Today, we are on Venus. In Roman mythology Venus is the goddess of love, beauty, fertility, victory and generally all those good things. So what are we going to hear about? Why all of those spirits that have love for the lord of course.

A funny story I guess. But these various characters that Dante meets have taken their turns with sin, as all men have. What I found extremely interesting is that punishment seems to be unevenly handed out. These characters admit to their sins which they attribute to making their exuberance for the lord that much stronger. This is like saying that ‘I am just a passionate person. Of course I murdered that person when I got angry. I just couldn’t help it, it is my being’. And by the same token, there is no real penalty as a result.

Whereas in the same book, certain figures could progress no further in heaven because they married against wishes when they were serving in the clergy. So approved sin is not penalized while unapproved sin has eternal consequences.

A lot of the commentary talks about the erotic love of god. I find this to be a little unholy personally. That being said, I heard a fascinating discussion a few months ago about the feminization of Christianity. This is playing a role in the ultimate decline of the church. While other major religions are focused on key tenants, Christianity has emphasized the concept of worship. Worship by it’s nature has a feminine appeal. Hence, men are turned off each generation and dwindling in participation.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is true. What I knew to be Agape or sort of spiritual love has become more of an perverted lust or love affair for some. That unhappy marriage has a new partner. Something new to worship and love and never lets you down. I think that this is much more typical in evangelical protestant denominations.

Relationship with god is a tricky thing. It requires something called faith. I have to believe that I am having one without becoming delusional about it. It is serious without being fanatical. I wouldn’t go as far as saying subdued though. We cannot deny or discount faith but rather be quietly confident and upfront about it. We have to trust the process without getting lost in it.

I actually didn’t realize that there were so many video analyses of the Devine Comedy. There are multiple series of the work in 100 days (Because there are 100 cantos). It seems like they were all published during the pandemic. This probably came out of the online only school movement. If I would have realized this, I probably would have linked to each canto every week.

End Your Programming Routine: Next week is the Sun. This is Cantos X – XIII. From what I have learned, we are about to go into some kind of new dimensional shift. I guess we will have to see when we get there. For now, we will just keep ticking boxes and collecting information. You probably get the sense of what I think about Venus.