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 coat with flowery language the circle of flattery?). The third pocket is for spiritual pimps, the fraud of simony, punished in inversions of baptismal fonts with sprinklings of fire on feet. The core of these three - the pimps, the seducers, and the flatterers - is treating people as beasts for their own gain. O see what Dante did there. Then, with one mention of Dante’s guilt at breaking the Baptistry of Saint John, the session ends with an internet crash.

For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on Dante's Inferno, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/inferno/

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