrath kindle itself, they must lie in hell, as dead bones, like singed scorched sheep in the fire, their stink and abomination gnaweth them.

(76) In this quality stands hell and eternal perdition, as also the eternal enmity and murderous den, and such a creature the devil is come to be.

(170) O security! the devil watcheth for thee. O high-mindedness! thou art a hellish fire. O beauty, pomp or bravery! thou art a dark valley. O potency of dominion! thou art a raging and a tearing of the hellish fire. O selfvindication or vengeance! thou art the fierce wrath of God.

(34) The birth or geniture of light, munificence and welldoing to be an eternal hellish pain and torment; the food of pleasing relish to be an eternal abomination and stink, a loathing of all fruits; and the house of Lebanon and cedars to be a stony and rocky house of fire; the sweet scent or relish to be a stink, and a house of ruin and desolation, an end of all good; the divine body to be a black, cold, hot, eating, corroding, and yet not consuming devil, who is an enmity against God and his angels: And so he has all the heavenly hosts or armies against him. Now observe:

(87) Some men have many times, according to or in the sidereal or astral spirit, entered in thither, and been ravished in an ecstasy, as men call it, and have presently known the gates of heaven and of hell, and have told, shewn and declared how that many men dwell in hell, with or in their living bodies, or with their bodies alive: Such indeed have been scorned, derided or laughed at, but with great ignorance and indiscretion, for it is just so as they declare; which I will also describe more at large in its due place, and shew in what manner and condition it is with them.

(28) Yet it could not be (how vigorously soever it was sought after) that Man (in his own Power) could enter into Paradise. And therefore poor captive Man must sit in this World in the Devil's murdering Den; where now the Devil has built his Chapel close by the Christian Church, and has quite destroyed the Love of Paradise, and has in the Stead of it set up mere covetous, proud, self-willed, [or self-conceited,] faithless, sturdy, malicious Blasphemers, Thieves and Murderers, which lift themselves up against Heaven and Paradise, and have built themselves a Kingdom according to the Dominion of the fierce sour [Stars or] Constellations, wherein they domineer (with Silver and Gold) and consume the Sweat one of another; whosoever is but able, oppresses the other to the Ground. And though he flies before him, yet then he only puts forth his Dragon's Tongue, and spits Fire upon him; he terrifies him with his harsh Voice, and plagues him Day and Night.

(34) Now the Mind thinks, that if all the Works of a Soul (which it wrought here) shall follow it in the Figure, then how shall it be, if a Soul here has for a long Time committed great Abominations, but that they will be great Shame to it, if they must stand in the Figure before its Eyes? This is a great Stumbling- Block of the Devil's, which plagues the poor Soul, and usually forces it thereby into Despair, so that itself continually presents its Sins before it, and despairs of the Grace of God.

(144) In this devouring abyss will rise up all manner of hellish fruits and forms, all according to the hellish quality and kind; as in heaven there spring up heavenly fruits and forms, according to the heavenly quality and kind.

(8) The gloom and depression of the Lesser Mysteries represented the agony of the spiritual soul unable to express itself because it has accepted the limitations and illusions of the human environment. The crux of the Eleusinian argument was that man is neither better nor wiser after death than during life. If he does not rise above ignorance during his sojourn here, man goes at death into eternity to wander about forever, making the same mistakes which he made here. If he does not outgrow the desire for material possessions here, he will carry it with him into the invisible world, where, because he can never gratify the desire, he will continue in endless agony. Dante's Inferno is symbolically descriptive of the sufferings of those who never freed their spiritual natures from the cravings, habits, viewpoints, and limitations of their Plutonic personalities. Those who made no endeavor to improve themselves (whose souls have slept) during their physical lives, passed at death into Hades, where, lying in rows, they slept through all eternity as they had slept through life.

(121) O beauty, pleasure and voluptuousness of this world! O riches and proud stateliness! O might and power! Thy unrighteous judgment and great pomp, with all thy pleasure and voluptuousness, lie all together on a heap, and are become a hellish fire!

(38) Hast thou been a proud vain-glorious, selfishly Potent, and one that has for thy Pleasure Sake oppressed the Needy, then such a Spirit goes forth from thee, and then so it is in the Eternity, where it can neither keep nor get any Thing for [to feed] its Covetousness, neither can it adorn its Body with any Thing, but with that which is there, and yet it climbs up eternally in its Pride, for there is no other Source in it; and thus in its Rising it reaches into nothing else but the stern Might of the Fire in its Elevation; it inclines itself in its Will continually in such a Purpose as it did in this World; as it was wont to do here, so all appears in its Tincture, therein itclimbs up eternally in the Abyss of Hell.

(106) And here is apparently seen the Glass of the Abyss of Hell, and [of the] eternal Despair; when the Anger of God rises up in the Source, that the Malice [and Wickedness] is made stirring, and there begins Trembling, Galling, and Crying, and Despair in itself as to God; there the Soul seeks Abstinence in the Kingdom of this World, and finds mnone; and then it leaves the Kingdom of this World also, and runs also into the Originality into the Root of the eternal Birth, and seeks Abstinence, and yet finds nothing; and then casts itself into the abominable Deep, supposing to reach the Original of the Abstinence, or the Gate of the Breaking in; but it mounts only above the Heaven, out (into the most outermost) into the fierce [wrathful, grim] Eternity.

(25) And by this now, in the creation of this world, the stars and the elements, as also the creatures, tremble and burn; out of it existeth also the house of death and of hell, also an eternal, base, loathsome habitation for the kingdom of Lucifer, and for all Godless men.

(72) O how have all the Prophets written of thee, and yet thou knowest not thyself; thou ridest so upon thy fat pampered Beast, and that Riding pleases thee so well, that thou wilt rather go to the Devil into the Abyss of Hell, than that thou wilt light off thy Beast. What shall become of thee then, thou blind Babel? Do but light off from thy great ugly Beast, [which indeed is] thy Might, Pomp, State, and Pride. Behold! thy Bridegroom comes, and reaches forth his Hand to thee, and would lead thee out of Babel.

(61) And here now was no Remedy, neither in Heaven, nor in this World, they were captivated in hard Slavery, in Misery and Death; the Abyss of Hell held the Soul, and the Spirit of this World held the Body [captive.] Death and Corruption was in the Body; and there was nothing else in them but Enmity to itself, [proceeding] from the tart Essences of the Stars, wherein one Source [or Quality] strives against the other, and one breaks [or destroys] the other with greater Pain and Torment to the Body, with Trembling and Shrieking; and at last [comes] Corruption and Death, as it is before our Eyes.

(10) Behold, we understand by Jerusalem the Paradise, and by the Way to Jericho the Going forth out of Paradise into this World, where then the World captivated us in her Garden, where continually the great Sea of Misery is wherein our Soul swims. Also the Devil is therein, who has bound us with the Chains of the Anger of God, and he leads the poor Soul captive (in the dark Garden of Flesh and Blood) into his fierce Garden of Anger; where the new-born Souls continually break out of his Garden, and break his hellish Kingdom in Pieces; also they have taken Possession of his royal Throne, where he was an Angel, and with their Horns (which are the Spirit of God) have broken in Pieces his hellish Kingdom which he set up; also they oppose him with their Storm out of Hell into Heaven, and assault his Kingdom; but he holds the poor Soul captive with the Chains of the Anger, in this evil Flesh and Blood, and continually sets on the Crew of the Wicked, that they seduce it, and baptize it in the Anger of God up to the very Lips; and there the poor Soul stands up to the Neck in the Sea of Misery, ready to be drowned; and there the Devil thrusts it down with the Vices and Sins of the Body, and would drown the poor Soul in the Anger of God in the Abyss of Hell.

(1) Darkness of hell, and of a night deprived Of every planet under a poor sky, As much as may be tenebrous with cloud, Ne'er made unto my sight so thick a veil, As did that smoke which there enveloped us, Nor to the feeling of so rough a texture; For not an eye it suffered to stay open; Whereat mine escort, faithful and sagacious, Drew near to me and offered me his shoulder. E'en as a blind man goes behind his guide, Lest he should wander, or should strike against Aught that may harm or peradventure kill him, So went I through the bitter and foul air, Listening unto my Leader, who said only, "Look that from me thou be not separated." Voices I heard, and every one appeared To supplicate for peace and misericord The Lamb of God who takes away our sins. Still "Agnus Dei" their exordium was; One word there was in all, and metre one, So that all harmony appeared among them. "Master," I said, "are spirits those I hear?" And he to me: "Thou apprehendest truly, And they the knot of anger go unloosing."

(1) Thus I descended out of the first circle Down to the second, that less space begirds, And so much greater dole, that goads to wailing. There standeth Minos horribly, and snarls; Examines the transgressions at the entrance; Judges, and sends according as he girds him. I say, that when the spirit evil-born Cometh before him, wholly it confesses; And this discriminator of transgressions Seeth what place in Hell is meet for it; Girds himself with his tail as many times As grades he wishes it should be thrust down. Always before him many of them stand; They go by turns each one unto the judgment; They speak, and hear, and then are downward hurled. "O thou, that to this dolorous hostelry Comest," said Minos to me, when he saw me, Leaving the practice of so great an office, "Look how thou enterest, and in whom thou trustest; Let not the portal's amplitude deceive thee." And unto him my Guide: "Why criest thou too? Do not impede his journey fate-ordained; It is so willed there where is power to do That which is willed; and ask no further question."

(33) Only, the spirit here setteth open for thee the gates of hell, that thou may see what is the condition of the devils and of hell, and what is the condition of man, when the divine light extinguished in him, so that he sitteth in the wrath of God and liveth in such a generating, in such an anguish, in such smarting pains, in such woe and misery.