Dante Alighieri, Tripping, and Paradise

Of the three parts of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy by far the best known is the Inferno, where the author meets a succession of people condemned to cunningly inventive and devilishly appropriate eternal tortures. Hell is the one place in the Comedy where everybody is guaranteed a dead end job for all time, so trust our culture to neglect the other two parts at the expense of this one. The Purgatorio is all about change and growth, while the Paradiso could be called a meditation on spiritual expansion, and it is here that Dante gives us a cohesive portrayal of what happens with sustained exposure to sacred light. It is one of the great Western depictions of a mystical experience.

 With the coming of the age of psychedelics, where we can all have visionary experiences in our own living rooms, interest in the Paradiso has a good chance of growing. In it, Dante ascends from the garden of Eden, through the crystalline spheres of the planets, up into to the empyrean, the sacred realm beyond the stars. There like any good pilgrim, he finally has his ego death moment.

 When we talk about the setting for a psychedelic experience we usually think of nice mood music, a soft couch, and no Francis Bacon paintings on the wall. We don’t think so much about the cultural setting, though anybody’s cultural surroundings are pervasive and inescapable. When Medieval mystics had a visionary experience, they would have expected it to make perfectly good sense to all their community; today though, the more ineffable we get, the harder it is for those around us to understand. We cast around to other cultures to render sense, (or no-sense) out of the experience, forgetting that here in the West there once was a thriving mystical tradition too.  It’s useful to see the commonality this tradition has with Asian and with shamanic traditions, and it may be a comfort to know that our own ancestors have “been here before,” and gone through experiences that we are encountering for the first time. For instance, have you ever had a psychedelic experience that was ‘beyond words?’ Dante opens the Paradiso by talking about that very thing:

 The glory of Him who moves all things

Pervades the universe and shines

In one part more and in another less.

I was in that heaven which receives

More of his light. He who comes down from there

Can neither know nor tell what he has seen,

For, drawing near to its desire,

So deeply is our intellect immersed

That memory cannot follow after it.

Nevertheless, as much of the holy kingdom

 As I could store as treasure in my mind

Shall now become the subject of my song.

 The Paradiso is not an easy read, largely because it makes constant reference to classical myths we may not know about, and to people of his time who are now entirely obscure historical figures, so you may want some support in getting the most out of it. Here then are some Paradisical resources:

This podcast is an outline of the full Divine Comedy, which you may want before you plunge in: Mythology and Fiction Explained

Or you might want to consult with your Thug Notes. Though he just goes through the Inferno it is hilarious enough to be well worth the ride: Thug Notes

 This one is a rather wry, very spoofy, but quite useful short summary of the Paradiso itself: Classics Summarized. And you might want to add in this other short: What Is Dante's Paradiso?

If you want to listen to the full Divine Comedy, I found this in Audible. The reader is very good, the verse jogs along quite happily, and you can listen to a sample to see if you like it too: Clive James translation

In this podcast, Mark Vernon explains the Paradiso canto by canto, and although he is a little on the serious side, he gives you a good picture of what is going on: Dante's divine Comedy

Please don’t take my uninformed word for it, but as I understand it this written translation is one of the best. If you buy the kindle version don’t try to read it on your phone, it gets clunky and hard to manage there, read it on a larger kindle device or buy the book: Hollander Paradiso

But, if you want a different translation, plus Gustave Dore’s famous illustrations, here it is for 99c! Cheap Divine Comdey

And finally, in this Youtube video Mark Vernon talks with Rupert Sheldrake about the spiritual significance of Dante’s work, and they discuss the relationship between Dante’s visit to Heaven and modern-day tripping. Mark and Rupert agreeing with each other

 In reading the Paradiso you are skipping past the combined 66 cantos of the Inferno and Purgutorio. If, however, the full 33 cantos of the Paradiso are still a bit of a mouthful, you can start at canto 30, where Dante goes from the spheres of the planets up into the empyrean, the place where God hangs out. It is the happiest of happy endings.