In the 14th century the Italian poet and philosopher Dante Alighieri wrote his epic poem The Divine Comedy. In it Dante describes his journey through the 9 circles of hell while being guided by his fellow poet Virgil. The nine stages or "circles" Dante encounters lead deeper into the realm of sins and punishments until finally arriving at the last two circles, #8 and #9 which are the stages reserved for those that practiced fraud and treachery. I his view fraud and treachery were punished more severly than wrath, lust, greed, heresy, gluttony or anger. In the view of Dante, most of the other sins spring from these two. Fraud and treachery began with the serpent in the garden, continued right on to the betrayal by Judas and has never slowed until the present day. Dante broke down the different types of fraud and treachery practices as the panderers, the seducers, the flatterers, sorcerers, imposters, sowers of discord, those that practice simony (selling that which belongs to God) and the falsifiers. Do any of these describe someone you might have encountered lately? We face treachery and fraud every minute of every day. You don't have to look for it- it finds you. We have become numb to lies, We don't even notice them any more, we just accept it. We are lied to all the time. People attempt to deceive us throughout the day. We expect dishonesty, and we get it. The farther away it originates from our personal space the less we care. Dishonesty does something to us and we don't realize what it it or how to describe it but it causes you to look both ways before you cross a one way street. It causes you to distrust folks you don't even know. In the more personal cases of treachery or dishonesty such as that performed by a family member or loved one you lose chunks of your life. Suddenly you realize what you thought was true today isn't and now the past you thought you had didn't really happen and so now the future isn't so certain either. You lived life thinking you married the farmers' daughter until one day you look at her and think "You're not really from the farm", and so it's easy to see how the final and lowest circles of damnation lead to the other deadly sins - the anger, violence, greed, ect. It leads to gaslighting, future faking, and a host of other mental injuries. And it leads to another more modern day situation - the grand deception where someone tells you a lie and you know it's a lie, and you are certain that they know that you know it's a lie but yet they continue on with it and you contine to listen and you both walk away like nothing happened. Maybe we need Dante or even Virgil to guide us through that situation. Maybe we are digging a tunnel to a ninth circle Dante could not have imagined. Maybe we should stop giving dishonesty a free pass. Food for thought.
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AuthorI am a Mississippi native and now live in Jackson,Tennessee. I write about everyday life and events from the perspective of how they effect my own thoughts and feelings. Archives
April 2020
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