Dante encounters seven popes in the Divine Comedy, five in hell, one in purgatory and one in paradise - that last being Saint Peter. His condemnation of individual popes and, I think, the papacy is extraordinarily strong and discomforting to relate. But was it all revenge? Did he fall for the politics too? Or was his message one of renewal, revival and reunion with God? Dante was concerned about salvation, the role of women and friars, the love of the gospel, and the fate of Christianity. His cr...
May 04, 2025•48 min
This talk was first given to Idler Drinks. For more on Mark's work on Dante - https://www.markvernon.com/dantes-divine-comedy
Mar 11, 2025•6 min
“Circles of hell" has become commonplace in language. But what was Dante trying to show us when he wrote the inferno? What has been lost in translation, with this first canticle in Dante’s trilogy now part of a secular culture? Jason Baxter talks about his new translation of the Inferno with Mark Vernon. They discuss what Dante could convey in language and why the text never ceases to offer fresh insights. How can we understand his encounters with figures from Virgil to Ulysses? What is it ...
Oct 04, 2024•1 hr
Rowan Williams and Jesse Armstrong talked at The Idler festival, partly around the idea, caught in the expression, “boring as hell”. But is that right, they asked, when a drama like Succession so clearly appeals to us? The question is fundamental, for an age inclined to regard hell as appealing or intriguing, is one on the way to being lost. Drawing on Dante and William Blake, two great diagnostic writers about different states of mind, this talk explores how the passions of the soul, to use Wil...
Jul 11, 2024•33 min
Dante lived through a period of almost total social collapse. Civil war and city-state terror, practiced by the church as much as secular powers, drove him into exile for the last 20 years of his life. For a while, he lost everything. But then, through the trauma, he regained a ground and rediscovered the fullness of life. The Divine Comedy is the product of that transformation. The journeys through hell, purgatory and paradise hold nothing back, be that terrible tortures of extraordinary deligh...
Jun 13, 2024•15 min
Dante's imagery, particularly in the Paradiso, offers powerful prompts to developing the sense of what it is to be intelligent. He wrote for modern times, he said. And now, as AI becomes more pervasive, he can help us understand how machine learning and human intuitions are very different capacities. This was part of a talk given at the Scientific and Medical Network - https://scientificandmedical.net/webinars/ For more on Mark's work, particularly on Dante, see www.markvernon.com...
Nov 25, 2023•42 min
Reason fails before the greatest spiritual truths. That much is not news. But part of the genius of Dante is his conjuring of images that reach beyond the impasses of paradox and seeming contradiction. I consider 8 such moments when Dante sees the unsayable and offers images of the ineffable. - how darkness leads to light - how appearances can be the opposite of the truth - how the immediate eclipses wider perspectives - how all faces are the divine face - how “I” and “we” coincide - how divine ...
Aug 05, 2023•22 min
What is the meaning of Easter? How might Holy Week be more than an occasion for its retelling? Can death and resurrection live today, as they once did, 2000 years ago? Dante’s journey, in the Divine Comedy, begins on Maundy Thursday, 1300. It continues through the inferno, on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, before he enters purgatory on Easter Sunday morning, at dawn. The climb up Mount Purgatory, then, takes until Easter Wednesday when, finally, Dante reaches paradise. Though that is really anot...
Apr 06, 2023•27 min
Dante would seem to be a key candidate for infernalism, the doctrine of endless punishment in hell for sinners who failed to turn to Christ. He’s said to be medieval and isn't that what they believed then? And doesn’t his Divine Comedy clearly, indisputably say as much? But Dante’s whole point is that nothing is as it seems to the unawakened eye. I think what Dante is doing is taking evil completely seriously and showing why eternal damnation not only isn't, but can’t be the final resu...
Mar 06, 2023•27 min
The Divine Comedy is all about guides - finding guides, following guides, conversing with guides. Virgil and Beatrice are the best known, but there are other modes of guidance that Dante seeks and explores. Angels, dreams and myths accompanying Dante, even in the darkest moments. He learns to be present to them and trust that whilst in one encounter they can bring fear or shame, in another they inspire wrestling and struggle, and then in another again bring divine light and insight. For more on ...
Dec 23, 2022•17 min
Dante coined the word "transhumanise" in the Divine Comedy, 700 years ago. "Trasumanar" is the transformation he will undergo in order to share in the life of paradise. Today, the word has associations that are strikingly related to Dante's; partly quite similar, though changed in subtle but crucial ways. Understanding those differences illuminates the dangers of transhumanism today and how it might limit, not expand, our humanity. I consider this constriction across hal...
Aug 28, 2022•35 min
A joy to speak again with Brian, this time on Dante's Divine Comedy. We talked about what happened to Dante, what happened to Mark that opened up the Divine Comedy, how the poem works as an initiation, what it reveals about Christianity, what happens to Virgil, the nature of paradise, amongst other things. For more on Brian see http://brianjames.ca For more on Mark see https://www.markvernon.com
Jul 14, 2022•1 hr 21 min
Bernard Carr is a leading cosmologist who worked with Stephen Hawking and now investigates time, multidimensionality and consciousness, amongst other things. Bernardo Kastrup cites him as at the vanguard of the great task to integrate matter and mind. So I was delighted to get the chance to ask Bernard about images from Dante. We talked about relational cosmologies as advocated by Carlo Rovelli, who has talked about being inspired by Dante, and whether alternative images from the Divine Comedy m...
Jul 10, 2022•13 min
This episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues continues Rupert and Mark's exploration of Dante’s Divine Comedy, taking a lead from Mark’s book, Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey. Dante is now guided by Beatrice through the heavenly spheres and into the Empyrean. It is a journey into the abundance of infinity and eternity, which immediately struck Rupert as akin to a DMT trip. Mark and Rupert explore how that is an apt analogy with Dante enabling us to incorporate the...
Jun 24, 2022•44 min
Various human experiences are deepened and resolved as Dante travels through hell, purgatory and paradise. The Divine Comedy can be read as an examination of this transfiguring of perception. From the alienation of hell, through the transforming time of purgatory, to the ever-expanding awareness of paradise: Dante show us how time & love, seeking & suffering, telepathy & transhumanising can change to reveal divine life without limit. For more on Mark's book on the Divine Comedy ...
Jun 07, 2022•37 min
This is a contribution to recent dialogues on idealism between Bernardo Kastrup, John Vervaeke, Matt Segall, Philip Goff and others, including myself. I draw particularly on: - Dante's account and analysis of his journey to the heart of consciousness in all its fullness - source and manifestation - in the Divine Comedy - how minds as we know them not only dissociate but also project and introject, and what meaning this might have for Bernardo's thesis - trinitarian understandings of on...
May 01, 2022•45 min
Paradise. Destiny for a chosen few? Dismissed today by many. Or might it be the end for us all? Dante tells us to follow closely in the richest, subtlest and most expansive part of the journey conveyed in the Divine Comedy. He shows us how to develop paradisal perception, the way to know this experience of reality now, and to become ready for it in the hereafter. Paradise is when the deepest truths become clear, the most intimate participation with life is known as divine. This is the third of t...
Apr 12, 2022•1 hr 1 min
The mode of life called purgatorial is a medieval superstition, according to some, and the very purpose of mortal life, according to others. So what did Dante make of Purgatory and what has it to teach us now? In the Purgatorio, the essence of the spiritual path is shown in encounters and discussions. Purging itself, for example, is not about being rid of what we don't like, an activity that is another form of vanity. Rather it is about becoming clearer of that which hinders our sight of Go...
Apr 05, 2022•1 hr
The liberal world and western churches increasingly seem to suffer from the lack of a sophisticated understanding of erotic love - an approach not merely governed by morals but arising from insight into who we are and our deepest nature. Erotic love can be felt on nearly every page of the Divine Comedy, in perverted and desperate forms, as well as in free and joyous souls. He understood that eros has a goal as it draws us towards God, though that goal is readily thwarted as we traverse its energ...
Apr 03, 2022•26 min
The notion of hell is delighted in by some and causes offence in others. So why did Dante write about this infernal domain on his journey through reality? What is its meaning? What might be learnt from it? The inferno illuminates how desires go awry, the nature of our being is misunderstood, perceptions narrow, and how societies, even civilisations, become lost. This is the first of three talks, originally hosted by the Fintry Trust. Why Purgatory and Why Paradise follow. The talk draws on Mark&...
Mar 30, 2022•52 min
This episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues continues Rupert and Mark's exploration of Dante’s Divine Comedy, taking a lead from Mark’s book, Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey. Dante and Virgil have found the way out of hell and a new adventure begins on Mount Purgatory. They first encounter souls who are shocked by their deaths and bemused by the afterlife. Then, the transformative ascent up the various terraces of the mountain begins. On each, souls are reckoning...
Mar 02, 2022•37 min
Dante’s Divine Comedy famously opens with the poet wakening in a dark wood. His life has seemingly taken a wrong turn. But why must he embark first on a journey through hell, before ascending Mount Purgatory, only then entering paradise? What has the way into darkness to do with the way into light? He learns to say ‘yes’ to all of reality, and that the light includes the darkness, even as tragedy is integrated into the comedy of divine life. This event is part of a series looking at dualities wi...
Feb 17, 2022•1 hr 16 min
John Vervaeke, Paul VanderKlay and Paul Anleitner asked what "God" means, with John challenging the Pauls to talk about God via Light, Love, Logos and Life, so as not to hide behind the "g" word. Drawing on Dante, I offer some thoughts... The original conversation is here - https://youtu.be/UGq34dLXrFI More about Dante and my work - http://www.markvernon.com...
Jan 17, 2022•38 min
The Dante exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, for the 700th anniversary year of 2021, brought together some of the Divine Comedy’s greatest illustrators, living and dead, from Monika Beisner to William Blake and Sandro Botticelli. Here are my reflections on these studies in line and light depicting darkness and life. Modern works discussed include those by Monika Beisner, Dante and Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise (2001) and Dante and Beatrice and the Mystic Rose of Paradise (2001); Rachel Owen,...
Jan 02, 2022•28 min
Audible have released the audiobook of Dante's Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey. I hope you enjoy the first chapter, Inferno 1. For more information go to Audible. And for more on the book as a whole see my website - https://www.markvernon.com ....
Dec 21, 2021•10 min
This episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues is the second part of a conversation between Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon on the Inferno of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Deeper regions of hell are explored, in which individuals aren’t just confused about life but have become wedded to their confusions and the seeming power they bring. The deep ramifications of the worship of Mammon and worlds built on money is part of that addiction, as are the huge risks of spiritual seeking that arise directly fro...
Dec 17, 2021•39 min
Dante and Otherworld Journeys was an online conference organised with the Scientific and Medical Network - https://scientificandmedical.net/events/dr-kayleen-asbo-lorna-byrne-dr-peter-fenwick-mariel-forde-clarke-david-lorimer-felicity-warner-dr-mark-vernon-dante-and-otherworld-journeys/ This is the conversation, with extra thoughts, that I had with Lorna Byrne - https://lornabyrne.com I was particularly glad to compare her experience with those of other angel seers, from Socrates to Dante and Wi...
Nov 29, 2021•55 min
The Divine Comedy by Dante is one of the great spiritual works of the Christian tradition. But how can it be read and what does it mean? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discuss the first part of Dante’s cosmic pilgrimage. It takes Dante through the circles of hell, until he reaches the lowest point of reality, the region furthest from God. It becomes clear that descent into darkness is a key part of personal transformation because it helps the ...
Nov 12, 2021•30 min
Dante was clear: he wrote so that others might follow him on otherworld journeys. So what might this mean? With the Scientific and Medical Network, an online conference, Sat 27th Nov, to explore this issue. Join individuals who have studied it and others who have so travelled. Full details here - https://scientificandmedical.net/events/dr-kayleen-asbo-lorna-byrne-dr-peter-fenwick-mariel-forde-clarke-david-lorimer-felicity-warner-dr-mark-vernon-dante-and-otherworld-journeys/...
Nov 04, 2021•1 min
This lecture was given to the Temenos Academy on Tuesday 19th October 2021 - a particular delight as it was on its perennial philosophy course that the Divine Comedy first began to open up to me. See here for more details - https://www.temenosacademy.org I make some remarks on the Inferno and Purgatorio first, about how spiritual intelligence recognises the significance of now and knowing yourself. However, as we live in an age that finds the Paradiso increasingly incomprehensible, most of the l...
Oct 22, 2021•54 min
