The Mirror of the Soul: Three Steps Towards Salvation

(Purgatorio, Canto IX): Achilles, Ganymede, Angel and gates to Purgatory

Vashik Armenikus

and

Lisa Statler

Jun 08, 2025

We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.
~ Novalis

Welcome to Dante Read-Along! ✨

(If this post appears truncated in your inbox you can read it on the web by clicking here. )

Welcome to Dante Book Club, where you and I descend into Hell and Purgatory to be able to ascend to Paradise. Our guide is the great Roman poet Virgil and in this Ninth Canto of the Purgatorio, we approach the Gate of Purgatory. You can find the main page of the read-along right here, reading schedule here, and the list of chat threads here.

In each post you can find a brief summary of the canto, philosophical exercises that you can draw from it, themes, character, and symbolism explanations.

All the wonderful illustrations are done specially for the Dante Read-Along by the one and only Luana Montebello.

This Week’s Circle ⭕️

Dante falls into sleep in the Valley of the Princes - He dreams of being lifted by an Eagle to the heavens - A bright light wakes him - He and Virgil are at the Gate of Purgatory - The guardian angel and his singular sword - The three steps of marble, broken rock, and porphyry - The mark of seven P’s on Dante’s forehead - The gold and silver keys - The opening of the Gate.

Canto IX Summary:

In this canto of transition from one space to the next, from Ante-Purgatory to the gate of Purgatory itself, we find extensive classical elements and symbolism to uncover. Dante opens with an image of Aurora, who is familiar as the goddess of the Dawn; our poet plays with meaning and identity here and instead considers her the lunar Aurora of the evening,

Scholars have contested Dante’s representation of the goddess, and have come to the conclusion that the Aurora of the evening is of his own invention; notably through the use of the identifier of Aurora as concubine, or mistress, of Tithonus, rather than as his wife, the role held by Aurora of the dawn. This lunar Aurora, rising from the bed of Tithonus, is marked with the constellation of Scorpio; the timing of the astrology of Scorpio rising confirms her evening role. Virgil, along with other classical authors, refers to her as the morning dawn:

Dawn was by now beginning to stipple the earth with new brightness,
Leaving Tithonus’ saffron bed.
Aeneid iv. 584-585

Tithonus was the brother of Priam, king of Troy; Aurora—known to the Greeks as Eos—was able to grant him the gift of immortality from the gods, but failed to also ask for his eternal youth; some sources say that she transformed him into a cicada when he became impossibly withered and old.

So also golden-throned Eos rapt away Tithonus who was of your race and like the deathless gods. And she went to ask the dark-clouded Son of Cronos that he should be deathless and live eternally; and Zeus bowed his head to her prayer and fulfilled her desire. Too simply was queenly Eos: she thought not in her heart to ask youth for him and to strip him of the slough of deadly age. So while he enjoyed the sweet flower of life he lived rapturously with golden-throned Eos, the early-born, by the streams of Ocean, at the ends of the earth; but when the first grey hairs began to ripple from his comely head and noble chin, queenly Eos kept away from his bed, though she cherished him in her house and nourished him with food and ambrosia and gave him rich clothing. But when loathsome old age pressed full upon him, and he could not move nor lift his limbs, this seemed to her in her heart the best counsel: she laid him in a room and put to the shining doors. There he babbles endlessly, and no more has strength at all, such as once he had in his supple limbs.
Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 218–238

There is so much to discover, just in the first few lines of this canto —

Two hours of the evening had passed in the Valley of the Princes, and the third was passing, closing in on 9pm, when Dante, heavy and weary with his cloak of flesh, was worn out with the exertions of the climb. While his other companions Virgil, Sordello, Nino, and Corrado, sat by, Dante laid down in the grass to sleep.

In the hour before dawn, the hour of the swallow’s melancholy song, Dante dreamed. That swallow referred to the terrible story of Philomela, as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.1

Tereus, King of Thrace, the husband of Procne, violated her sister Philomena and cut out her tongue, so that she should not betray his crime. Philomena, however, by means of a piece of tapestry, denounced him to Procne who, in revenge, killed her son Itys and with Philomena’s help served up his flesh to Tereus. When Tereus, discovering this, tried to kill both sisters, the gods changed all three into birds - Tereus into a hoopoe, and the two sisters into a swallow and a nightingale respectively. Dante follows the less usual version, which makes Procne the nightingale and Philomena the swallow.2

Dreams before dawn, as widely understood in the middle ages, were prophetic; when relieved of the burden of the body in sleep, the soul could even prophecy the future, being fully in its divine nature. This is the first of the three dreams of Purgatory, one for each night he spends there.

Further we witness constant experience of our immortality in the divinations of our dreams, which might not be if there were not some immortal part in us.3

When, free to wander farther from the flesh
and less held fast by cares, our intellect’s
envisionings become almost divine-

in dream I seemed to see an eagle poised,
with golden pinions, in the sky: its wings
were open; it was ready to swoop down.

And I seemed to be there where Ganymede
deserted his own family when he
was snatched up for the high consistory.
ix.16-24

In his dream, he seemed to be lifted high into the air, even to the realm of the gods, as was Ganymede when he was abducted by Jupiter, who, enchanted by his great beauty-in some later accounts, not just enchantment, but an assault-stole him away to be the cupbearer to the gods. Statius told of Ganymede’s abduction thus:

Here the Phrygian hunter is borne aloft on tawny wings, Gargara’s range sinks downwards as he rises and Troy grows dim beneath him; sadly stand his comrades, in vain the hounds weary their throats with barking and pursue his shadow or bay at the clouds.
Statius, Thebaid I.548-551

Lifted up to the heavens in his dream by the eagle, he felt himself rising higher and higher through the sphere of fire between the air of earth and the level of the moon, purified by the flame as he rose symbolically higher to the heavens. The brightness of the light that he experienced in the dream woke him; in truth it was the bright light of morning.

Continuing the classical references, Dante compared his startled awakening to that of Achilles when he awoke upon the island of Skyros after his mother Thetis had whisked him away from his home being schooled with Chiron, in order to hide him from the impending Trojan War. On the isle of Skyros, Achilles was hidden with the women of the king Lycomedes and dressed as one of them. Ulysses, disguising himself as a weapons merchant, visited the island, and when Achilles naturally gravitated toward the arms, his disguise was uncovered. Despite her attempts to protect him, he was convinced to join the Greeks in battle.

The boy’s sleep was stirred, and his opening eyes grew conscious of the inpouring day. In amaze at the light that greets him he asks, where is he, what are these waves, where is Pelion. All he beholds is different and unknown, and he hesitates to recognize his mother.
Statius Achilleid i.247-50

So Dante awoke, dazed and pale, from his dream, to Virgil alone and his other companions gone. It was morning now, 8am, and the view had changed from that of the Valley of the Princes to that of the sea. Virgil reassured him and told him not to fear; they were at the gate of Purgatory. What he then tells of their night time journey explains Dante’s dream.

As Dante slept, they were visited by Lucia, one of the three blessed ladies watching over him: Mary, Lucia, and Beatrice. We had reference to Lucia in Inferno ii.97 as the one who received the message of help from Mary and who gave that message to Beatrice.

Lucia took the sleeping Dante in her arms, leaving the other shades, Sordello, Nino, and Corrado, behind, and carried him to the gate, with Virgil following behind. She is the patron saint of eyesight and vision, and with her lovely gaze showed Virgil the gate before disappearing as suddenly as she arrived. Perhaps, like the other souls in Purgatory who wish for merit from the intercession of others, Dante himself received that same divine merit, quickening his journey.

Just like a man in doubt who then grows sure,
exchanging fear for confidence, once truth
has been revealed to him, so was I changed;

and when my guide had seen that I was free
from hesitation, then he moved, with me
behind him, up the rocks and toward the heights.
ix.64-69

Addressing the reader directly, Dante points to the loftiness of his theme, as if to remind us of this boundary we are about to cross, and to prepare us to enter this new realm; remember the rough language of Inferno, the harsh and violent themes, where here, as Dante guides us higher, his words will grow more subtle and angelic.

Reader, you can see clearly how I lift
my matter; do not wonder, therefore, if
I have to call on more art to sustain it.
ix.70-72

What first looked like a gap in the wall, a crevice, Dante now saw was in fact a gate, and below the gate three steps, watched over by a radiant faced guardian—an angel—who was so illuminated that Dante could hardly look upon him. This guardian, representing the ideal confessor, the ideal priest, and at its highest, the ideal pope, sat silently, holding a singular sword of authority which reflected the morning light; he sat above the top step, his feet upon it.

With the angel who has only one sword, Dante is attacking the claims made by medieval Popes, including Boniface VIII in 1302, that they possessed two: not only supreme spiritual power but also supreme temporal power.4

This gate is so small compared to the wide, unguarded gate of Hell, through which any could enter; here the guardian asked them to identify their purpose and their escort. Virgil explained their purpose and the blessing of their pilgrimage. The guardian called them forward.

There we approached, and the first step was white
marble, so polished and so clear that I
was mirrored there as I appear in life.

The second step, made out of crumbling rock,
rough-textured, scorched, with cracks that ran across
its length and width, was darker than deep purple.

The third, resting above more massively,
appeared to me to be of porphyry,
as flaming red as blood that spurts from veins.
ix.94-102

These three steps embody the medieval sense of penitence:

The white marble step with it’s mirrored surface represented the first penitential step of confession, the reflection of the self with true, unflinching vision, the mirror of self knowledge. This is truly the ‘Know Thyself’ of Plato and the ancients, the ability to see one's faults clearly and without guile or excuse, the vision lacking in all the shades of Hell.

The second step, a dark purple black color, pitted and cracked in the shape of a cross, rough as the very texture of sin, represented contrition; this is recognition moving to the knowledge of the need of transformation.

The third is the red stone porphyry, as deep as blood—Christ’s blood, to the Christian—which represented the satisfaction of the error, or the promise to remedy the sin through acts of penance.

This then, was the threshold of Purgatory. Imagine the reverence of the moment, as if taking a vow to work toward purification.

Dante fell at the guardian angel’s feet with humility at the urging of Virgil, and smote his chest three times in remorse and in acknowledgment of his fallen state—mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa—these three errors of thought, word, and deed.

As though in acceptance of Dante’s humble state, and a sign that he will be allowed to pass through the gate, the angel traced seven P’s on Dante’s forehead, for peccatum - sin or error. The concept of error as a wound on the soul is strong here, and through his journey up the mountain Dante must cleanse these wounds; this is the progress of expiating the seven deadly sins that the P’s represent.

The P’s should also be conceived as representing the penance that is imposed upon the sinner after absolution and their removal as the satistactio operis, “satisfaction by works,” which is the third essential part of the sacrament, following contritio cordis, “contrition of the heart,” and confessio oris, “confession by the lips.”5

The earthen, ashy color of the angel’s robes is in contrast to the rich fabrics and trappings of the medieval church. From these robes, he drew two keys, one of gold and one of silver, the symbolic keys given to St. Peter upon the founding of the church. Both must turn to open the gate;

Accordingly we may distinguish two keys, the first of which regards the judgment about the worthiness of the person to be absolved, while the other regards the absolution.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

The significance of these keys brings us deep into medieval Christian theology, and the role of the church in the function of the processes of the three steps of confession, contrition and satisfaction; the church had the authority through God to absolve sin, which is the nature of the golden key; the function and purpose of the the priesthood rested in this idea. The silver key puts that authority into the hands of individual priests, who must use that authority wisely to be sure the sinner is truly repentant before giving that absolution. Dante puts such importance on this idea because it is apparent that so many invested with this power did not use it wisely or justly, absolving sins for payments of indulgences and the like.

The recurring theme of not looking back from whence one came, looking back to the old state of sin, is called up again here. Like Lot’s wife, like Orpheus losing Eurydice, those who look back lose their forward motion.

And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed…But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. Genesis 19:17, 26

The angel turned the keys and the gates of Purgatory opened; the sound they made rivalled the sound of the gates of the Roman treasury in the temple of Tarpeia, whose riches were taken by force by Caesar, even as the tribune Metellus tried to stop him.

Metellus was drawn aside and the temple at once thrown open. Then the Tarpeian rock re-echoed, and loud grating bore witness to the opening of the doors; then was brought forth the wealth of the Roman people, stored in the temple vaults and untouched for many a year…Dismal was the deed of plunder that robbed the temple; and then for the first time Rome was poorer than a Caesar.
Lucan Pharsalia iii.153-157, 167-68

As the gates opened, the sweet sound of the hymn Te Deum Laudamus, We Praise You O God, could be heard within; it mingled with the sounds of the gates opening, so that what Dante heard was a blend of them both, sometimes one, sometimes the other, one coming to the forefront and then receding.

💭 Philosophical Exercises

The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends.

~ Carl Jung

The Gate of Purgatory – Federico Zuccari (1586)

when, free to wander farther from the flesh
and less held fast by cares, our intellect's
envisionings become almost divine...
~ Purgatory, Canto IX

I believe that the purpose of literature and art is to reveal inner landscapes that few of us are aware even existed. In the same way as the famous explorers unveiled uncharted parts of our world, so do the painters, writers, and sculptors unveil parts of us that we only perhaps intuitively felt. If Ferdinand Magellan discovered parts of our visible world, so does Dante with the invisible side of the universe.

My reader, please, allow a brief digression. Let me place the photography of Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa again to your view.

Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1645-1652) – Artchive

We don’t think much of the Strait of Magellan today, or of the Cape of Good Hope discovered by Vasco de Gama. Once new territories are placed on the map, we forget that before Magellan or de Gama these places were unknown to us.

It is the same with the works like that of Bernini or of Dante. They placed on the map domains of the soul we did not know existed before they came about.

How else can one describe what Dante the writer does here in this Canto?

But, there is a lot to cover here, and I can barely touch the essentials, so let’s return to our pilgrim…

I. Dreams

In the Valley of the Princes, Sordello tells Virgil that since night has descended, they should find a place to rest before continuing their journey.

Here, after stepping away from the once-sinful kings, Dante falls asleep; for it’s in our dreams that mysterious forces re-arrange our transformation. In sleep—especially deep sleep—something inexplicable happens: memory is formed, feelings are sifted, existence is changed.

To quote a contemporary story: “Dreams are the messages from the deep.”

Dante alludes to the myth of Ganymede, a beautiful mortal boy, who was seized by Zeus (Jove) in the form of an eagle and taken to the heavens. There, the mighty god made him the immortal cupbearer of the gods. Dante, in contrast to the myth, becomes cupbearer of divine wisdom to us mortals and thus gains his own immortality.

But of course, Ganymede is not the only allusion here. Dante also subtly points us toward Adam, who was placed into a deep sleep by God so that Eve could be formed from his rib.

In modern times, we often treat sleep and dreaming as mere inactivity—a biological necessity, a pause we must endure to remain productive while awake. But for Dante and his contemporaries, sleep was something far more profound. It was in passivity, not action, that the soul could begin to unravel the labyrinth of existence and glimpse something beyond itself.

As we saw in the previous canto with the reversal of the Fall, Dante also inverts another classical narrative here—the path of Achilles.

According to myth, Achilles’s mother, Thetis, fearing that her son would be drafted into the Trojan War, stole him away from the centaur Chiron (whom we also encounter in Inferno) and hid him on an island. Achilles was brought there while asleep—only to be discovered later by Ulysses (Odysseus) and taken to war, where he would meet his death.

Dante, by contrast, falls asleep not to be led to destruction, but to salvation. He is lifted—not by a deceiving hero, but by a divine eagle—and carried not to war, but to the threshold of Purgatory, where he may seek grace and transformation.

The whole canto feels like an alchemical text that tries to tell the truth to those of us who have the patience and wisdom to pay attention.

And there it seemed that he and I were burning;
and this imagined conflagration scorched
me so—I was compelled to break my sleep.
~ lines 31 -33

Fire—scorching, purifying fire. Not the fire of punishment, but of transformation. A divine energy that does not destroy, but cleanses; that strips away the old self so a new one may emerge.

Like a serpent shedding its skin, the soul is renewed—made ready to begin again.

II. Steps to salvation

The alchemical interpretation, of course, does not end there.

When Dante awakens, Virgil explains that Lucia (the Light) carried him to this place, and that he, Virgil (Reason) humbly followed her. There has been much debate about the figure of Lucia (or Lucy) and her symbolic nature. But if I may offer a humble suggestion: there is seeing, and then there is seeing.

Not everyone who is blind is one who lacks sight.

Our pilgrims are now brought to the gates of Purgatory, and there, above the three steps, sits an angel with a sword. The sword, in turn, symbolises authority: the power to judge and to guard the threshold of transformation.

The three steps leading to the gate are, to me, a beautiful symbolic representation of the stages one must pass through to begin the work of purification. Though rooted in Catholic doctrine, Dante reorders and reinterprets them to fit his deeper vision of the human soul.

According to traditional Catholic teaching, the penitent must undergo three acts: contrition (recognising one’s sins), confession (voicing them), and satisfaction (performing acts that demonstrate sincere intent to change). But Dante subtly reverses the first two.

The white marble step, as some readers may have already guessed, represents confession—the moment of reflection. One must first look in the mirror of truth and see themselves clearly. It is only through this gaze—honest and unflinching—that we recognize how fractured we have become.

That recognition is followed by the second step, darker and cracked: contrition—the internal brokenness, the sorrow, the awareness of one’s moral fall. A deep purple-black stone, marred by a jagged fissure, represents this inner wound.

Dante’s reordering is deliberate. One cannot feel true sorrow without first seeing the truth. Only through this reflective act, this mirror of the soul, can the work of transformation begin.

III. Two Keys

Dante hits himself three times in the chest.

I threw myself devoutly at his holy
feet, asking him to open out of mercy;
but first I beat three times upon my breast.

“Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa”—the sin of thought, the sin of word, and the sin of deed. In the mirror of confession, Dante sees reflected back at him all three. He recognizes the hidden movements of his own heart, the words he has spoken, and the actions he now regrets.

Perhaps the most visually striking moment in this canto is the inscription of the seven Ps on Dante’s forehead—marks he will gradually shed as he ascends the mountain. Almost every commentary will note that P stands for peccato, or sin. But there is a subtle nuance worth attending to: in this stage of the journey, Dante is purging the inclinations to sins —the habits, the attachments, the spiritual gravity—that draw him toward sin.

The angel holds two keys: one opens the gate through divine grace; the other turns only if the sinner’s desire for ascent is sincere.

I found this to be a profound insight and, as Robert Hollander notes, the key that sometimes turns faultily is not the silver one, but the gold: the key of divine grace. For God’s mercy is vast and deep, and at times it opens even for those whose sincerity is not yet complete. Grace may precede the will, reaching out to those who might yet be saved.

IV.

Hearing that gate resound, I turned, attentive;
I seemed to hear, inside, in words that mingled
with gentle music, ” Te Deum laudamus.”
And what I heard gave me the very same
impression one is used to getting when
one hears a song accompanied by organ,
and now the words are clear and now are lost.

The final lines of this canto feel almost ritualistic a kind of transition from the dreamlike stillness we entered at the beginning to the mystical reality we now glimpse. It is a passage, both literal and symbolic, from shadow into light.

And once again—without, I hope, trying the patience of my reader—I must repeat: Dante is not merely a poet, but an explorer. He is our Magellan, our Marco Polo, our Vasco da Gama—charting unknown territories of the soul, revealing landscapes within us that often lie hidden, unnamed.

Our guide through the invisible world concludes this canto with a sacred gesture: the gates of Purgatory open, and he steps inside. As the angel declares, the doors slam shut behind him—for one who has begun to ascend no longer has the right to turn back.

This Week’s Sinners and Virtuous 🎭

(Themes, Quotes, Terms and Characters)

Dante and Virgil Approach the Angel at the Gate of Purgatory – Francesco Scaramuzza (ca. 1850)

I. Body and Soul

The seven letters P that Dante gets to his forehead act as a symbol that vice, life deprived of virtue, affects not only the soul but also the body. It is worth the reminder that the Ancient Greeks used to hold their discussions at Gymnasiums, for they believed that in a healthy body one finds a healthy mind.

II. Virgil, Angel and Cato

My reader hopefully remembers that Virgil tried to “bribe” Cato at the beginning of Purgatory. Virgil told Cato that he could pass a message to his wife, who was placed in the same realm of the Inferno as Virgil. Cato rebuked Virgil for such an attempt,

We can see that Virgil learnt his lesson. When the angel speaks to them, Virgil does not dare to make such offerings.