Mythgard Academy

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Support Mythgard Academy

Support Mythgard Academy

Support Mythgard Academy

Support Mythgard Academy

Welcome to Luna, here is your narrator, Mannie, a free born, old cobber with one arm who’s not on Authority’s payroll. Look him up and down. He comes from complicated Loonie heritage, belongs to a line marriage, has a clear attitude against Authority and Warden, and a subtle attitude against Terra and Earthworms. He switches arms and jobs with resilience, faces extreme hardships on Luna or Terra, and machines really like him. That is dinkum. ‘Cause Luna is a hostile place. Life is not default. Survival is gift. Bad actors don’t live long in Luna. And everything about what enables survival here is the approval and active protection of the community. That and being a not-stupid. For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/the-moon-is-a-harsh-mistress/

Week 24: And so we finish our tour of Hell and arrive at the crux of the world where we find Dante has been affected deeply by his travels at all three levels of his allegorical structure, and where Dante again faints, and where we also strengthen our understanding of the Medieval knowledge of World Geography. In Virgil’s capable hands the inversion principle moves us through Satan’s nether parts to the next realm, and we are free from the Inferno and the stars come out. For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on Dante's Inferno, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/inferno/

Week 23: Where Dante succumbs to the lure of base arguments and wishes he was merely in a dream. And where a bugle blast messes with Dante’s vision, and towers become giants, and not nice ones either. And Dante’s absolute terror returns and his wish to be anywhere else but the road to Hell. But Virgil trades Dante’s fame card for a ride in Antaeus fist into the dark, frozen well. There Dante’s hubris returns in time to help him harass and abuse the sinners; so much for pity and so much for brotherhood. Dante should take care not to betray his guide; we will return with ours next week as Dr. Olsen promises an end to this tour of Hell. For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on Dante's Inferno, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/inferno/

In which we complete our tour of the Malebolge with a rather crowded tenth pouch

In which we meet people with various kinds of bodily integrity issues.

Week 20: Where we call bologna on Dante’s talent curbing and clearly see the simple summer simile. Where with Ulysses we pass the columns, and the poles, and founder on the shores of Mount Purgatory having found the earth round. Where we hear that one cannot logically be absolved before, or during, the commission of an evil deed or counsel. Sorry, not sorry, or something like that, Minos judges. And Dante litters his own path with cautionary examples; there but for the ‘rock’ goes he. For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on Dante's Inferno, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/inferno/

\Week 19: A Place Among the Classics In the seventh pocket of the eighth circle, the fraudulent thieves are beset with snakes. Dante calls them all serpents, but some have six legs, and some none; some are caliente, peppercorn serpents, and some are winged, fiery dragons; some are smoking, and some are boring. Later, while describing the transformations from snake to thief and thief to snake, Dante disses Ovid and Lucan, two poets he wished to be named with back in Limbo. For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on Dante's Inferno, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/inferno/​

Guess what sin is punished by snakes. And cyclical incineration.

Week 17: Now into the second half of the Malebolge, we look back at the closing line of Canto 21 and The Comedy's lack of humor. Then on to Canto 23, where Aesop’s frog and mouse story is called upon to warn Dante against trusting too closely the partnership of Demons. And Virgil luges Dante down the rocky slope, making a quick escape from pocket 5 to 6, where they try to hide among the lead-lined, golden-robed hypocrites. For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on Dante's Inferno, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/inferno/

Tonight we encounter some really ... unexpected demons. What under the earth is going on here?

Week 15: We revisit the Baptistery of San Giovanni and notice the inversions in Dante’s destroying holy furniture to save a life while the popes destroy lives to save holy money for themselves. But what is with all the feet? And do you think Boniface saw the funny side of his little cameo, or would he be depressed in determinism like his predecessor having perverted the mechanism of forgiveness and having then no path to repentance? And here Virgil the ghost grabs Dante the flesh-man and poltergeists him back to the bridge, to the fifth ditch, the rampart of the Fortune Tellers. Where Dante cranes his own head to see the parade of backward-headed shades and sheds a tear for those who weep as their fate. And Virgil rebukes Dante, and Dante corrects Virgil, and one is ready to trust the poets again. For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on Dante's Inferno, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/inferno/

Dante Finds Himself Among Friends Week 12: There are no poor people in rings 8 and 9 of the 7th circle of Hell, but no one sees clearly either. Dante condescends to walk and talk with his old teacher Brunetto and stops to let three wealthy Florentine nobles ask for news from home. But everything about this tableau is inverted and full of oblique references. For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on Dante's Inferno, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/inferno/

Week 13: At the waterfall edge of the 7th circle Dante gives up his belt to conjure a ride. What is the truth which seems a lie? Poetic allegory of course. For Dante breaks the 4th wall to give his poem a name, Comedy, and to swear that he saw a beast swim in the air up the waterfall. Geryon is the impossible thing, but that’s ok, he’s a fraud. No, he’s The Fraud and through his depiction we see the truth. Fraud or no, the brute animal is the only way down into the 8th circle. And even with the command to be strong and daring, Dante is afraid like Phaethon and Icarus as Geryon descends. For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on Dante's Inferno, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/inferno/

Week 14: True to the nature of Fraud, the 8th circle is an artificial construct of inverted imagery split into 10 concentric pockets, with bridges that look down upon each trench. The first pocket is a gender discriminated container for pimps and seducers, a sex traffic kept moving by demons with whips. The second pocket is an egalitarian circle of very rude words (What? Would you like to sugar coat with flowery language the circle of flattery?). The third pocket is for spiritual pimps, the fraud of simony, punished in inversions of baptismal fonts with sprinklings of fire on feet. The core of these three - the pimps, the seducers, and the flatterers - is treating people as beasts for their own gain. O see what Dante did there. Then, with one mention of Dante’s guilt at breaking the Baptistry of Saint John, the session ends with an internet crash. For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on Dante's Inferno, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/inferno/

Violence Against God Session 11: Still in the Seventh Circle, in the first ring of the third ring of the Violent, where the violent objector is the landscape itself, fiery sands and flaming rain that banish all growth, we see Capaneus stuck in his railing rebellion against Jove. In the Old Man of Crete we see from the Golden Age to the crumbling of the Kingdom’s of Mankind a cracked statue weeping tears into four mythic rivers. Three of the rivers come into Hell. One confounds Dante's sense of direction, but protects his feet and quenches the fires above. And we shall forget about the fourth for the moment. For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on Dante's Inferno, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/inferno/