What’s in a number?

Dante and Beatrice.

If you’re ever read anything about the Divine Comedy, you’ll have noticed that commentators pay a very close attention to numbers.

From Rodolfo Benini (quoted by René Guénon in his “The Esoterism of Dante”) stating that the prophecies in the text are spaced either by 666 or 515 verses to the more literary observations about the number three — three worlds, three Cantici, each one with 33 Canti (the first Canto serves as a general introduction), terza rima, etc — they all perceived that Dante’s masterpiece is obviously structured by numbers.

Since this is a newsletter of astrology, I would like to talk a bit about a specific number — 10. In fact, 9 + 1. The number of Celestial Spheres Medieval people believed in (the Crystalline was postulated later), plus the Empirium, which was outside our Cosmos.

This is a “newer” version of the Cosmos; between the Firmament and the Primum Mobile, the “Sphere of the Signs” — the Crystalline — is depicted. So much for “astrologers didn’t take the precession of the equinoxes into account”.

Paradiso is composed of nine spheres and the Empirium. Inferno has nine Circles and a tenth “pre-hell”, the vestibule.

Less conspicuously, Purgatory also is divided in ten stages (two ante-purgatories, seven purging levels, and Earthly Paradise); the Eighth Circle of Hell is organized in ten Bolge; and in the Limbo, when Virgil tells Dante that Christ came and took with Him some souls to Heaven, his list has ten “items”.

This is not a coincidence.

The tenfold divisions of Inferno and Purgatorio are easier to understand. They’re both inverted in relation to Paradiso.

That is, both start with a version of the Empirium — a twisted and distorted one, in the Inferno (the vestibule is outside Hell; that’s where angels and the uncommitted are punished; Dante even puts a canonized saint in there, although he doesn’t name Pope S. Celestine V); an imperfect one in the Purgatorio (the beach and the first ante-purgatory, where the Angel comes to bring the souls into the Mountain, is the only part of it which is not on the mountain; where they meet Cato, who was not a Christian — he was from outside Christianity) — and end with the Moon sphere (traitors and Lucifer are trapped in a frozen lake, divided in four, in Hell; in Purgatory, where Dante meets Beatrice, he enters the Earthly Paradise after being washed — by a woman — to forget the memory of sins, and then drinks from another river to recover good memories).

We must not let the Capital Sins purged in Purgatory fool us — they’re not in any “planetary order”, and their imagery doesn’t always follow the planets associated with the sins. But they do follow the planetary order (the stage of Luxury is quite mercurial; the preceding one, gluttony, has beautiful trees, etc).

The subdivisions of the eight Circle of Hell are not hard to understand, either.

First Bolgia — Panderers and Seducers; explorers of women — the Moon;

Second — Flatterers — Mercury;

Third — Simoniacs — they betray their position (one of the sins the Bible would call “adultery”, abandoning the Lord for money, as would a wife turned into a prostitute) and sell Holy things, offices, and roles — Venus;

Fourth — Sorcerers and Future Seers (sorcerers, clairvoyants, and astrologers; see below), who would try to usurp God’s privilege and power —the Sun;

The fifth Bolgia punishes sins maybe more associated with other planets (people who extorted, blackmailed, speculated, or were shady businessmen, are locked there), but there is where the army of Malebranche (which means “evil claw”) is, throwing people in hot tar pits and poking them with hooks — Mars;

Sixth Bolgia — Hypocrites (gold on the outside, lead on the inside; the Jewish High Priests that condemned Jesus are also here, nailed on crosses on the floor) — Jupiter;

Seventh — Thieves (punished by Saturnine beasts) — Saturn;

Eight — Fraudulent Counselors, lit up like a miriad of suffering stars — Firmament;

Ninth — Sewers of discord, scandals, or schism, the “origin of all troubles”; they are torn apart, and/or dismembered — Primum Mobile;

Tenth and last — Alchemists, Liars, Impostors, and Counterfeiters, the ones that try to alter reality and are tortured by horrible diseases that transform the flesh — Empirium. This is ironically guarded by “living mountains”: giants.

The people rescued by Christ in Limbo are a bit trickier, but the key to understand it is that Virgil does not seem to follow any other order — certainly, not chronological.

Virgil mentions, in this order:

Adam — the image and likeness of God: as the Moon is, when full, the image of the Sun;

Abel, the first priest, and the victim in the first brother rivalry story, Mercury;

Noah, which was so loved by God that survived the Flood, and brought with him the seeds of the new world, Venus;

Moses, who saw God face to Face, the Sun;

Abraham, who was called to leave his land and lived a roaming life, and was also commanded to slay his only son, Mars;

David, the wise King, Jupiter;

Israel, the father of the Jewish, Saturn;

Isaac, Israel’s father, and Abraham’s son, the promise of offspring numerous as the stars in the sky, the Firmament;

Israel’s sons, the founders of Twelve Tribes, the “entire people”, the Primum Mobile, that moves everything below it;

Rachel, a symbol of God’s love, the final “reward” of Israel, the mother of Joseph and Benjamin; Rachel, who is indeed mentioned in the Empirium later in the poem, the Empirium.

The order of the Cosmos torments the damned, instructs the penitent, enlightens the blessed; but it’s always there.

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A note on the fourth Bolgia — the astrologers.

Dante puts us lot in the fourth division of the Eighth Circle, condemned to walk backwards, with our face twisted and our tears running down and between our butt cheeks (it’s there, don’t blame me).

He specifically mentions Guido Bonatti, Michael Scot, and Asdente (a shoemaker-turned-astrologer).

No need to despair — at least, not yet.

First, the political bit: both Bonatti and Scot were financed by ghibelines; Bonatti was advisor to Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor, who also employed Scot as his court astrologer.

Dante was a White Guelph (their views could be summarized as “screw the Emperor”, as all Guelphs wanted, but also “screw this particular Pope”, whom the Black Guelphs supported).

Asdente was a Guelph… but of the wrong type. As much as Dante disliked Frederick II, he hated the Black Guelphs — and the popes they supported, with all the dead ones duly put in Hell, and a place already reserved for the next, in the poem —and saw in Henry VII, Frederick’s sucessor, a savior, a new Charlemagne.

He wouldn’t miss the chance of putting them in Hell.

Then, the astrological bit: there is astrology in the three Cantos. Not only in their structure; astrology is explicitely discussed with Marco Lombardo (Purgatorio) and Beatrice herself (Paradiso).

However, the craft is not without its risks for the soul. Dante’s view on the subject seem to have been very similar to the one held by the bishops at the Council of Trent (which occurred some three hundred years after his death). The art is permissible (and, according to his Convito, admirable), but stating contingent things as they were certain is anathema.

What is being punished in the Fourth Bolgia is, literally, trying to see the future; considering free actions of human beings as predictable with certainty.

We are, after all, free beings — even though love-smitten horary clients try their best to make us think otherwise.

That’s it for now. See you soon.