When last we left our intrepid adventurers...
Dante and his dead girlfriend had just witnessed some really trippy symbolism-laden nonsense
and then subsequently ascended to heaven, like you do.
Dante starts us off by telling us that God sheds light everywhere.
But mostly in Heaven, which is where he is right now.
This is incidentally why Heaven is bright.
Like... *really* bright.
Take note of this brightness as it is something of a theme in this book.
So. *hits table* Fun fact:
When Dante says "Heaven," he basically means Space.
I understand the confusion; they're both *up* from the perspective of Earth.
So they leave Earth behind and Beatrice starts him on a guided tour of the celestial spheres.
That is, the 14th century model of the solar system, which looks something like this.
And here's something for your literary analysis:
Motion is a *huge* theme in the Divine Comedy.
In Hell, nothing ever changes, while in Purgatory, upward motion is the single goal.
But in Heaven, time is
EVERYTHING ALWAYS FOREVER AND IT'S Full of spirits buzzing around like 10-year-olds jacked up on Pixy Stix.
So anyway, the first planet they go to is the moon.
Which, uhhh, isn't a planet.
And Beatrice is like,
"Look, Dante. Everything the light touches is God's kingdom."
And Dante's like,
"Whaddabout that shadowy place?"
And Beatrice is like,
"Oh, it's FASCINATING, actually!
It's not darker because it's farther away. Light's a funny thing, see..."
About 5 School Years of Religious Quantum physics later...
"...and in conclusion, it's dark because God said so!"
So anyway, the spirits of the dead that get to hang out on the moon are those who are inconstant.
Just like the moon!
Oh yeah, that crazy moon, always orbiting the Earth in that unpredictable, elliptical pattern
while the Sun's light reaches it in an increasing angle in relation to the Earth,
consequently leading it to its regularly changing phases.
And it's *so* crazy, you never know WHAT it's gonna do next.
So Dante chats with this lady, Piccarda, who's glowing so much he's having trouble recognising her.
And she talks about how when she was alive, she was a nun who was taken from her convent.
It's cool, though. She gets to chill on the moon forever.
That's...
...good?
Next on this episode of The Magic School Bus is our tour of Mercury.
Now, Mercury's pretty close to the sun, which means it's — surprise, surprise...
...too bright to see.
So Dante gets to chill with all the heaven-bound souls who were a little too ambitious when they were alive.
I'd say it's because they
flew too close to the Sun.
Eh? Eh?
But it's actually because the glory they earned on earth pales in significance to the glory of God.
Just like Mercury pales next to the Sun because it's too goddamn bright.
Dante also hangs out with Emperor Justinian, who's...
...a guy?
Some 5th century Byzantine emperor, I guess.
Part of what makes these texts difficult to read nowadays
is that Dante gave cameos to all his pals and favorite historical figures,
only a few of whom we still actually care about today.
*sigh* And so the sands of time wear down on us all.
But who cares?
Certainly not us!
Dante's off to Venus!
And to his credit, Dante gets one thing right about Venus:
it's very cloudy.
But these are nice, sedate, cool clouds that don't rain acid down on the barren hell-scape below.
No, this Venus is where the lovers go.
It's lovely, peaceful, devoid of greenhouse gases and acid lakes, and — surprise, surprise...
...extremely bright.
Anyway, Dante talks to this troubadour who takes the opportunity to take a big ol' dump on Florence,
blaming it for everything wrong with the clergy.
Uhh, for those keeping score,
that's so far a handful of popes and one major city that Dante's blaming for the sorry state of the church.
On to the fourth Heaven, which is...
...the Sun?
WHAT?!
What happened to Mars?
Why is this path so inefficient?
If you were already in Mercury, why the hell would you go to Venus before you went to the Sun?
Even The Magic School Bus visited the planets in order and THEY DID THAT IN A BUS.
*sigh* Anyway.
The Sun is bright, no kidding.
Dante takes a moment to appreciate the craftsmanship before being surrounded by twelve glowy spheres,
each the soul of an extremely wise dude.
And then they move on to Mars.
Finally, geez.
Anyway, Mars is bright red and full of Warriors of the Faith, people who died for God.
Hey, I wonder if that means Jesus is here.
*thunder*
Y'know I'm sure he's got a special share somewhere.
Anyway, all the glowing souls on Mars are assembled in the shape of a Greek cross,
which Google Images tells me is basically a plus sign trying to be an individual.
Dante compares the cross to the Milky Way, which tells me that he's either never looked up at the sky
or he's finally been blinded by all the goddamn lens flare.
Anyway, Dante runs into an ancestor of his with an unpronounceable name
who tells him to write all this stuff down.
He also bumps into Judah Maccabee (for those of you unfamiliar, he's relevant to the story of Hanukkah)
along with Charlemagne and a few others.
Then it's on to Jupiter and here's where it starts to get weird.
So first of all, as soon as Dante and Beatrice get there, the souls start putting on a living fireworks display
and spell out the Latin words... these things.
Euugghhhhh.
Anyway, they mean something like "Love peace, you who judges the earth."
So the last M hangs around while the other souls scatter and then it gets really big and bright
and apparently stands for "Monarca" aka monarch aka Jesus.
Pro tip: When analyzing Paradiso, EVERYTHING IS JESUS.
Anyway, then the M turns into a giant eagle which Dante chats with for a while.
It is... exactly as weird as it sounds.
Also the eagle is probably Jesus.
So they move on to Saturn, which is really bright.
It's where the contemplatives end up, which is interesting
because you'd think it'd be pretty hard to think, let alone hold a conversation,
on a planet composed entirely of screamingly fast and poisonous winds.
Dante chats with another soul and Beatrice somehow manages to become even prettier.
It's symbolic of their ascension closer to God.
This is also why the spheres keep getting brighter.
Anyway, they climb up this golden ladder, Jacob's ladder apparently,
and ascend into the eighth Heaven, the Circle of the Fixed Stars.
So, time for an astronomy lesson.
The fixed stars are an antiquated concept that defined the celestial bodies
that didn't seem to move in relation to each other.
The things that did move, namely the planets and your occasional asteroid,
were designated as wandering stars.
The fixed stars were supposedly on the inside of a giant celestial sphere with the Earth at its center
and in fact they served as the outermost layer of the geocentric model of the solar system.
So anyway, Dante climbs a ladder into space.
This sphere is just full of saints because it's basically for the holiest of holy dudes just short of Jesus.
One of the dudes here, Saint Peter as it turns out, fwooshes around Beatrice a few times
and then starts arguing with Dante over what faith is.
Dante's like,
"Well, see, faith is when you hope something will happen even though you have no evidence to support it."
And Saint Peter's like, "Awesome," and poofs off.
And then Saint James asks him what hope is and Dante's like,
"Oh, hope is an expectation of good stuff that God gives you if you're good."
And Saint James is like, "Great!" And poofs off.
But then, horror of horrors! Beatrice vanishes!
Or maybe Dante's finally gone blind from all the lens flare.
Actually that turns out to be exactly what happens.
So Dante's blind, and then Saint John shows up and asks him to explain love, and Dante's like, "Well it's—"
♪ What is love (love)? ♪
"—and that's why gardens are just the best."
And then Beatrice cures Dante's blindness by — wait for it...
...shining some really bright light into his eyes.
Utter BS or the first recorded instance of lasik eye surgery?
We'll never knowwwww.
Anyway, now that Dante can see again, he notices a really bright light.
And Beatrice is like, "Yeah, that's Adam as in Adam and Eve. Let's go say hello."
So they go over and Adam's like, "Lemme stop you right there because I know what you're about to ask me.
Before you ask about all that, it's because I'm literally psychic.
God wasn't mad because I ate the fruit, he was mad because I broke the rules.
I was in Eden for all of 7 hours. It's been 6,498 years since I got kicked out.
And the language I spoke is long dead because 6,000 years have passed."
You really get the impression that Adam has heard it all before and he's like
one of those really jaded celebrities who just does not have time for his fans anymore.
Anyway. So Dante, the writer, not his self-insert, takes a minute to take a dump on the current pope.
So the five souls he's talked to so far, Beatrice, Saint Peter, Saint James, Saint John, and Adam,
all start glowing really brightly, and then *gasp* shock!
Saint Peter turns red!
This is apparently because on Earth, Pope Boniface is apparently just doing an *awful* job at being pope.
It's so bad that God himself is bummed, and the entire rest of Heaven turns red as a result.
Talk about theatrical.
*thunder*
Speaking of theatrics,
Saint Peter is so incensed by all this corrupt papacy that he starts ranting about evil popes
and orders Dante to write about how terrible they are so everybody knows.
So anyway, Dante looks back at Earth and his newly unblinded eyes let him see it in insane detail.
He even sees the route Odysseus took during the Odyssey and the island of Crete,
which is impressive because Crete is tiny, even by island standards.
And Beatrice has once again become even more beautiful.
As it turns out, this is because they're getting closer to the Primum Mobile,
the last physical circle of Heaven and the realm of the angels.
So Dante sees a really bright light, shocker, which is orbited by nine rings of light.
The smallest ring has the purest light, which Dante thinks is because it's closest to the other light.
There was a whole lot of light in that sentence.
Incidentally, the light at the center of that is the tenth circle of Heaven.
We'll get to that.
Anyway, Beatrice is like, "Yeah, that ring is spinning fastest because it's the holiest and closest to God.
And it's spurred on by love."
And Dante's like, "Yeah, that's cool and all but
doesn't that imply that the Earth would be the holiest of all the heavenly circles, cause it's... smallest?"
And Beatrice is like, "No, see, because in this universe, the better something is...
...the ~bigger~ it is."
Anyway, the nine rings are representative of the angelic hierarchy, which is pretty fascinating all on its own
so here's how that goes.
The smallest ring, and the top tier of the angels, are the seraphim.
Seraphim literally translates to "burning one," and they're traditionally represented with three sets of wings.
Confusingly, seraph is also sometimes used in the Bible to refer to snakes.
Man, the Bible just cannot be asked to keep its terminology straight.
This is that "Satan" mess all over again.
The second ring are the cherubim, and let me stop you right there because
you just thought of a pudgy little baby with wings and a trumpet, and boy, are you wrong.
Cherubim are four-faced monstrosities with four wings covered in eyeballs,
which sounds less like something that'd decorate a Valentine's Day card and more like a boss in Dark Souls.
That baby thing you thought of is actually called a putto, by the way.
The third ring are the thrones, which are... bizarre, even by Heaven standards.
They're... wheels? Specifically two wheels, one nested inside the other,
and they're also covered in eyeballs for... some... reason.
*breathes in*
Also I think they're on fire?
The fourth ring are the dominions, which are blessedly normal-looking for angels.
They're divinely beautiful dudes with big, feathery wings.
The fifth ring are the virtues, which i couldn't find a description for but apparently they glow.
Shocker, right?
The sixth ring are the powers, which are warrior angels.
The seventh ring are the principalities, which are traditional-ish angels.
They carry scepters and wear crowns because they're basically rulers of certain groups of people
and it's kind of confusing so NEXT.
The eighth ring are the archangels, and I want you to do me a favor
and forget everything you think you know about archangels
because they are much less cool than you think they are.
Archangels are just slightly better than plain vanilla angels, and angels are just messengers.
They're the highest class of angel, but not the highest class of *angel*.
You know what, forget it.
And then the ninth ring are just your standard, plain vanilla angels.
Next up, it's time for a history lesson.
Beatrice tells Dante that in the beginning, God made form and matter and also a combination of the two
in a big flash of light, and that's how he created the universe.
Almost immediately thereafter, Lucifer took it into his head to rebel,
and as a result, was cast down to the lowermost butthole of the universe:
Earth.
After all that mess was taken care of, the rest of the angels started spinning around God
in these nine concentric rings and they haven't stopped since.
And now it's on to the tenth sphere, the Empyrean.
This is where it starts getting weird because here's where we transcend the physical universe
and get a look at the face of God.
First off, the Empyrean is described as a heaven of pure light,
unlike all those other heavens which are just really bright all the time.
Anyway, the first thing Dante runs into is a river of light, which Beatrice tells him to drink from.
He takes a swig, and that's when stuff gets *really* weird.
So basically, this magic glowy water lets him see the Empyrean for what it truly is.
And it's possibly the weirdest thing ever.
First of all, the river goes from straight to round, and all the glowy flowers and gems around it
turn into a bunch of angels and saints.
Dante also notices a bright light high above him as well as an enormous rose for some reason?
The rose is full of the souls who were so righteous and awesome that they get to chillax right next to God.
There's a seat reserved especially for King Henry VII,
not the one who ended the War of the Roses,
the German one who was Holy Roman Emperor for like a year.
Because Dante believed he was gonna unite Italy or... something.
This didn't end up happening.
Gotta wonder if they kept his seat open.
Anyway, there are a whole bunch of angels flying around the rose,
distributing love all over it like bees pollinating a flower.
That's not my metaphor, by the way.
So Dante's very impressed, and he goes to talk to Beatrice about it when —
SHOCK!
Beatrice is gone!
And it's not because he's gone blind again; she's been replaced by some old guy.
So Dante channels his inner Batman and goes all, "Where is she?"
And the old guy's like,
"Whoa, hey, chill out dude. Have you... tried looking up?"
So yeah, Beatrice totally ditched Dante to go chill in the celestial rose.
Remind me again why Dante liked her so much.
Anyway, the old guy in question is Saint Bernard
who, for the purposes of this review, will be represented as a dog.
And he points out some of the dudes chilling on the rose,
which includes an alarming number of children.
Bernard explains that before the big J was born, all kids were guaranteed a spot in Heaven,
but after he was born, they had to baptized and, if male, circumcised or they'd get tossed into limbo which,
just a reminder, is in HELL.
Yeah. Thanks, Jesus.
But Dante's running out of pages so it's time to meet God face to face.
But this part is *so* bright that Dante can't properly remember it, which might explain why it's so
...
...weird.
So first off, I want you to imagine God for me.
Get a really clear image in your head of what you think the big guy looks like.
Ya got it?
Great.
You're wrong.
God is in fact three glowing circles occupying the same space, one each for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
So that incidentally means that one of the glowy rings is in fact Jesus,
just like everything else in this book.
Oh, but we're not done yet.
In case you're not confused enough already, at the center of those rings is a book.
And it's bound by love?
So yeah, God is also a book?
This just got, like, four dimensions of meta.
There are also rainbows because of course there are.
So in conclusion, God is a circle full of book and rainbows.
Wait, wait. Wait one sec.
Are you telling me God is a reading rainbow?
("Reading Rainbow" theme song)
OH my God, my childhood just got so much more theologically significant.