Dante and His Poem by Domenico di Michelino
This is the third instalment in a very personal series of letters about a period of transformation and growth in my life.
You can read the rest of the letters here.
Bookstores, I think, are one of the universe’s favourite ways of getting a message to someone when they need a little direction. Bookstores and, presumably these days, the TikTok algorithm.
It must be too easy for cosmic forces to quickly rearrange the contents of a bookstore so that the right title is on display to catch your eye, just as you walk in. It would take a particularly astute bookseller to notice.
I’ve had enough experiences of this phenomenon in my life to treat a bookstore a bit like a celestial post-office: worth popping into every couple of weeks to check if there are any messages.
So it was, back in February of this year, when I found myself most lost. In the weeks after my dream, I was in emotional turmoil, contemplating an awful choice. It is, in all honesty, the closest I have come to praying in a long time.
I wrote a letter to you back then, describing how I felt lost in the woods, surrounded by fog and was even compelled to capture the feeling with graphite and a blender stick.
(Many of you sent me very kind and personal emails after that letter: thank you.)
Some friends I was due to meet one morning were running late and so I ducked into a nearby bookstore to kill a bit of time. The key to seeing if the universe has left you any post is to be completely open-minded and let your eyes gravitate towards whatever intuitively grabs them.
This one morning it was a grey hardback with red text, which read “Dante’s Inferno” and the most extraordinary image on the cover, rendered in graphite (that puts my fog picture to shame).
In fact, before I go any further, I’ve got to show you this artwork. I mean, holy shit.
Panels from Dante's Inferno, The Graphic Adaption by The Brizzi Brothers — All made with a pencil?!?
This book is genuinely a beautiful piece of art by two former Disney animators, that hasn’t received the recognition it deserves.
And it was how I first read the opening of Dante’s epic myth, and (depending on the translation) it goes like this:
“Midway through this, our mortal life, I found me in a forest lost, Gone from the path direct.”
I was stunned. It was as if Dante Alighieri himself were reaching through 700 years of space and time to speak to me.
But really, it was the universe and it was saying: “There is a guide.”
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“It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward.”
Joseph Campbell
If you ever find yourself deeply, spiritually lost, or undergoing some kind of transformation, I urge you to turn to mythology.
Don’t mistake their child-like qualities as pointless fancy. Far from being silly made-up stories for simple people in simpler times, myths are the most powerful and profound stories ever created.
Their fantastical characters and marvellous environments give our minds something enjoyable to chew (and make them memorable enough to retell). But myths are not speaking to our minds: They are communicating directly to our spirits, urging, guiding them to take a journey of their own.
Joseph Campbell, the great curator of mythology lamented once that the word “myth” has come to mean untrue - when it’s original meaning is the literal opposite.
Campbell’s great contribution to mythology — aside from bringing countless African, Asian and Native American folk stories to a western audience — was to identify a global structure to a myth, and if you have ever taken a course in creative writing or screenwriting you’ll no doubt be familiar with “The Hero’s Journey.”
But read Campbell’s opus The Hero With A Thousand Faces and you realise the Journey structure is not a template for making a blockbuster; it’s something far more profound: a template for spiritual transformation!
The way to uncover the Truth behind a myth is to treat it like a dream: Understand that every visible, tangible and physical act that takes place in the story is a visual symbol for an invisible, ineffable and emotional transformation within your own soul — an adventure that is available to all of us, should we answer the call.
Gandalf, Morpheus and Obi-wan? They are projections of the inner wisdom lying dormant inside each of us. Darth Vader, the White Witch and Satan himself? Reflections of the darkness lurking inside us all.
In the same way the poet Virgil leads a hapless Dante through hell itself, mythology shines a lantern on our path ahead, should we have the courage to take the first step.
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My ordinary world had been pierced by an unavoidable call — to leave home and hearth behind and journey into lands unknown.
The writers among you will know what comes next: The refusal of the call - a hesitation, a contemplation of everything one stands to lose.
I remember lying in bed one night unable to sleep, realising I was going to have to surrender the wonderful person who had been the centre of my life for more than a decade.
I whispered: “Please don’t make me choose” — realising in that very moment I had already made my choice.
What world was I about to step into?
I couldn’t see – but I need only have asked Dante (and the Brizzi brothers) to get a sense of what lay ahead…
Until another Sunday soon,
