The Starry Cave

Anger or more precisely wrath or rage is perhaps one of the more complexes of the cardinal sins because its field of identification and expression is so wide, it moves beyond the sphere of self and aim towards usurping parts of the world not naturally pertaining to the one suffering from rage. It can stretch out in the world and then collapse upon the wrathful leading to suicide. In the 7 th canto Dante describes in Inferno that here in the fifth circle where the wrathful ones were found he saw more people than anywhere else, they were clashing against each other in a never ending clash and turmoil, like hungry wolfs taking bites of each other just to be hurled apart and clashed against each other yet again, like a tormented wave of angry flesh. Wrath can range from destructiveness and hurtfulness of any kind to violence, vengeance and war. In the 7 th Canto Dante do speak of the battle between Michael and Satan, but this should not be interpreted as some forms of wrath

“Pride,   envy , avarice - these are the sparks have set on fire the hearts of all  men ” - Dante When Virgil takes Dante to Purgatory in Canto XIII he sees people wearing coats that look like grey and bruised flesh, their eyes are sewn up with iron wires in a terrace where the blind leads the blind as they stretch out towards any good angel and fragment of love they can find. Here Dante also meet Sapia, a noblewoman purged for taking greater joy in others misfortunes than her own fortune. Invidia or envy is about feeling sadness for another man’s good fortune, it is the negation of charitas (charity), an absence of love... Invidia is also integral to the mystical powers of those who possess the evil eye. Naturally, some possess the ‘evil eye’ because of an overflowing of an inherent power undirected – but care should be observed so this most negative effect is not taking hold. A person possessing the ‘evil eye’ and who is suffering from the affliction of invidia will constantl

"But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." - James 1: 14 - 15 -      Luxuria , or better known as lust is by John Cassian understood to be the very womb of sin and death in accordance with James 1. Whereas pride/hubris is the seed of sin, lust is the womb of the sinful seed. Today the word ‘lust’ carry an overtly sexual and hedonist flavor and in truth one of the predecessors of ‘luxuria’ is found in the activity related to porneia or prostitution, but more than this, luxuria is a thymus , an appetite. Perhaps the most proper idea that still carries on the inherent idea of ‘luxuria’ is actually luxury – in other words, an excess. In Antiquity as in galenic medicine all disease was caused by excess of something, in the cause of ‘luxuria’, we are speaking of an excess of pleasing oneself. This self pleasing is of a nature tha