Monday, April 12, 2010

The 9th Circle

"I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken, and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken pieces as long as I lived"
-Margaret Mitchell

In Dante's Inferno, Hell is described as nine circles of suffering within the Earth. The very bottom circle, The Ninth Circle, is reserved for those who have betrayed a special relationship of some kind. At the very center of Hell is Satan, waist deep in ice, with three heads, each one chewing on a traitor: Brutus, Cassius and Judas Iscariot. It is a perverted trinity of Satan's impotence, ignorance and hate, contrasted to the all-powerful, all-knowing and loving nature of God.

Betrayal by a trusted loved one is the most painful of all.