Notes

Dante is 35 when he wakes up in a dark forest. He is cold and scared when he sees light (Divine Light) from the sun (God, Heaven, Human Perfection) shining down onto a hill. He climbs the steep hill at incredible speed but is stopped by Malice/Fraud, Violence/Ambition, and Incontinence. A spirit poet, Virgil (Human Reason), appears before him and says his only passage out of the forest is through hell. This takes place under Aries (the medieval tradition of where the Creation occurred), at the dawn of a Good Friday, during Easter Season, and when the moon was full and the sun was in equinox.

NINE CIRCLES OF HELL
0. The Vestibule of Hell
The Opportunists are those who did neither good nor bad in their time and are chased around in a pit of maggots and worms, constantly chased around by hornets and wasps.

1. Limbo
Virtuous people who have lived and died before Christ, including all philosophers. Mohammad, Moses, and various other religious figures born before Christ were taken to heaven when Christ came through hell. Surrounding Limbo is a river that Dante walks across effortlessly. He is welcomed into the company of the Virtuous Pagans, but he must go on.

2. Lust
Those who have fell to an excess of love - the carnal. They are buffeted around in a cyclone of wind, the least of punishments. Dante speaks to some of them and passes out with pity as hears them being punished for their love.

3. Gluttony
Those who have fell to an excess of consumption - the gluttons. They lie in disgusting slush with dirty ice rain, and Cerberus munches on them. Cerberus is portrayed as a 3 headed ravenous beast, a good symbol for the Gluttonous. As they make their way to the 4th circle, they are stopped by a beast who takes the role of Plutus, the god of wealth. Virgil (human reason) shows himself more powerful than hell's rages.

4. Greed
Those who have fell to an excessive desire for material items and money - the greedy. They are split into two factions - Hoarders and Wasters. They are shackled to large boulders and weights and clash them against each other, rolling back and pushing forth. They scream "Why do you hoard!" and "Why do you waste!"

5. The Wrathful and Sullen (Styx)
Those who bore hatred toward others in their life, and are stuck in the marshlike slimy boiling River of Styx, constantly fighting each other under the water, some experiencing more pain than others.
As they stand on the shore, Phlegyas, the Boatman of Styx, furiously races across the water towards them, thinking he's found new souls to torment but sees living Dante and Virgil. He howls with rage, but once again Virgil (human reason) shows himself more powerful than hell's creatures.

6. Heresy (Dis)
These are rebellious angels, the evilest creatures, who rebelled against god. They do not let Virgil pass by, showing Human Reason not having the full power to make their way through hell. As they panic at the closed gates of Dis (the next large section of hell, where all of hell's flame and fire is kept). Three Furies appear, adding to their fear, symbols of Remorse. The angels threaten to send Medusa, who is evil too wicked to be observed safely. Suddenly, a storm approaches, and a large wind is blown from a singular source - an angel from heaven walking through. In hell, Divine Aid has seen purely as an unstoppable force - storms preceded his arrival, the souls of the damned cry and scream in fear, and his face is the face of scorn. He looks nor left nor right and simply touches the gate and it blasts open for Dante and Virgil.

They make their way through a field of flaming tombs, each packed with souls of the damned who did not believe in Christianity. They believed in no life after death, and are thus packed in flaming tombs to suffer eternal death. On judgment day, the lids of the tombs will close and they will be eternally trapped.

7. Violence
1) Violent towards others - eternal suffering in a river of boiling blood, the Phlegethon. Centaurs guard the shore and shoot all who surface above the river.
2) Violent towards themself - they are turned into trees who are constantly feasted on by vultures and can only speak when bleeding.
3) Violent towards God - they are set on a desert of flaming sand with flaming rain. Some are forced to lie supine because they were violent towards Art, the usurers.

8. Fraud - a sin committed within community, betraying trust with not only divine forces but with those around you
The monster Geryon transports Virgil and Dante across a great abyss to the Eighth Circle of Hell

Bolgia 1: Panderers and seducers are punished here. They are forced to march, single file around the circumference of their circle, constantly lashed by horned demons.
Bolgia 2: Sinners guilty of excessive flattery are punished in this bolgia, immersed forever in a river of human excrement, similar to what their flatteries were. Thaïs the hetaira is found there.
Bolgia 3: Simoniacs are punished here. They are turned upside down in large baptismal fonts cut into the rock, with their feet set ablaze by oily fires. The heat of the flames burns according to the guilt of the sinner. Popes condemned to Bolgia Three all go into the same font, the earlier ones pushed down by the later arrivals.
Bolgia 4: Astrologers, seers, sorcerers and others who attempted to pervert God’s laws to divine the future are punished here. Their heads have been twisted around to face backwards, and thus they are forced to walk backwards around the circumference of their circle for all eternity. They also are blinded by their tears; therefore they cannot walk in straight paths. The seers Tiresias and his daughter, Manto, reside in this bolgia.
Bolgia 5: Grafters (speculators, extortionists, blackmailers and unscrupulous businessmen: sinners who used their positions in life to gain personal wealth or other advantages for themselves) are punished by being thrown into a river of boiling pitch and tar. In addition, should any of the grafters try to escape the pitch, a horde of demons ("Malebranche", meaning "evil claws") armed with grappling hooks and barbs stands guard over them, ready to tear them to pieces.
Bolgia 6: Hypocrites are punished in this circle. They are forced to wear heavy lead robes as they walk around the circumference of their circle. The robes are golden and resemble a monk’s cowl but are lined with heavy lead, symbolically representing hypocrisy. Also, Caiaphas, the Pharisee who insisted on the execution of Jesus, and all of the Sanhedrin are crucified in this circle, staked to the ground so that the ranks of the lead-weighted hypocrites march across him.
Bolgia 7: This bolgia houses the souls of thieves. This bolgia is also filled with serpents, dragons and other vengeful reptiles that torture the thieves endlessly. The bites of some of the snakes cause the thieves to spontaneously combust, only to regenerate their bodies for further torment in a few moments. They are pursued by the monstrous fiery Cacus. Other thieves are denied human forms and appear as reptiles themselves, and can only assume their true shape if they steal a human shape from another sinner; this involves a very painful transformation for both souls involved.
Bolgia 8: In this trench, the souls of deceivers who gave false or corrupted advice to others for personal benefit are punished. They are constantly ablaze, appearing as nothing so much as living, speaking tongues of flame. The Ancient Greeks Ulysses and Diomedes are here.
Bolgia 9: Sinners who, in life, promoted scandals, schism, and discord are punished here; particularly those who caused schism within the church or within politics. They are forced to walk around the circumference of the circle bearing horrible, disfiguring wounds inflicted on them by a great demon with a sword. The nature of the wound mirrors the sins of the particular soul; while some only have gashes, or fingers and toes cut off, others are decapitated, cut in half (as schismatics), or are completely disemboweled. Among those who are tormented here is Muhammed, prophet of Islam and his son-in-law and successor Ali, who both eviscerate their own bodies, and Bertran de Born, alleged agitator of the Revolt of 1173–74, who carries around his severed head like a lantern.
Bolgia 10: Falsifiers, those who attempted to alter things through lies or alchemy, or those who tried to pass off false things as real things, such as counterfeiters of coins, are punished here. This bolgia has four subdivisions where specific classes of falsifiers (alchemists, impostors, counterfeiters, and liars) endure different degrees of punishment based on horrible, consumptive diseases such as rashes, dropsy, leprosy and consumption. Among them is Myrrha, who suffers from insanity after she seduced her father.

9) Treachery
1) Those who betrayed their kin stand frozen up to their necks in the lake’s ice.
2) Those who betrayed their country and party stand frozen up to their heads; here Dante meets Count Ugolino, who spends eternity gnawing on the head of the man who imprisoned him in life.
3) Those who betrayed their guests spend eternity lying on their backs in the frozen lake, their tears making blocks of ice over their eyes.
4) Those who betrayed their benefactors spend eternity in complete icy submersion.

A huge, mist-shrouded form lurks ahead, and Dante approaches it. It is the three-headed giant Lucifer, plunged waist-deep into the ice. His body pierces the center of the Earth, where he fell when God hurled him down from Heaven. Each of Lucifer’s mouths chews one of history’s three greatest sinners: Judas, the betrayer of Christ, and Cassius and Brutus, the betrayers of Julius Caesar. Virgil leads Dante on a climb down Lucifer’s massive form, holding on to his frozen tufts of hair. Eventually, the poets reach the Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, and travel from there out of Hell and back onto Earth. They emerge from Hell on Easter morning, just before sunrise.