Description

Instructor: Joseph Crane

What You’ll Learn

Once upon a time, you were respected in your community, politically active, and attempting reforms. Then it all falls apart—you are accused of corruption and exiled. How do you cope? If you are Dante Aligheri, you start writing.

Eight hundred years ago, the exiled poet Dante Alighieri pondered the nature of personal, cultural and institutional evil and our chances of doing better. His Divine Comedy traces a spiritual journey and cosmology that will be familiar to modern astrologers.

Dante’s depiction of human frailty, malevolence, and redemption is stunningly relevant to our times and will give you new tools for understanding the astrological symbolism of the seven visible planets and the spiritual possibilities of the human spirit.

This two-part workshop uses Dante’s work, with its rich astrological symbolism, to follow his path from the darkest shadows to liberation.

Part One: Human Bondage and Liberation

As Dante is guided through a dream journey, he depicts a version of Hell that examines human darkness. Dante descends further and further into a place of darkness, violence, and confinement. But he is not forever trapped. Dante is shown the path out of Hell to make the climb to Purgatory, a mountain on the earth, where darkness and light alternate, where confusion and hope comingle.

This section follows the path from the dry and frozen numbness of our personal hells, and the types of thought and action that lead us there, to the hope of change with the assistance of those who care for us.

Students will explore the planetary symbolism in Hell’s shape, and how this applies to the passage through Purgatory. By touring both realms with Dante and his guides, students will explore the origins and outcomes of evil, and paths of liberation toward a better life, all within some of history’s most sublime drama and poetry.

Part Two: From Time to Eternity–The Planets and Beyond

How is a fully realized life available to us “down here?” To answer this question, Dante continues his dream-tour and enters “the heavens.” This section follows our journey as we begin to recognize and work on our soul’s path.

Students will continue to explore the vastness and diversity of human excellence through Dante’s symbolism of the planets and beyond. As Dante travels through the planetary spheres, he meets exemplary people who represent the astrological symbolism of planet where they appear to reside.

As we follow this spiritual path, we move move from time-based planets to the celestial realm. From these heights, we can contemplate human possibility within a divine cosmology.

Notes

Recorded over 2 sessions, beginning 10/21/2017

Runtime: 245 minutes