Dante's Divine Comedy
I invite you to experience the odyssey, by accompanying me as I discuss each canto. My book, Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide For The Spiritual Journey, is published by Angelico Press for the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death on 13th September 2021. For more information see - www.markvernon.com
Episodes
143 episodes
The way down is the way up. Dante on how to live in turbulent times. Lessons from The Divine Comedy
This talk was first given to Idler Drinks.For more on Mark's work on Dante - https://www.markvernon.com/dantes-divine-comedy
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5:55
Is hell forever? The Inferno. Jason Baxter & Mark Vernon on Dante’s film noir
“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 Bax...
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59:56
Is hell really boring? Rowan Williams & Jesse Armstrong, Dante & William Blake
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 fu...
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32:44
Dante and civilisational decline. A dispatch on disillusionment in politics
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,...
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14:44
What is intelligence? Dante in an age of AI
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 lea...
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42:20
Seeing the Unsayable. Dante’s ineffable images
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 Dant...
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22:17
Dante and the Meaning of Easter
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, 130...
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27:08
Dante and Eternal Damnation
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 Comed...
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26:46
Angels, Dreams & Myths. Dante on times of transition
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 accom...
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16:59
How can we transhumanise? And why we need to
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 Dant...
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34:57
Understanding Dante. A second Medicine Path podcast with Brian James
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,...
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1:20:41
Dante, cosmology, and a conversation at Rupert Sheldrake's 80th do
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 integr...
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12:30
Dante’s Paradiso. Awakening to the Light. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake
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 Beatr...
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44:05
Dante's transfiguration of time & love, seeking & suffering, telepathy & transhumanising
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 tran...
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37:01
Dante on Idealism. Or Dante in dialogue with Bernardo Kastrup and others
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 jo...
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45:12
Why Paradise? Part 3 of 3 talks on Dante's Divine Comedy
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 h...
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1:01:16
Why Purgatory? Part 2 of 3 talks on Dante's Divine Comedy by Mark Vernon
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 esse...
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1:00:06
Sexual Mores & Divine Eros: Why we need Dante to teach us about love
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.
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25:54
Why Hell? Part 1 of 3 talks on Dante's Divine Comedy by Mark Vernon
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 des...
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51:30
Dante’s Purgatorio, How to be transformed: a conversation with Rupert Sheldrake
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 ...
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36:40
The Way Up and the Way Down. Dante and the One Path from Hell to Paradise
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 h...
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1:16:18
Light, Love, Logos, Life - How to speak about God
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.....
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38:13
The Darkness That Is Light. Thoughts from an exhibition
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 r...
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27:49
Listen to audiobook chapter from Dante's Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey!
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 -
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10:22
Dante's Inferno, Part 2, dangers in spiritual seeking. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake
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 ...
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38:57