The Fire of Desire Holds the Keys to Paradise (Dante's Divine Comedy)

Dante Alighieri’s poem, Divine Comedy, initiates a journey that would eventually lead voyagers to the virtues of Heaven. However, he teaches that reaching this paradisical state of virtue is impossible without first navigating through multiple layers of vice – namely, the 7 deadly sins: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony & Lust. These sins are suffered by climbing Mount Purgatory, a liminal, hellish space positing the idea that all sin arises from misexpressed Love.

The Christian zeitgeist of Dante’s era affirmed that the highest state to exist in was Union with God. This was made possible by Love, which was spurred on by desire - hence, perfected desire was the signature of Heaven. This understanding of Union/ Love as the highest spiritual telos is not unique to Christianity. Across traditions (Jungian individuation, Tantric sādhanā, Islamic Tawhid), union is treated as the soul’s ultimate end.

Love remains innocuous when assumed to represent the static ‘Agape’, or the benevolent ‘Charitas’. But our souls cannot approach union without one essential force of nature: Desire. With words like ‘Desire, Eros, Amor’ introduced to the field, things become more polarised. But nestled behind allegory, thinkers like Plato, Pseudo-Dionysus, and Aquinas all taught that Eros can be a servant of God. Dante’s moral tale reflects this truth. Among the sins of Purgatory, Lust alone stands closest to Heaven because it is the most volatile form of love. When purified rather than repressed, desire becomes the chariot of spiritual ascent. Lust ceases to be an obstacle to paradise, rather a calefactor with power to turn the dense and crude into something subtle enough to exist in union with the Divine.

The Platonic Eros - by the wings of desire

Arguably, without the Platonic tradition (mediated through Augustine and Aquinas), Dante could never have treated lust as anything other than animalistic sin. In his work Phaedrus, Plato describes lust as μανία (madness), but specifically a divine type of madness, “given by the gods for our greatest good”. Here, erotic desire has the power to physically transform the soul: spurred on by the erotic, the soul grows wings that let it ascend through the heavens towards union with God. Dante personifies Eros through Beatrice, whom he loved passionately up until her death. It is a recollection of Beatrice’s beauty that allows Dante to reach Heaven, and likewise, Plato believed that Eros awakens memories of pre-incarnate Virtues, “recollection of those things which our soul once saw when it travelled with the god”.

“The madness of Eros is the greatest of heaven’s blessings, for it is given to us by the gods for our greatest good.For madness that comes from a god is better than soundness of mind that comes from human beings.”— Plato, Phaedrus 244a–b

Christian Eroticism

Platonism allowed Dante to recognise Eros as a vehicle for virtue, but Pseudo-Dionysus allowed for its synonymity with the Christian God Himself. Dionysius was a Christian Neoplatonist born around the 6^th Century whose most notable contribution to Christianity was meditating upon God from an apophatic perspective: the idea that we understand God not by what he is, but by what he is not. For example, Dionysius said that God is not just loving, but that God is Love itself.

He went further, emphasising that God is not limited to ‘safer’ forms of Love like Agape and Philia, he is Erotic love. Dionysus said we mustn't consider Eros dishonourable of God: it is God because it is the ecstatic, self-transcendent force that permits us to go ‘outside of ourselves’ in search of unity. In reference to the Lord’s Prayer, Eros allows God’s kingdom to come, and his will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

Similar to Plato’s notion of erotic love being a chariot that draws us to heaven, Dionysius calls Eros an “elevating power which moves the lover towards the beloved”. He described love not just as a feeling, but as δύναμις, a divine power, like how the ancient Greeks considered Eros a mighty deity capable of rendering Zeus, the mighty king of kings, weak.

“We must not shrink from the name of Eros, nor think it unworthy of God. …We must dare to affirm that the cause of all things, in His beautiful and good love for all, through the excess of His loving goodness, becomes ecstatic and goes out of Himself in His providential care for all that exists. For this reason, the divine is spoken of as Eros and as Love. …Some of our sacred writers speak of divine love as Eros, others as Agape; but these names signify one and the same power, which moves all things toward union.” - (Divine Names IV.11–12, IV.15), Pseudo-Dionysius

Born centuries after Dionysus was Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas is universally considered one of the most influential Christian thinkers in history – hence it should not go overlooked that he placed Pseudo-Dionysus in a uniquely exalted position, praising his ability to understand God not just by reason, but by “divine inspiration”.

Whilst not as mystical as his predecessor, Aquinas integrated Dionysus’ teachings on love within his Summa Theologiae.  Here, Aquinas recognised Amor (the pleasure-oriented form of love present within the carnal appetite) as a unitive force, and crucially stated that when refined, Amor becomes equivalent to Caritas, the name of love used in the bible as synonymous with God (Deus caritas est - 1 John 4:8). This synchronised pleasurable, bodily love with divinity. Still, not all Amor was good. Aquinas said that when inordinate Eros becomes evil, for “it is sinful to love a creature more than God”. Eros is a vehicle – if only used to satisfy the carnal appetites, it becomes corrupted, crashing and burning. From this came the Aquinian doctrine that sin occurs when desire is misexpressed, hence refining desire is of the utmost importance.

“Amor and Caritas are not different in reality, but only according to reason; for every Caritas is Amor, but not every Amor is Caritas … Amor is in the concupiscible appetite [i.e. the sensory capacity for desire and pleasure], which belongs to the sensitive part of the soul." - (cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I–II, q.26, a.3 and a.1)

As a student of Aquinas, Dante shaped ‘The Divine Comedy’ as a poetic simulacrum of this idea. Whilst the tale trods on through Hell to Paradise, desire is expressed with increasing purity - foreshadowing it’s eventual union between Heaven and Love in the final chapters. However, this union cannot occur until the fires of lust have been crossed atop Mount Purgatory.

“Through fire the ascent of the spirit is made”

Throughout all these philosophies is the idea that Desire cannot promise heavenly ascension until we promise ourselves to intense suffering at its feet. By this pain, the inner desires that would formerly have been misexpressed are purified to align with the holy ‘Amor’ that Aquinas recognised as God. These sufferings of heavenly ascension are repeatedly seen through the motif of ‘Fire, Burning, Heat’ –  Plato says that erotic desire “heats up” (θερμαίνω) the soul, making it “distressed by pains and prickings” as it prepares for ascent, Dante’s fire of lust is the final threshold before ascending Eden/Paradise.

Allegorically, to walk the fiery passageway without faltering is to endure the anguish of yearning without falling prey to its flames. Similarly to the biblical idea that there is no atonement without a painful bloodshed, going through lust’s fire is a painful, immolative requisite of Dante’s paradise. Once the fire is conquered, you are no longer at the mercy of lust – it is used, integrated, and dominated, like a refined state of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde’s hedonist), who declared, “I don’t want to be at the mercy of my passions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them”. Medieval philosophers like Dante and Aquinas sought metaphysical transformation, whilst medieval alchemists sought to bridge chemical transformation processes with the metaphysical. It is no wonder that the key rule of medieval chemistry was the phrase “Per ignem fit ascensio spiritus”, meaning, ‘Through fire the ascent of the spirit is made’.

Fleeing from erotic idolatry

Up to this point, Dante has journeyed through hell and purgatory guided only by his friend Virgil, a personification of ration and intellect. By intellect, Dante conquered Pride, Wrath, Envy, Sloth, Avarice and Gluttony – all the sins, except for Lust. Challenged by its fire, Dante is filled with fear. This moment marks a metaphysical boundary.

Plato called Eros a divine insanity sent by the gods; likewise, reason and sanity (Virgil) are barred from crossing lust’s fiery threshold. Terrified, Dante refuses to enter until Virgil reveals that Beatrice, his long-lost true love, awaits him on the other side. Dante’s desire for Beatrice proves stronger than his fear of self-immolation, and for her sake, he submits himself to the furnace. He passes through suffering and emerges reborn in the Garden of Eden, Paradise.

At this moment, Virgil/Intellect says goodbye to Dante: purified by lust’s fire, Dante’s will is now “upright, and whole,” and to act against its pleasures in favour of reason would be wrong. Intellect has brought him as far as it can; from this point forward, he must be guided by rectified “pleasure, desire, and will”, each embodied in the chaste Beatrice. At Heaven's gates, Virgil, a guide characterised by intellect, safety and platonic love, is replaced by a Beatrice, a guide characterised by desire, polarisation, and erotic love.

One barrier remains - the heavenly court of judgement. Here, Beatrice acts as Dante’s prosecutor. All of his sufferings through sin were in her honour, but once finally reunited she harshly condemns his ‘infidelity’. This infidelity is not mundane copulation, it is a lack of devotion to one’s truest and first passion. Dante first fell in love with Beatrice in his youth; this remains important enough to appear in modern-day analytical psychology. Remaining loyal to the true desires of our formative years is considered the pathway to ‘Heaven’ by Jungian psychologists, who teach that the unique fascinations of childhood are symbols of our paths to psycho-somatic salvation:

“The image that governs your life is present from the beginning. To forget it, abandon it, or deny it is to lose contact with one’s fate…The image of the calling shows itself in childhood in what the child loves, envies, imitates, or longs for…The calling is not something you choose. It is something that has chosen you. It shows itself early in life, often in the form of a fascination, an attraction, or a strong interest that grips the child.” -  James Hillman (Jungian Psychologist), The Soul’s Code

Beatrice was Dante’s first and true love, yet in her absence, he “turned his steps upon a false way” and attempted to substitute her with “false images of good” - Aquinas’ notion of desire misexpressed, amorous Idolatry. Beatrice recounts this as Dante’s greatest sin to the court, prompting Dante’s collapse and confession. The humility redeems him and he is judged innocent by the court. With his Eros now loyal to the image of his first passion (Beatrice), there is no more sin: lust’s fire and the gravitas of divine Desire have left no enemy unconquered, for he is now “pure and ready to mount the stars”. Lust needn’t be a vice that pulls us down to hell. Etymologically, to desire is to yearn for union with the stars – the Latin ‘de-siderium’ means separation (de) from the heavens (sidus). With sin finally conquered and the blisses of Heaven waiting, Dante fixes his gaze firmly upon his lover. He says, “Beatrice gazed upward, and I gazed at her, then in an instant we were lifted up to Paradise”.