Dark Wood to Mystic Rose: Dante’s Way of the Pilgrim
with
Wendy Furman-Adams, Ph.D.
- Friday Lecture
- ONLINE
- May 15, 2026
- 7:00 - 9:00pm PST
Dante’s pilgrimage begins in a moment of crisis: “midway in our life’s journey . . . alone in a dark wood” (Inferno 1.1-3). The only way out is down – into the hell of division and violence – then up the purgatorial mountain of spiritual and psychic renewal. At last the poet is able to soar to the empyrean and gaze at the “supernal face” of universal Love – so radiant that no one who sees it can ever again turn away.
Like Dante, we are living in a period of profound social division and spiritual dislocation. His poem can serve as a map for our own essential journey to “the Light of the intellect, which is love unending” (Paradiso 30. 40) where we can find ourselves anew.