Our force of character and determination is a valuable protection

On the road from Venice to those plains which he now understands to be the spiritual replica of the plains of Lombardy, Franchezzo's attention is suddenly attracted by a voice calling to him in a pitiful tone for help. Turning back a little way, he sees a couple of spirits lying apparently helpless on the ground and one is making gestures to cause Franchezzo to come to him.  Thinking it is someone in need of his help, he lets Faithful Friend go on and goes to see what he wants. As Franchezzo bends down to lift him up, the spirit holding out his hand to him clutches his legs with his hands and contrives to fasten his teeth in his arm. While the other one, suddenly jumping up, tries to fasten on his throat like a wolf.

With some trouble and a good deal of anger on his part, Franchezzo shakes himself free of them and is stepping back when he half-stumbles. Turning his head, he sees that a great pit has suddenly opened behind him into which with another step backwards he must have fallen.

He remembers the warnings given him not to allow his lower passions to be aroused and thus place himself on a level with these beings and he regrets his momentary burst of anger and resolves to keep calm and cool. He turns towards the two dark spirits again and sees that the one he fancies has been hurt is crawling along the ground to reach him, while the other is gathering himself together like a wild beast about to spring. He fixes his eyes steadily on the pair, whom he now recognises as the man with the withered hand and his friend, who has tried to deceive him with the false message a short time before.  Steadily he looks at them, throwing all the power of his will into the determination that they should not advance nearer to him. As he does so they falter and stop and finally roll over on the ground snarling and showing their teeth like a couple of wolves but unable to approach a step nearer. Leaving them thus he hurries after Faithful Friend – whom he soon overtakes – and narrates to him what has occurred.

Faithful Friend laughs and says –

I could have told you who those were, Franchezzo, but I felt it would do no harm to let you find out for yourself and likewise learn how valuable a protection your own force of character and determination can be. You are naturally strong-willed and so long as you do not use it to domineer over the just rights of others, it is a very useful and valuable quality. In your work in the spirit world you will find that it is the great lever by which you can act, not alone on those round you but even on apparently inanimate matter. I thought as those two are very likely to come across you from time to time you might as well settle now which should be master, which should be the dominant personality. They will be shy of directly meddling with you again but so long as you work about the earth plane, you will find them ready at any chance to thwart your plans if the opportunity comes. 

360 degrees fog bow – Brocken Inaglory (CC-by-SA-3.0)

Selfish Oppression

Oh, horror! they were my own past misdeeds, my own evil thoughts and desires, which had been prompted by this very man beside me and which nestling in my heart had formed those links between us that held me to him now.

Franchezzo's revulsion causes the waves of magnetic ether on which the music and images are borne to him to waver and break and vanish, leaving him alone with his tempter, with his voice sounding in his ears, pointing out to him how he might enjoy all these delights if he will join him and be his pupil. His words fall on deaf ears, his promises do not allure him. In his heart is only a horror of all these things, only a wild longing to free himself from his presence.

Franchezzo gets up and turns from him but finds he cannot move a step.  An invisible chain holds him fast and with a derisive laugh of rage and triumph, his dark ancestor calls out –

Go, since you will have none of my favors or my promises. Go now and see what awaits you.

Franchezzo cannot move a step and begins to feel a strange alarm creeping over him and a strange numbness of limbs and brain. A mist seems to gather round and enfolds him in its chill embrace, while phantoms of awful shape and giant-size draw near.  To his horror, he recognises these forms as his own past misdeeds, his own evil thoughts and desires, which this very man has prompted and which have formed those links that hold Franchezzo to him now.

A wild, fierce, cruel laugh breaks from him at his discomfiture. He points to these weird shapes and bids him see what he is, who thinks himself too good for his company. The hall grows darker and darker and wave on wave the grim phantoms crowd round him, each growing more fearful as they gather, hemming him in on every side, while below his feet a great vault or pit opens in which he sees or seems to see a seething mass of struggling human forms. His fearful ancestor shakes in wild paroxysms of rage and fiendish laughter and, pointing to the gathering phantoms bids them hurl him into the black pit. Suddenly a star gleams above them in the darkness and from it falls a ray of light like a rope, which he grasps with both his hands. As the folds of light diffuse themselves around him, he is drawn up, out of that dark place, away from that fearful palace.

When Franchezzo recovers from his astonishment (and relief) at his release, he finds himself in the open country with Faithful Friend and his Eastern guide making passes over him, for he is much shaken and exhausted with the struggle.  His guide addresses him kindly and tells him that he has permitted this trial so that his knowledge of the true nature of the man he has just left should be his best protection in future against his wiles and schemes for his enslavement. Franchezzo's guide says to him –   

So long as you thought of this man with pride or respect as an ancestor and one who had any ties to you, so long would his power to influence you continue but now your own sense of horror and repugnance will act as a repelling power to keep his influence away from you. Your will is as strong as his and you need no other protection. In the interview just past, you allowed your senses to be beguiled and your will paralysed by this dark being before you were aware and had I not rescued you, he might, though for a time only, have made you his subject and have done you serious injury. Take heed now while you yet remain in his sphere that you do not again lose the sovereignty over yourself, which is your own and which no man can usurp unless your wavering will allows him to do so. I leave you again, my son, to follow your pilgrimage, which will soon, however, draw to its close and I bid you be of good cheer since your reward will come from her whom you love and who loves you and sends ever her most tender thoughts to you.

Summertime – Anders Zorn

Amusements in a Great City of Hell

As Franchezzo and his companion descend from the tower and enter the city, they find quite a large crowd of dark spirits assembled, listening to some sort of proclamation. Evidently it is one which excites their derision and anger for there are yells and hoots and cries resounding on all sides. As Franchezzo draws yet nearer, he perceives it is one which has been read recently in the earthly counterpart and has for its object the further liberation and advancement of the people – an object which, down here in this stronghold of oppression and tyranny, only provokes a desire for its suppression and these dark beings around him are vowing to thwart its good purpose .

The more men are oppressed and the more that they quarrel and fight against the oppression with violence, the stronger these beings are here below to interfere in their affairs and to stir up strife and fightings among them. The more men become free and enlightened and improved, the less chance there is that these dark spirits will be drawn to earth by the kindling of kindred passions there and thus be enabled to mingle with and control men for their own evil purposes. 

These dark beings delight in war, misery and bloodshed and are ever eager to return to earth to kindle men's fierce cruel passions afresh. In times of great national oppression and revolt when the heated passions of men are inflamed to fever heat, these dwellers of the depths are drawn up to earth's surface by the force of kindred desires and excite and urge on revolutions, which, begun at first from motives that are high and pure and noble, will under the stress of passion and the instigation of these dark beings from the lower sphere become at last mere excuses for wild butcheries and excesses of every kind. By these very excesses a reaction is created and these dark demons and those whom they control are in their turn swept away by the higher powers, leaving a wide track of ruin and suffering to mark where they have been. Thus in these lowest Hells a rich harvest is reaped of unhappy souls who have been drawn down along with the evil spirits that tempted them.

Passage group, Hautecombe Nights, Savoie, France by Yann Forget (CC-by-SA-3.0)

Those awful mysterious dark valleys of eternal night

In his wanderings, Franchezzo describes his arrival at a vast range of mountains whose bleak summits tower into the night sky overhead. There are no regular pathways at the foot of these great dark mountains and its rocks are very steep. After a toilsome ascent of one of the lower ranges of these mountains, Franchezzo sees on either side of him vast deep chasms in the rocks, gloomy precipices and awful-looking black pits. Franchezzo and his companion make a rope from some of the great rank, withered-looking weeds and grass that grow in small crevices of these otherwise barren rocks and they attempt to rescue the spirits that are down in these depths of misery.

These spirits have been caught in their own traps and pitfalls until that time when repentance and a desire to atone should draw rescuers to help and free them from the prisons they have themselves made.  Many are imprisoned in these mountains who may not yet be helped out by any, for they would only be a danger to others were they free. The ruin and evil they would shed around them make their longer imprisonment a necessity.  Yet their prisons are of their own creating, for these great mountains of misery are the outcome and product of their earthly lives and these precipices are the spiritual counterparts of those precipices of despair over which they have driven their unhappy victims.

It is not until their hearts soften and they learn to long for liberty that they may do good instead of evil – only then will their prisons be opened and they will be drawn forth from the living death in which their own frightful cruelties to others have entombed them.

The sun, street light and Parallax by Brocken Inaglory (CC-by-SA-3.0)

The Joy of Heaven

Franchezzo rescues an unhappy spirit whose repentant prayers have reached the higher spheres –

And in this man's heart there had sprung up a desire, hopeless, as it seemed to himself, for better things, for a path to open before him which, however hard and thorny, might lead him from this night of Hell and give him even at this eleventh hour the hope of a life removed from the horrors of this place.

As Franchezzo retreats to the door, grasping firm hold of the poor spirit who had sought to help him, Franchezzo sees four majestic spirits from the higher spheres making magnetic passes over the unfortunate's prostrate form.  Franchezzo beholds the most wonderful sight he has ever seen. From the dark disfigured body which lies as in a sleep of death there arises a mist-like vapour which grows more and more dense until it takes shape in the form of the spirit himself; the purified soul of that spirit released from its dark envelope.  Franchezzo sees those four angelic spirits lift the still unconscious risen soul in their arms as one would bear a child.

At his side stands another bright angel who says to him – 

Be of good cheer, oh! Son of the Land of Hope, for many shalt thou help in this dark land, and great is the joy of the angels in Heaven over these sinners that have repented.

Bouguereau's L'Innocence

Spiritual emanations are attracted upwards or downwards

In the lives of cities as of men spiritual emanations are attracted upwards or downwards according as there is good or evil in the deeds done in them.

A City in Hell

In a city in Hell life is in no way different from the earthly life at the time when it was in the full zenith of is power and when the particles thrown off from its material life were drawn down by the force of attraction to form its spiritual reflection.  This city's buildings are fit dwellings for its inhabitants and we see in its more modern appearance how it has been added from time to time by the same process which is going on continuously.  The spirits here fancy themselves still in the earthly counterpart and wonder why all looks so dark and foul and dingy.  

Franchezzo describes his first impressions of this ancient fortified city of the old Roman Empire –

We were now traversing a wide causeway of black marble, on either side of which were deep, dark chasms of which it was impossible to see the bottom from the great clouds of heavy vapour that hung over them. Passing and repassing us on this highway were a great many dark spirits, some bearing great heavy loads on their backs, others almost crawling along on all fours like beasts. Great gangs of slaves passed us, wearing heavy iron collars on their necks and linked together by a heavy chain. They were coming from the second or inner gate of what was evidently a large fortified city whose dark buildings loomed through the dense masses of dark fog in front of us. The causeway, the style of buildings and the appearance of many of the spirits made me feel as though we were entering some ancient fortified city of the old Roman Empire, only here everything gave one the sense of being foul and horrible, in spite of the fine architecture and the magnificent buildings whose outlines we could dimly trace. 

In like manner this same city has its spiritual prototype in the higher spheres to which all that was fair and good and noble in its life has been attracted and where those spirits who were good and true have gone to dwell. 

And as the deeds done in this city of Hell have in evil far exceeded those which were good, so this city is far larger, far more thickly peopled in this sphere than in those above. 

In the ages to come when the spirits who are here now will have progressed, that heavenly counterpart will be fully finished and fully peopled and its hellish counterpart will have crumbled into dust and faded from this sphere.