Throughout the Gothic & Renaissance perionds, daemons of the Imagination creeped forth from the shadows of The Darkside of the mind like never before, thus producing some of the most compelling & attractive monsterpieces the world had ever had the misfortune or fortune to see, hear, & read.
It was this written work that really ingrained the standards for the popular depictions of Hades, as well as paintings by artists like Jon Von Eyck, Heironymous Bosch, Peter Breughel, & Albrecht Durer. In the musickal genre, Bach, Wagner, Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, & Chopin, to name but a few, were realeasing tempestuous, monolithic, & eerie symphonies into the ether, which are now universally employed to set an eerie embiance.
In THE INFERNO, Dante Alighieri, an Italian poet, meets with a mysterious & etheric host named Virgil, who takes him down to witness the terrors of The Great Abyss, so it may be recorded, & that mankind may wish not to go there. Heavy-duty guilt-trip. Throughout the sick, gnarled, blood-soaked, & freezing crevasses of Dante's brain, there are brief, but memorable encounters with the damned souls.
There are seven {sic} circles in the first section of Hell, each populated by a different class of "sinners". On the way, we take a ride upon the back of a winged beast named Geryon, around a waterfall {nice to know there's water in Hell!}. The Ninth {of course} Circle is where Satan Himself is entrenched in the frozen lake Cocytus. The only escape from this abode of lost souls is by climbing down the devil's leg hairs {that's got to hurt}, which then leads to Purgatory. Obviously, this work was written at the height of the catholic church's oppression.
There have been rumours, that Dante was secretly commissioned by church papacy to write the book, to better gain control of the peasants, who were taken to revolting quite often. Dante, being a starving poet at the time, could not refuse the offer. Cleverly, Dante was at first reviled by the church, & threatened with ex-communication, but was vindicated when he demonstrated his loyalty to the church by writing 'El Paradiso', which deals with Dante's journeys in the wonderful mystical world of Heavenland. This clever technique has been used over & over again to enslave minds, turning the unwary catholic & xian zombies, who blindly give their rations away to church & state {which at the time, were one in the same}. By first guilt manipulating someone into fear, you render them vulnerable, & they seek salvation wherever they can get it. Conveniently, 'El Purgatorio' & 'El Paradiso' were published not too far apart from The Inferno, attaining an essential balance, that their distribution may keep the populace in line. Needless to say, these three opuses caused the simpletons to flock back to church in record numbers. The pope became very fat, very fast.
What I found most interesting about this abysmal field-trip, is that Dante's Hell is icey cold, instead of the typical scorching. That in itself makes it all less threatening.
Dante's Inferno is one of the most colorful books I have ever read. It is filled with such wonderfully elaborate words that manifest magnificently morbid spectacles of diabolic delight. Use your own filtration wisdom as far as any foolosophy is concerned.