Evening under Lamplight Podcast

And finally, the long-awaited Beatrice makes her appearance, but not in the sweet, affectionate way we may have expected. 

Here is a pageant put on in the Garden of Eden, at the top of the mountain, vivid with colours and meaning.

We're now in the Garden of Eden, and we have to adjust to the experience of primal innocence.

We come to the climax of the healing, that frightening wall of fire that must be entered, and then, we're out of Purgatory, into the next stage of the journey.

We engage with those suffering on the Terrace of Lust and learn a few things about where lust may lurk.

We learn how babies are made and how souls after death can project themselves onto aerial bodies, and we arrive at the Terrace of Lust, walking a narrow path, needing careful negotiating.

Friendship, poetry, love, gratitude - these are the themes here, helping us get a clearer view of the wider meaning of gluttony.

Dante meets an old pal, an old companion in gluttony, and we discuss all the unexpected examples of gluttony, some of which might not have occurred to you before.

We find out more about the opposite extreme of avarice, and about Statius's debt to Virgil, and arrive up at the terrace of Gluttony, where a talking tree forbids them from eating any of the tempting fruit.

Dante and Virgil meet someone who's just releasing himself from his Purgatorial suffering, who explains more about the process of healing, and finally gets the surprise of his (after)life.