Mythgard Academy

Week 14: True to the nature of Fraud, the 8th circle is an artificial construct of inverted imagery split into 10 concentric pockets, with bridges that look down upon each trench. The first pocket is a gender discriminated container for pimps and seducers, a sex traffic kept moving by demons with whips. The second pocket is an egalitarian circle of very rude words (What? Would you like to sugar co...

Violence Against God Session 11: Still in the Seventh Circle, in the first ring of the third ring of the Violent, where the violent objector is the landscape itself, fiery sands and flaming rain that banish all growth, we see Capaneus stuck in his railing rebellion against Jove. In the Old Man of Crete we see from the Golden Age to the crumbling of the Kingdom’s of Mankind a cracked statue weeping...

Concerning Violence Session 10: Where we arrive on time to find the tormentors of the violent are themselves the violent. The symbolic Nessus, whose own blood became the instrument of the death of his enemies, is the gracious guide and ride for Dante across the field of blood and flame and into the black wood of the suicides. Where we pause and check our own souls, lest we be careless, for the Med...

Week 9: Where we stop and notice that the Medieval mind is not modern. And just as the organization of Hell was Aristotlean so too is the nature of physics and philosophy. As Virgil and Dante discuss the purpose and place of everything in the world, Prof. Corey reminds us that in their model the sun is Happy to go around the earth, and the rock is Happy to fall to the ground with a thud, and the s...

The Mythgard Academy resumes our discussion of Dante's Inferno. Having gotten, with some difficulty, through the Gates of Dis, it is time to enter a new sector of Hell!

Class 7: Where we are reminded that Dante’s frame is a vision and an allegory and not a GPS-enabled map, and even more disturbing there are no bodies in the pageant he sees except his own. Yet, when they get to Dis, the locks may be disabled but so is their confidence; and now all Dis’ demons block their way and Virgil is dismayed. And the angel is full of disdain. And we distance ourselves from V...

Class Six: Where Boethius and Dante do not understand Fortune, but Virgil does. And three of the 7 deadly sins make their appearance in a swampy, messy, mud wrestling fracas, where souls struggle against Fortune on multiple levels. And someone admits to being on the game show and to seeing someone fall! Apropos! And then there was a tall tower, with eyes. And here Dante refuses to faint but waxes...

Class Five: Where we ask: Does Virgil recognize the shade of Aeneas’ Cerberus, and is his beast being punished here for its own appetite? And does Ciacco really want to be remembered for eternity as the man with mud on his face...? And though there is an order to the levels and punishments of Hell, the intended audience may not be obvious. And so we move from lust, through gluttony, but cannot be...

Class Four: Where we digress, and agree with Aristotle. And then we think about Francesca da Rimini and Paolo and the very tragedy of their romance is the irony of their situation in the Second Circle of Hell. Is it really about turning Courtly Love on its head? Yup! And can Dante understand this intimately? Um, Dante? Oh, he has fainted again. And will we really enter the Third Circle of Hell on...

Class three: Dante was a poet of courtly love, and he perfected the art in pursuit of Beatrice; but here in the Inferno, he places her as his patroness in heaven sending him aid. He starts at the gates of Hell that say: Abandon all Hope; and The Divine Architect has the authority, wisdom, and love to accomplish justice here. Yet Dante must put cowardice aside and move forward through sweat and blo...

Class Two: Where we set the frame, and meet the sun, and identify the scary beasts. And we see that the political, moral, spiritual, and poetical allegories blend and twist and illustrate each other. Can we dig deeper and find more treasures in Dante’s words? Oh, yes. Look how he places one moment in time! He never just says, ‘It was morning.’ No! He must take four lines to place his story in a ce...

Mythgard Academy goes to Hell with Dr. Corey Olsen and Dante’s Inferno. Class One starts off the close look at Dante’s masterful poem with a great introduction to the 4-fold interpretation of poetry and scripture, and a warning to avoid looking at the notes instead of experiencing the poem for ourselves. It is a deep dive into a super gutsy fan fiction in everyday language that is full of allegory...

Note: Prof. Olsen’s hardware failed about half an hour before he intended to end the discussion, so the video stops abruptly.