“The soul, being created prone to Love,
is drawn at once to all that
pleases it,
as soon as pleasure summons it to
move.
From
that which really is, your apprehension
extracts
a form which unfolds within you;
that
form thereby attracts the mind’s attention,
Then
if the mind, so drawn, is drawn to it,
that
summoning force is Love; and thus within you,
through
pleasure, a new natural bond is knit”
- Purg, XVIII Ciardi, 16-270
Sloth is recognized by a failure to utilize ones gifts
and talents, it is about forcing others to do ones own work and to reduce
oneself to mere existence where one turns into a burden for all – even for one
self. It is a sad condition where disbelief has entered the person’s life and
generates carelessness and fits of despair. Laziness has generated the illusion
of being a captive in an impossible complication. But there is no such thing as
impossible complications, just situations scaled in degrees of difficulty.
The sluggish one is someone who has given up on life,
on friends, on Fate and on himself. The sluggish one is negativity in person
and contaminate all with its hopelessness and sulking amidst gluttony (gula) and lust (luxuria) that hives off the natural kakodaimonos of the sluggish
escapist. Sloth has turned into absolute selfishness where one become a burden
to ones surroundings where one’s own misery and hopelessness becomes the ominous
worth of one’s sorry excuse for a life. A life where one feeds upon others
goodwill and favors, where one expect the world to listen to one’s putrid
lament while one is not giving anything to anyone – not even to oneself. Sloth
can work as a darkened scale where one pleases others because one has renounced
ones centre or that one like a beast of pestilence demands the world to attend
to the suffering void of one´s painful existence. In both cases one has
sacrificed ones soul to the realm of Hypnos and has taken greedily the chalice
of Lethe’s waters of forgetfulness to mend ones pain and self-inflicted soul-sores.
This is true sloth; a denial of love both its coming and going...
Sloth is said to be the spirit of the daimonic
gatekeeper Aergia, child of Aether and Earth, who watched the gates of Hypnos
in the realm of Pluto and fell sway to his powers and fell into accidia, or ‘being consumed by sleep’.
The parenthood is interesting, because according to Hyginus
several of the most grave sins were bon from Aether comingling with Earth, such
as Wrath (Ira) and Pride (Superbia),
but also the spirit of Incest (Incestum),
Lies (Mendacium) and Fear (Timor) were brothers and sisters of
Aergia, the spirit of sloth.
Sloth could be understand more as a form of indulgence
than mere laziness, we are speaking of a station beyond laziness, where one’s
sluggish ways has led to a reluctance towards life and one is simply giving up
and just comply with whatever whims and commands someone expresses, one turn
into a stupefied pleaser of the world renouncing ones will and soul to the
crowds.
But we are at the core speaking of sleep, portal for
dreams; the realm of Hypnos.
Hypnos was the daimon of sleep and his realm was found
in the darkest recesses of the night or Nyx
– his mother. He was brother of Thanatos
(death, but peaceful) and Oneiro (dreams). His form was that of a winged young
man, similar to an angel, holding a horn of poppies and a torch turned towards
the ground.
Dreams comes in a variety of manifestations ranging
from the divine dream that hungers for manifestation to the dull day dream of
someone who finds himself locked down in a situation of dislike and disgrace
that one seek to escape by living in fantasy and illusion rather than the
magical dream of possibility. The sin of sloth is to renounce the divine dream
in favor of escapism. Sloth is to drink so hardly from the cornucopia of opium
that one gulps down Lethe’s water and forgets Self and purpose in a dreadful
dross of existence awaiting to become dirt and earth… So Hypnos, great daimon
can give you Thanatos or Oneiro, death or dream… in the words of
Edgar Allen Poe:
A Dream Within A Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?