Descent Into Hell Quotes

Basia coquum," Simon said. "Or whatever their motto is." "It's 'Descensus Averno facilis est.' 'The descent into hell is easy," said Alec. "You just said "Kiss the cook." "Dammit," said Simon. "I knew Jace was screwing with me.

The descent into Hell is easy

The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labor lies.

The gates of Hell are open night and day; smooth the descent and easy is the way.

Facilis descensus Averni," he whispered, his ominous and preternatural words striking her very soul. "The descent to Hell is easy.

The descent into hell is easy." said Alec. "You just said kiss the cook" "Dammit" said Simon. "I knew Jace was screwing with me

Facilis descensus Averno: Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis; Sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est. (The gates of Hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this task and mighty labor lies.)

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

I sought to puncture Heaven and instead discovered Hell.

You are my angel and my damnation; in your presence I reach divine ecstasy and in your absence I descent to hell.

He pointed at Brother Jeremiah, who had come to a halt in front of a statue just slightly taller than he was, its base overgrown with moss. The statue was of an angel. The marble of the statue was so smooth it was almost translucent. The face of the angel was fierce and beautiful and sad. In long white hands the angel held a cup, its rim studded with marble jewels. Something about the statue tickled Clary’s memory with an uneasy familiarity. There was a date inscribed on the base, 1234, and words inscribed around it: NEPHILIM: FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNI. “Is that meant to be the Mortal Cup?” she asked. Jace nodded. “And that’s the motto of the Nephilim—the Shadowhunters—there on the base.” “What does it mean?” Jace’s grin was a white flash in the darkness. “It means ‘Shadowhunters: Looking Better in Black Than the Widows of our Enemies Since 1234.’” “Jace—” It means, said Jeremiah, The descent into Hell is easy.

My only regret involved the sad knowledge that I could not handle the amount of alcohol I would have enjoyed. “Easy is the descent into Hell.

Anaxagoras said to a man who was grieving because he lay dying in a foreign land, "The descent to hell is the same from every place.

I will follow him to hell, and that is saying not a little, as I believe him entirely capable of the descent.

Hell is a different place for each man, or each man has his own particular hell. My descent into the inferno is a descent into the irrational level of existence, where the instincts and blind emotions are loose, where one lives by pure impulse, pure fantasy, and therefore pure madness. No, that is not the inferno.

the Devil's hand directs our every move the things we loathed become the things we love; day by day we drop through stinking shades quite undeterred on our descent to Hell.

Love was even more mathematical than poetry. It was the pure mathematics of the spirit.

It may be a movement towards becoming like little children to admit that we are generally nothing else.

She endured her own nature and supposed it to be the burden of another's.

Facilis descensus averno - The descent into hell is easy

How easily such a thing can become a mania, how the most normal and sensible of women once this passion to be thin is upon them, can lose completely their sense of balance and proportion and spend years dealing with this madness.

In older myths, the dark road leads downward into the Underworld, where Persephone is carried off by Hades, much against her will, while Ishtar descends of her own accord to beat at the gates of Hell. This road of darkness lies to the West, according to Native American myth, and each of us must travel it at some point in our lives. The western road is one of trials, ordeals, disasters and abrupt life changes — yet a road to be honored, nevertheless, as the road on which wisdom is gained. James Hillman, whose theory of 'archetypal psychology' draws extensively on Greco–Roman myth, echoes this belief when he argues that darkness is vital at certain periods of life, questioning our modern tendency to equate mental health with happiness. It is in the Underworld, he reminds us, that seeds germinate and prepare for spring. Myths of descent and rebirth connect the soul's cycles to those of nature.

A man cannot love himself; he can only idolize it, and over the idol delightfully tyrannize - without purpose. The great gift which the simple idolatry of self gives is lack of further purpose

Our lives aren't even about doing real things most of the time. We think and talk about people we've never met, pretend to visit places we've never actually been, to discuss things that are just names as though they were as real as rocks or animals or something. Information Age. Hell it's the Imagination Age. We're living in our own minds. No, she decided as the plane began its steep descent, really we're living in other people's minds.

The steep descent into Hell is always paved with good intentions.

There was no half-assing a descent into hell.

Somehow I lost all ability to regulate not only my emotions but my behavior as well.... It was an alarmingly rapid and complete descent into hell.

But very few ordeals are redemptive and I doubt if the descent into hell teaches anything new. It can only hasten processes which are already in existence, and usually this just means that it degrades. You see, in hell one lacks the energy for any good change. This indeed is the meaning of hell.

He’d never felt this protective of a woman before. Only she brought that out in him. That powerful, odd mixture of independence and vulnerability completely melted him. The fact that she flew a Black Hawk and could talk shop with the best of them? Hot as hell. And her laugh. God, she had the dirtiest laugh he’d ever heard. Every time he heard it he thought of sex. Hot, sweaty sex, the kind that left a man exhausted and weak and his partner unable to move.

Jace’s grin was a white flash in the darkness. “It means ‘Shadowhunters: Looking Better in Black Than the Widows of our Enemies Since 1234.’” “Jace—” It means, said Jeremiah, The descent into Hell is easy.

The implacable logic of retribution will prove as appalling as the crime itself, consisting of the soul’s slow agonizing descent into a state of such loneliness and despair as to be finally indistinguishable from Hell.

According to the mystics, the obscure matter that creation presupposes is nothing other than divine potentiality. The act of creation is God’s descent into an abyss that is simply his own potentiality and impotentiality, his capacity to and capacity not to . . . In this context, “abyss” is not a metaphor . . . It is the life of darkness in God, the divine root of Hell in which the Nothing is eternally produced. Only when we succeed in sinking into this Tartarus and experiencing our own impotentiality do we become capable of creating, truly becoming poets.

your mind becomes a supercomputer capable of calculating the gyrations of your car, multiplying that by the speed of the fall over the angle of descent, factoring in Newton’s laws of motion and, in a split second, coming to the panicked conclusion that this is gonna hurt like hell.

The gates of Hell are open night and day Smooth the descent, and easy is the way But, to return, and view the cheerful skies In this, the task and mighty labor lies.

I would follow him to hell, and that is saying not a little, as I believe him entirely capable of the descent.

So long always as joy was not rashly pinned to the happening; so long as you accepted what joys the universe offered and did not seek to compel the universe to offer you joys of your own definition.

There was a date inscribed on the base, 1234, and words inscribed around it: NEPHILIM: FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNI. “Is that meant to be the Mortal Cup?” she asked. Jace nodded. “And that’s the motto of the Nephilim—the Shadowhunters—there on the base.” “What does it mean?” Jace’s grin was a white flash in the darkness. “It means ‘Shadowhunters: Looking Better in Black Than the Widows of our Enemies Since 1234.’” “Jace—” It means, said Jeremiah, The descent into Hell is easy.

There are people in the world all the time who know" the professor said. "But they keep quiet. They just move about quietly, saving the people who know they are in the trap. And then, for the ones who have got out, it's like coming around from chloroform. They realize that all their lives they've been asleep and dreaming. And then it's their turn to learn the rules and the timing. And they become the ones to live quietly in the world, just as human beings might if there were only a few human beings on a planet that had monkeys on it for inhabitants...

, Stanhope delayed a moment behind Miss Fox to add: "The substantive, of course, governs the adjective; not the other way round." "The substantive?" Pauline asked blankly. "Good. It contains terror, not terror good. I'm keeping you. Good-bye, Periel," and he was gone.

Pardon,Periel, like Love, is only ours for fun: essentially we don't and can't.

We were already damned to Hell; it was silly to not at least enjoy our descent.

I suddenly see us from above. I do that all the time now. I think it’s because I’m losing my humanity and it’s my way of marking my descent into hell.

It means, said Jeremiah, The descent into Hell is easy. “Nice and cheery,” said Clary, but a shiver passed over her skin despite the heat.

Sharp teeth flashed between his lips when he spoke. He was a real teddy bear, but he looked scary as hell, and he was meant to deter Zohak from sending fiends through the front door. Elise paused. “Go home, Ed.

At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond the albatross---at times became dizzy with the velocity of our descent into some watery hell, where the air grew stagnant, and no sound disturbed the slumbers of the kraken.

If you could see how I see by penetrating the superficial, you'd see the grand scheme of those co called "powerful" officials. It's disgust and deception at its deepest descent and yes, all those involved, it's hell where all reside.

My sense of urgency is very simple,' said the professor, 'I've remembered that much. It's because what I have to remember has to do with time running out. And that's what anxiety is, in a lot of people. They know they have to do something, they should be doing something else, not just living hand-to-mouth, putting paint on their faces and decorating their caves and playing nasty tricks on their rivals. No. They have to do something else before they die—and so the mental hospitals are full and the chemists flourishing.

The ward was the only true community of equals I have ever lived in. What I mean is that we all knew we had already lived through hell, that our lives were already over, and all we had was the final descent. The only thing to do on the way down was to radiate mercy.

Visionary experience is not the same as mystical experience. Mystical experience is beyond the realm of contradictions. Visionary experience is still within that realm. Heaven entails hell, and 'going to heaven' is no more liberating than is the descent into horror.

For suddenly it had changed into that gear when time is slower - as when, falling off a ladder, one has time to think: I shall land so, just there, and I must turn in the air slightly... All this in a space of time normally too short for any thought at all. But we are wrong in dividing the mind's machinery from time: they are the same. It is only in such sharp emphatic moments that we recognize this fact.

If the redeemed sing, presumably someone must write the songs.

Christ’s descent to hell in the Gospel of Nicodemus, one of the most theologically influential narratives from outside the biblical canon.

No, this is wonderful!” Mrs. Hernandez’ face turned into a wrinkle mosaic when she smiled. “It’s not what you give, but the spirit in which you give. That’s what’s important.” Rise was on the fast track to hell, if that was the standard. Her neighbor had trouble with a heavy box, so she reached to help, thinking it might slow her descent into the fiery pit of eternal damnation.

I do not wish upon anyone a descent into hell. But if your life has to be turned inside out in order for you to know yourself—if the shadow of a shaman crosses your path and you turn and follow it down—I pray that you use its force wisely. I hope that you take the ultimate responsibility for your actions and that you consecrate any destruction to the rebuilding of your higher self and a more radiant life.

There are tales that can give you yourself completely and the world could never treat you so badly then that you wouldn’t neglect it. One can get everything by listening or looking in the right way: there are all sorts of turns.

Because you could not talk to the world. You could not pray to it or love it or damn it to hell. With the world there could be no discussion, and with no discussion there could be no terms, and with no terms there could be no grace.

Each day was the same, an infinite parade of degradations and torture accomplished by unyielding women overseen by the condescension of uncaring men. If not mad already upon internment, surely no mind could withstand the torment of this hell.

Like many fellow travelers who’ve crossed the Styx and returned, I view the itinerary as transformational. On the one hand, I won’t join that cohort claiming gratitude for their time in hell; on the other, I can say that in the wake of my depression, I’m pierced by other people as I wasn’t before, that I waste less time entertaining myself, and that I hear my thoughts with a useful attention to their tenor, fairness, and sanity. I feel equanimous most of the time, and have a strong impulse to give. My life has become, if you will, intentional, in a way it might not be if I hadn’t made my plummet. William Styron died in 2006. During the last third of his life, after the publication of Darkness Visible, he became a mental health advocate. I’m among those aided by his account, who found in it succor, but I’m also mindful of complaints such as those in Joel P. Smith’s essay “Depression: Darker Than Darkness”—that Styron was depressed for months, not years; that he was never alone; that he had the best of treatment; that he stayed in a hospital “as comfortable as they come”; and that he didn’t have to rely on radical remedies like electroshock therapy: all of this to say that Styron didn’t plumb the depths and can’t represent the depressed, and neither can I. Others have and have had it worse. For them, depression never yields or lessens. For them there’s no rising into the light of day, no edifications, and no gains, nothing but the wish to be dead, which is, after a marathon of untenable suffering, granted. “E

A hundred years of scholarly thinking has stretched back a million-fold the age of the Earth. But these same diviners, antiquarians and scholars are thinking now as they did a hundred years ago, when it comes to the age of civilizations; they can't even begin to concede that civilizations might have very old histories. The Earth is allowed to be millions of millions of years old, but the birth of civilization is still set somewhere between two thousand B.C., depending on the bias of the archaeological school and the definition of civilization.

The human ripples of pain are still heartbreaking when made visible to us now. Our friend Agnolo the Fat wrote: “Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through the breath and sight. And so they died. And none could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship. Members of a household brought their dead to a ditch as best they could, without priest, without divine offices.” The essence of that account is of an epidemic destroying the very bonds of human society. When was the last time the developed world experienced such a rapid descent into a microbial hell? And if parents abandoning children wasn’t destabilizing enough, other support elements in society were shattered by the justifiable fear of the pestilence. The natural human inclination to seek companionship and support from one’s neighbors was short-circuited. No one wanted to catch whatever was killing everybody. In an era when people congregating together was so much more important than it is in our modern, so-called connected world, people kept their distance from one another, creating one of the silent tragedies of this plague: that they had to suffer virtually alone.

He had hoped she would assume he had succumbed again to methamphetamine hydrochloride and was sparing her the agony of his descent back into the hell of chemical dependence. What it really was was that he had again decided those 50 grams of resin-soaked dope, which had been so potent that on the second day it had given him an anxiety attack so paralyzing that he had gone to the bathroom in a Tufts University commemorative ceramic stein to avoid leaving his bedroom, represented his very last debauch ever with dope, and that he had to cut himself off from all possible future sources of temptation and supply,

But no verse, not Stanhope's, not Shakespeare's, not Dante's could rival the original, and this was the original, and the verse was but the best translation of a certain manner of its life. The glory of poetry could not outshine the clear glory of the certain fact, and not any poetry could hold as many meanings as the fact.

They have not yet evolved into an understanding of their individual selves as merely parts of a whole, first of all humanity, their own species, let alone achieving a conscious knowledge of humanity as part of Nature; plants, animals, birds, insects reptiles, and all these together making a small chord in the Cosmic Harmony

. Nature's so terribly good. Don't you think so, Mr. Stanhope?" Stanhope was standing by, silent, while Mrs. Parry communed with her soul and with one or two of her neighbours on the possibilities of dressing the Chorus. He turned his head and answered, "That Nature is terribly good? Yes, Miss Fox. You do mean 'terribly'?" "Why, certainly," Miss Fox said. "Terribly--dreadfully--very." "Yes," Stanhope said again. "Very. Only--you must forgive me; it comes from doing so much writing, but when I say 'terribly' I think I mean 'full of terror'. A dreadful goodness." "I don't see how goodness can be dreadful," Miss Fox said, with a shade of resentment in her voice. "If things are good they're not terrifying, are they?" "It was you who said 'terribly'," Stanhope reminded her with a smile, "I only agreed." "And if things are terrifying," Pauline put in, her eyes half closed and her head turned away as if she asked a casual question rather of the world than of him, "can they be good?" He looked down on her. "Yes, surely," he said, with more energy. "Are our tremors to measure the Omnipotence?

they seem unable to retain this very simple truth for long, although they have been told again and again, and this is because of another and most powerful feature of their thinking, which is that anything they are told is distorted to fit their own particular personal or group bias and then added, like another pebble to the pile of the half-truths they already cherish.

Not going to lie, I thought Asher would have been the last person to fall for Liam’s charm.” I raise a brow at him in question. “You thought Vincent before Asher?” He shrugs. “I could see Vincent enjoying causing Liam pain, and I think Liam would enjoy it too.” “Not a chance in fucking hell,” Vincent calls out easily, clearly not asleep. “You say that now, until you see how tight my asshole is,” Liam says sleepily. “Jesus, what a way to wake up,” Asher grouches.

She said, still perplexed at a strange language: "But how can I cease to be troubled? will it leave off coming because I pretend it wants you? Is it your resemblance that hurries up the street?" "It is not," he said, "and you shall not pretend at all. The thing itself you may one day meet-never mind that now, but you'll be free from all distress because that you can pass on to me. Haven't you heard it said that we ought to bear one another's burdens?" "But that means-" she began, and stopped. "I know," Stanhope said. "It means listening sympathetically, and thinking unselfishly, and being anxious about, and so on. Well, I don't say a word against all that; no doubt it helps. But I think when Christ or St. Paul, or whoever said bear, or whatever he Aramaically said instead of bear, he meant something much more like carrying a parcel instead of someone else. To bear a burden is precisely to carry it instead of. If you're still carrying yours, I'm not carrying it for you--however sympathetic I may be.

Something in every person objects to acknowledging the fact that he is not even "master in his own house". The unconscious is un-conscious, and there's no bargaining on that score. The whole analytic therapy is based on the principle of making the unconscious conscious through an emotional therapeutic process, thus changing the unfavorable inner structure. All the misconceptions current about "self-analysis" via book knowledge are empty talk; self-analysis is a fancy word for arriving at wrong conclusions about one's own wonderful self. A psychiatric guide is needed for the descent into one's "inner hell". Psychoanalysis has always had the distinction of presenting unpalatable ideas. This fact is not based on some peculiar predilection of analysts but is inherent in analytic discoveries. Since our science deals with psychic material typically repressed (expelled from consciousness because too painful and shameful to remain conscious) the reaction of the conscious ego is an indignant "no". Facts, however, do not change by simple denial of them.

I am not I in myself alone, but only in all others. If, then, anyone is in hell, I too am partly in hell. Happily, however, if the Christian story is true, that love cannot now end in failure or tragedy. The descent into those depths--where we seek out and find those who are lost, and find our own salvation in so doing--is not a lonely act of spiritual heroism, or a futile rebellion of our finite wills against a merciless eternity. For the whole substance of Christian faith is the conviction that another has already an decisively gone down into that abyss for us, to set all the prisoners free, even from the chains of their own hatred and despair; and hence the love that has made all of us who we are, and that will continue throughout eternity to do so, cannot ultimately be rejected by anyone. Thus all shall have their share in--as Gregory [of Nyssa] says in his great mystical commentary On the Song of Songs--"the redeemed unity of all, united one with another by their convergence upon the One Good." Only thus will humanity "according the the devine image" come into being, and only thus will God be truly all in all.

It was a grief and a fear too ancient for me, it was a sorrow bred into the essence of the race. I saluted it, and passed on, for like the early all-pervading nausea, this was part of my living, kneaded into my fibres, a necessity like breathing and associated with it: this cold, this weight, this pulling and dragging and compelling. It was too old a lodestone for any individual to fight away from, or even to accurately know or place. It was there. [...] There it lay, just out of sight, deadly and punishing, for its pulse was that of a cold heaviness, it had to be a counterweight to joy.

the voluntary evil we do one another can be profoundly and permanently damaging, even to the strong. And what is it, precisely, that motivates such evil? It doesn’t make itself manifest merely in consequence of the hard lot of life. It doesn’t even emerge, simply, because of failure itself, or because of the disappointment and bitterness that failure often and understandably engenders. But the hard lot of life, magnified by the consequence of continually rejected sacrifices (however poorly conceptualized; however half-heartedly executed)? That will bend and twist people into the truly monstrous forms who then begin, consciously, to work evil; who then begin to generate for themselves and others little besides pain and suffering (and who do it for the sake of that pain and suffering). In that manner, a truly vicious circle takes hold: begrudging sacrifice, half-heartedly undertaken; rejection of that sacrifice by God or by reality (take your pick); angry resentment, generated by that rejection; descent into bitterness and the desire for revenge; sacrifice undertaken even more begrudgingly, or refused altogether. And it’s Hell itself that serves as the destination place of that downward spiral.

John Calvin writes, in one of the best paragraphs you’ll ever read, “We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ [Acts 4:12]. We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else. If we seek salvation we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is ‘of him’ [1 Cor. 1:30]. If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in his anointing. If we seek strength, it lies in his dominion; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth. For by his birth he was made like us in all respects [Heb. 2:17] that he might learn to feel our pain [cf. Heb. 5:2]. If we seek redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross [Gal. 3:13]; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment, in the power given to him to judge. In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain and from no other” (Institutes 2.16.19). 2Institutes 3.2.24.

Okay, drop.” He nodded in satisfaction at her clean descent. “Again, Harper.” Biting back a curse, she did it again. And again. And again. And a-fucking-gain. “Better. Much better. Now, do it once more. This time, I’m going to ask you to go higher and hold it a lot longer.” When she slumped, Knox arched a brow. “Do you want to try flying or not? We’ll do it today, but only if you master this move.” Harper rolled back her shoulders. “I’ll do it,” she bit out. She wanted to punch him square in the face for grinning at her. “What’s so funny?” “I’m not laughing.” “Not out loud.” “You’re just cute when you’re agitated.” She was back to being a hissing, spitting kitten that amused the hell out of Knox and his demon.

Know your heart - whether it is good or evil, whether the source of your actions is pure or impure. Know what can be imputed to you and what belongs to your moral state, whether as something inherent in man's substance or as something derived (acquired or admitted). Moral self-knowledge, which requires one to penetrate into the unfathomable depths and abyss of one's heart, is the beginning of all human wisdom. For wisdom consists in the harmony of the will of a being with his final end, and in the case of man this requires him first to remove the inner obstacle (an evil will actually present in him) and then to develop his inalienable and inherent disposition of a good will. "Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to deification.

There was presented to him at once and clearly an opportunity for joy--casual, accidental joy, but joy. If he could not manage joy, at least he might have managed the intention of joy, or (if that also were too much) an effort towards the intention of joy. The infinity of-grace could have been contented and invoked by a mere mental refusal of anything but such an effort. He knew his duty--he was no fool--he knew that the fantastic recognition would please and amuse the innocent soul of Sir Aston, not so much for himself as in some unselfish way for the honour of history. Such honours meant nothing, but they were part of the absurd dance of the world, and to be enjoyed as such. Wentworth knew he could share that pleasure. He could enjoy; at least he could refuse not to enjoy. He could refuse and reject damnation. With a perfectly clear, if instantaneous, knowledge of what he did, he rejected joy instead. He instantaneously preferred anger, and at once it came; he invoked envy, and it obliged him. He crushed the paper in a rage, then he tore it open, and looked again and again-there it still was. He knew that his rival had not only succeeded, but succeeded at his own expense; what chance was there of another historical knighthood for years? Till that moment he had never thought of such a thing. The possibility had been created and withdrawn simultaneously, leaving the present fact to mock him. The other possibility--of joy in that present fact--receded as fast. He had determined, then and for ever, for ever, for ever, that he would hate the fact, and therefore facts.

You need to add a quiet room down here," Bastien drawled. Yes, they did. "Why?" Chris asked. "For interrogation purposes?" "Okay," Bastien replied, voice bland. A moment passed. Then..."Oh hell no," Reordon blurted. "I am not spending tens of thousands of dollars to soundproof a room down here so you two can have sex without the vampires hearing you." "You want the vampires to hear us?" Cliff and the other vampires laughed. "No," Chris sputtered. "I mean, I don't want you having sex! Not while you're both on the clock. Melanie is supposed to be working-" "She is." Bastien defended her, an edge entering his voice. "Long hours." "And you are supposed to be serving as guard. Seven vampires live across the hallway. What are you going to do if a couple of them have psychotic breaks and try to escape while you two are having a quickie?" "Chase them down bare-ass naked and give the human guards an eyeful." That was one hell of an incentive not to escape. "I don't know about you," one fo the new vamps said in his apartment down the hallway, "but I'm pretty sure even total mind-fuck madness wouldn't make me risk that guy chasing me down and tackling me while he's naked and has a hard-on.

SILVER CITY IS NO PLACE FOR AMATEURS I left Colorado Springs the next morning and got back in the fucking car for another day of driving for the Tour of the Gila. I’d never driven in snow before, but I made it to Santa Fe and then Albuquerque in the afternoon, careful to dodge all the tumbleweeds on the highway in New Mexico. I hadn’t known that those existed outside of cartoons. Already exhausted when I got off the interstate, I was surprised when my GPS said “48 miles remaining, 1.5 hours’ drive time”—I was sure that couldn’t be right. Then I saw the steep climbs, bumpy cattle guards, and dangerous descents on the road into Silver City. I drove as fast as I could, sliding my poor car around hairpins in the dark. I made it to the host house, fell asleep, and found two flat tires when I went outside to unpack the car in the morning. They probably weren’t meant for drifting. My luck didn’t improve when the race started. I got a flat tire when I went off the road to dodge a crash, and I chased for over an hour to get back to the field. Between the dry air and altitude, I got a major nosebleed. My car was parked at the base of the finishing climb, and I got there several minutes behind the field, my new white Cannondale and all my clothes covered in blood. The course turned right to go up the climb, and I turned left, climbed into my car, and got the hell out of there. I might have made the time cut, but for the second time in two weeks, I opted to climb in the car instead. I got out of that town like I was about to turn into a pumpkin, and made it back to San Diego nine hours later. If there wasn’t a Pacific Ocean to stop me, I’d have driven another day, just to get farther from Gila.

Reaching the door of his mother’s apartments, Marcus found it locked. He rattled the handle violently. “Open it,” he bellowed. “Open it now!” Silence, and then a maid’s frightened reply from within. “Milord… the countess bade me to tell you that she is resting.” “I’ll send her to her eternal fucking rest,” Marcus roared, “if this door isn’t opened now.” “Milord, please—” He drew back three or four paces and hurled himself against the door, which shook on its hinges and partially gave with a splintering sound. There were fearful cries in the hallway from a pair of female guests who happened to witness the astonishing display of raging frenzy. “Dear God,” one exclaimed to the other, “he’s gone berserk!” Marcus drew back again and lunged at the door, this time sending chunks of paneling flying. He felt Simon Hunt’s hands grasp him from behind, and he whirled with his fist drawn back, ready to launch an attack on all fronts. “Jesus,” Hunt muttered, retreating a step or two with his hands raised in a defensive gesture. His face was taut and his eyes were wide, and he stared at Marcus as if he were a stranger. “Westcliff—” “Stay the hell out of my way!” “Gladly. But let me point out that if our positions were reversed, you would be the first to tell me to keep a cool—” Ignoring him, Marcus swerved back to the door and targeted the disjointed lock with a powerful, accurately aimed blow of his boot heel. The housemaid’s scream shot through the doorway as the ruined portal swung open. Bursting into the receiving room, Marcus charged toward the bedchamber, where the countess sat in a chair by a small hearth fire. Fully dressed and swathed in ropes of pearls, she stared at him with amused disdain. Breathing heavily, Marcus advanced on her with bloodlust racing through his veins. It was certain that the countess had no idea that she was in mortal danger, or she would not have received him so calmly. “Full of animal spirits today, are we?” she asked. “Your descent from gentleman to savage brute has been accomplished so very quickly. I must offer Miss Bowman my compliments on her efficacy.” “What have you done with her?” “Done with her?” Her expression taunted him with its innocent perplexity. “What the devil do you mean, Westcliff?” “You met with her at Butterfly Court this morning.” “I never walk that far from the manor,” the countess said haughtily. “What a ridiculous asser—” She let out a strident cry as Marcus seized her, his fingers wrapping around the pearl ropes and tightening them around her throat. “Tell me where she is, or I’ll snap your neck like a wishbone!” Simon Hunt seized him from behind once more, determined to prevent a murder from occurring. “Westcliff!” Marcus closed his hand in a harder grip around the pearls. He glared without blinking into his mother’s face, not missing the flicker of vindictive triumph that lurked in her eyes. He did not take his gaze from hers even as he heard his sister Livia’s voice. “Marcus,” she said urgently. “Marcus, listen to me! You have my permission to throttle her later. I’ll even help. But at least wait until we’ve found out what she’s done.” Marcus tightened the tension of the pearls until the elderly woman’s eyes seemed to protrude from their shallow sockets. “Your only value to me,” he said in a low tone, “is your knowledge of Lillian Bowman’s whereabouts. If I can’t obtain that from you, I’ll send you to the devil. Tell me, or I’ll choke it from you. And believe that I have enough of my father in me to do it without a second thought.

IX. THE DESCENT OF CHRIST TO HELL Note: This article attests that Christ descended into hell to proclaim and announce His victory over sin, death, and the devil; not as part of His atonement for the sins of the world. It put an end to the squabbling that had arisen among Lutherans over the meaning of Christ’s descent to hell, and it based its conclusions on one of Luther’s sermons discussing this issue. (See also Apostles’ Creed; Nicene Creed; Athanasian Creed; SA I; SC II; LC II; FC SD IX.) STATUS OF THE CONTROVERSY THE CHIEF CONTROVERSY ABOUT THIS ARTICLE [1] This article has also been disputed among some theologians who have subscribed to the Augsburg Confession: When and in what manner did the Lord Christ, according to our simple Christian faith, descend to hell? Was this done before or after His death? Did this happen only to His soul, only to the divinity, or with body and soul, spiritually or bodily? Does this article belong to Christ’s passion or to His glorious victory and triumph? [2] This article, like the preceding article, cannot be grasped by the senses or by our reason. It must be grasped through faith alone. Therefore, it is our unanimous opinion that there should be no dispute over it. It should be believed and taught only in the simplest way. [3] Teach it like Dr. Luther, of blessed memory, in his sermon at Torgau in the year 1533 [WA 37:62–67]. He has explained this article in a completely Christian way. He separated all useless, unnecessary questions from it, and encouraged all godly Christians to believe with Christian simplicity. [4] It is enough if we know that Christ descended into hell, destroyed hell for all believers, and delivered them from the power of death and of the devil, from eternal condemnation and the jaws of hell. We will save our questions ‹and not curiously investigate› about how this happened until the other world. Then not only this ‹mystery›, but others also will be revealed that we simply believe here and cannot grasp with our blind reason.

My temples are white, my head largely bald. Graceful youth has departed from my face, and my teeth are the loose teeth of an old man. I have few years left of sweet life. Therefore I tremble and fear the underworld, for the lightless chasm of death is dreadful and the descent appalling: once cast down into Hell there is no return.

And thus the descent is at the same time also transformation. The final solitude no longer exists — except for the one who wants it, who rejects love from within and from its foundation, because he seeks only himself, wants to be from and for himself.21

The descent into Hell is easy.

I am not I in myself alone, but only in all others. If, then, anyone is in hell, I too am partly in hell. Happily, however, if the Christian story is true, that love cannot now end in failure or tragedy. The descent into those depths -- where we seek out and find those who are lost, and find our own salvation in so doing -- is not a lonely act of spiritual heroism, or a futile rebellion of our finite wills against a merciless eternity. For the whole substance of Christian faith is the conviction that another has already an decisively gone down into that abyss for us, to set all the prisoners free, even from the chains of their own hatred and despair; and hence the love that has made all of us who we are, and that will continue throughout eternity to do so, cannot ultimately be rejected by anyone. Thus all shall have their share in -- as Gregory [of Nyssa] says in his great mystical commentary On the Song of Songs -- "the redeemed unity of all, united one with another by their convergence upon the One Good." Only thus will humanity "according the the divine image" come into being, and only thus will God be truly all in all.

When I was writing my novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet, I became enthralled by the myth of Orpheus, the greatest poet who was also the greatest singer, the personage in whom song and story became one. You can recount the myth of Orpheus in a hundred words or less: his love for the nymph Eurydice, her pursuit by the beekeeper Aristaeus, the snakebite that killed her, her descent into hell, his pursuit of her beyond the doors of death, his attempt to rescue her, his being granted by the lord of the underworld -- as a reward for the genius of his singing -- the possibility of leading her back to life as long as he didn't look back, and his fatal backward look. And yet when you begin to delve into the story it seems almost inexhaustibly rich, for at its heart is a great triangular tension between the grandest matters of life: love, art and death. You can turn and turn the story and the triangle tells you different things. It tells you that art, inspired by love, can have a greater power than death. It tells you, contrariwise, that death, in spite of art, can defeat the power of love. And it tells you that art alone can make possible the transaction between love and death that is at the centre of all human life.

instead it has Christ with his arms outstretched, in the figure of the cross, standing on the gates of Hades, placed crosswise, raising up Adam and Eve. Although often misleadingly called the ‘Descent into Hell’ or the ‘Harrowing of Hell’, it is not:

In the Christian tradition, Christ is identified with the Logos. The Logos is the Word of God. That Word transformed chaos into order at the beginning of time. In His human form, Christ sacrificed himself voluntarily to the truth, to the good, to God. In consequence, He died and was reborn. The Word that produces order from chaos sacrifices everything, even itself, to God. That single sentence, wise beyond comprehension, sums up Christianity. Every bit of learning is a little death. Every bit of new information challenges a previous conception, forcing it to dissolve into chaos before it can be reborn as something better. Sometimes such deaths virtually destroy us. In such cases, we might never recover or, if we do, we change a lot. A good friend of mine discovered that his wife of decades was having an affair. He didn’t see it coming. It plunged him into a deep depression. He descended into the underworld. He told me, at one point, “I always thought that people who were depressed should just shake it off. I didn’t have any idea what I was talking about.” Eventually, he returned from the depths. In many ways, he’s a new man—and, perhaps, a wiser and better man. He lost forty pounds. He ran a marathon. He travelled to Africa and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. He chose rebirth over descent into Hell.

A loud knock shook her door. Emma damn near jumped off the sofa. Her neck popped as she jerked her head around to stare at the door with wide eyes. Her heart began to slam against her ribs as fear trickled through her. Who the hell would be knocking on her door this late at night? Who the hell would be knocking on her door at any time of day or night? No one she knew would do so without calling first. And deliverymen and women didn’t drop off packages at freaking midnight. As quickly and quietly as a mouse, she darted into her bedroom and grabbed the 9mm her father had bought her and trained her to use. Flicking off the safety, she returned to the living room and swung by the coffee table to tuck her phone in her pajama pants pocket in case she needed to call 911. Only then did she cautiously approach the door. Another knock thundered through the house. Adrenaline spiking, she peered through the door’s peephole. Shock rippled through her. “Oh shit,” she whispered. Setting the gun on the coatrack bench beside her, she hastily unlocked the dead bolt, then the knob, and flung open the door. Cliff stood before her, his big body blocking her view of the yard. Emma gaped up at him. He wore the standard blacks of network guards covered with a long black coat similar to that of an Immortal Guardian. His face, neck, and hands were streaked with blood. His clothing glistened with wet patches. And his eyes shone bright amber. She had never seen them so bright and knew it meant that whatever emotion roiled inside him was intense. Panic consumed her. “Cliff,” she breathed. Stepping onto the porch, she swiftly glanced around, terrified she might see soldiers in black approaching with weapons raised. When none materialized, she grabbed his wrist and yanked him inside. Her hands shook as she closed and bolted the door, her fingers leaving little streaks of blood on the white surface. Spinning around, she stared up at him. “What happened? Are you hurt?” Her gaze swept over him, noting every wet patch on his clothing, every ruby-red splotch on his skin. Was that his blood or someone else’s? “How did you get here? Are you hurt?” Closing the distance between them, she began to run her hands over his chest in search of wounds. Cliff grabbed her wrists to halt her frantic movements. His glowing eyes dropped to the points at which they touched. He drew his thumbs over her skin as if to confirm she was real. Then he met her gaze. “I need your shower,” he said, voice gruff. Heart pounding, she nodded. As soon as he released her, she pointed. “It’s through there.” Without another word, he strode toward it. His heavy boots thudded loudly in the quiet as he entered the short hallway, then turned in to the bathroom. The door closed. Water began to pound tile. Emma didn’t move. Cliff was here. In her home. What the hell had happened?

188 In the Old Testament the word “hell” usually referred to sheol, or the abode of the dead. The Church teaches that after his Crucifixion, Christ preached to the spirits in sheol (1 Pet. 4:6), an event the Apostles’ Creed refers to as Christ’s “descent into hell.” Regarding this event, the Catechism clearly says, “Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him” (CCC 633).

Anyone who believes a word anyone says in bed deserves what she gets.

And in the lowest deep, a lower deep Still threat’ning to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav’n. —JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost

It isn’t the outer battle against so called demons that takes the most courage, but the inward battle against our own demons, our own nature. This path that you take once you decide to put both halves of the divine masculine twin together, is akin to a willing descent into hell. To face your darkest fears, and while you walk this path burn off all the things that don’t serve you any more.

The gates of hell are open night and day. Smooth the descent, and easy is the way. But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labor lies. Virgil

The noise of the rain against our umbrellas hushed for one long breath as we walked beneath the wall. In that moment I thought I heard again the noise of my dreams. The haunting cry of a soul so alone, even being in hell in the company of the other dammed would be a comfort.

It is easy to go down into Hell …; but to climb back again, to retrace one’s steps to the upper air—there’s the rub.… —VIRGIL, Aeneid

The descent into hell is easy

In front of the woman, there was a white ceramic plate with a chunk of bloody meat on top. There was a bloody fork and knife on the right side. Russell's bottom lip quivered from the shocking sight – a woman reduced to a slab of bloodied flesh for a man's sick appetite. He was utterly appalled by the discovery. The descent was never-ending. He was being led to the pits of hell – torture, rape, murder, incest, necrophilia, and cannibalism.

The great design of Jesus' descent into hell is to rouse people out of their deep sleep, to deliver them from sin and death.

So you should continually keep in mind the great humiliation which the Lord took upon Himself in His ineffable love for us: how the divine Logos dwelt in a womb; how He took human nature upon Himself; His birth from a woman; His gradual bodily growth; the shame He suffered, the insults, vilification, ridicule and abuse; how He was scourged and spat upon, derided and mocked; the scarlet robe, the crown of thorns; His condemnation by those in power; the outcry of the unruly Jews, men of His own race, against Him: 'Away with him, away with him, crucify him' (John 19:15); the cross, the nails, the lance, the drink of vinegar and gall; the scorn of the Gentiles; the derision of the passers-by who said: 'If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross and we will believe you' (cf Matt. 27:39-42); and the rest of the sufferings which He patiently accepted for us: crucifixion; death; the three-day burial; the descent into hell.

I don’t know whether to punch you or kiss you.” “A combination of both is usually the best,” Prophet advised. “Might want to wait until later, though.” They were about to start their descent, according to Mitch’s call over the loudspeaker. But Tom gave Prophet a quick, hard slam with his fist to Prophet’s biceps before grabbing his face and yanking him close . . . and kissing the shit out of him. He pinned Prophet against the seat, ground against him . . . both knowing they didn’t have much time before they’d need to be officially seat-belted. A hard, hot grind, and both of them yanked their pants down. He caught their cocks in his hand and stroked them together. Prophet reached down and tweaked one of Tom’s piercings and that was enough to make him shoot. Prophet was right behind him, shuddering, murmuring into Tom’s mouth, since they hadn’t stopped kissing at all. Tom only pulled back slightly to breathe—they remained, foreheads together, panting. Smiling. And he decided that yes, Prophet’s surprises could actually be good for him.

Education means only this- that the lively alert fearless curiosity of children must be fed, must be kept alive. That is education.

For these creatures(humans) are for the most part malevolent and murderous by nature, able to tolerate others only insofar as they resemble themselves, capable of slaughtering each other because of a slight difference in skin colour or appearance. Also, they cannot tolerate those who do not think as they do. Although they know perfectly well, theoretically, that the surface of the inhabited globe is divided into thousands of areas each with it system of religious or scientific belief, and although they know that it is entirely by chance that any individual among them was born into this area or that area, this or that area of belief, this theoretical knowledge does not prevent them from hating foreigners in their own particular small area, and if not harming them, isolating them in every way possible.

The logic of hell is nothing other than the logic of human free will, in so far as this is identical with freedom of choice. The theological argument runs as follows: “God, whose being is love, preserves our human freedom, for freedom is the condition of love. Although God’s love goes, and has gone, to the uttermost, plumbing the depth of hell, the possibility remains for each human being of a final rejection of God, and so of eternal life.” Let us gather some arguments against this logic of hell. The first conclusion, it seems to me, is that it is inhumane, for there are not many people who can enjoy free will where their eternal fate in heaven or hell is concerned. Anyone who faces men and women with the choice of heaven or hell, does not merely expect too much of them. It leaves them in a state of uncertainty, because we cannot base the assurance of our salvation on the shaky ground of our own decision. Is the presupposition of this logic of hell perhaps an illusion—the presupposition that it all depends on the human beings’ free will? The logic of hell seems to me not merely inhumane but also extremely atheistic: here the human being in his freedom of choice is his own lord and god. His own will is his heaven—or his hell. God is merely the accessory who puts that will into effect. If I decide for heaven, God must put me there; if I decide for hell, he has to leave me there. If God has to abide by our free decision, then we can do with him what we like. Is that “the love of God?” Free human beings forge their own happiness and are their own executioners. They do not just dispose over their lives here; they decide on their eternal destinies as well. So they have no need of any God at all. After God has perhaps created us free as we are, he leaves us to our fate. Carried to this ultimate conclusion, the logic of hell is secular humanism, as Feuerbach, Marx and Nietzsche already perceived a long time ago. The Christian doctrine of hell is to be found in the gospel of Christ’s descent into hell. In the crucified Christ we see what hell is, because through him it has been overcome. Judgment is not God’s last word. Judgment established in the world the divine righteousness on which the new creation is to be built. But God’s last word is “Behold I make all things new” (Rev 21: 5). From this no one is excluded. Love is God’s compassion with the lost. Transforming grace is God’s punishment for sinners. It is not the right to choose that defines the reality of human freedom. It is the doing of the good.

The descent into hell can be an exhilarating ride, but it is a one-way trip.

Did it ever occur to you,” Kai said, “how overblown that sounds? Final descent. Poets take a final descent into the hells. Emperors have a final descent from the throne before someone chops off their heads. We’re about to land, which we will presumably survive, to descend again.

what benefit does retaining the clause, He descended into hell, bring to us? In a word, this clause is an essential part of the doctrine of the Christian church as well as the experience of its members. John Calvin spoke of its essential nature for doctrine when he said what this clause asserts in the Apostles’ Creed is “a matter of no small moment in bringing about redemption.” He continued to say that, “a place must be given to it, as it contains the useful and not-to-be-despised mystery of a most important matter.” To those with scruples about this clause, Calvin said, “It will soon be made plain how important it is to the sum of our redemption: if it is left out, much of the benefit of Christ’s death will be lost.”1

In the beginning, there was the earth, formless and empty. Darkness hung over the surface of the deep. And then there was light. It spilled over the waters, vast and powerful, and its creation severed the unity that had come before. This light was a separate entity from the darkness. Something novel and cruelly different. The spirits called it “day.” Its opposite was called “night.” Between them was evening and morning—the First Day. This division marked the end of peace in the universe. Everything has been pretty much fucked up since then.

Without the baggy clothes or oven mitts, she looked less like a cute young housewife and more like something that had crawled out of Hell.

Everything lovely in you for a perpetual companion, so that you'd never be frightened or disappointed or ashamed any more. There are tales that can give you yourself completely and the world could never treat you so badly then that you wouldn't neglect it. One can get everything by listening or looking in the right way: there are all sorts of turns.

And Colton used her, treated her like a muddy little dog.

Facilis descensus Averno," he quoted from Virgil's Aeneid. Ryan found himself answering, by rote, The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labor lies.

but he did not change his purpose, nor did the universe invite him to change. It accepted the choice; no more preventing him than it prevents a child playing with fire or a fool destroying his love. It has not our kindness or our decency; if it is good, its goodness is of another kind than ours.

On June 23 the Detroit Free Press printed Jimmy’s last letter to the editor under the title “Race: The Issue Isn’t Black and White.” This letter said: It is no longer useful to look at the racial climate of this country only in terms of black and white. People from more than 100 ethnic groups live here. By 2040 European Americans and African Americans will be among the many minorities who make up the United States. Blacks in Detroit are a majority; they need to stop thinking like a minority or like victims. Both African Americans and European Americans should be thinking of how to integrate with Detroiters of Latino and Arab descent. To the very end Jimmy was striking out at two of his favorite targets: racial (or what he called biological) thinking, and blacks viewing themselves as a minority. When Ossie and Ruby stopped by to see us in June, he met them at the door with a three-page memo suggesting things for them to work on. The next week Ruby sent him a big batch of rich dark gingerbread that she had baked. A few weeks before his death he called Clementine to alert her to the killing of children that was going on in Liberia and to instruct her how to intervene. A few days later he spoke at a Detroit Summer gathering. The next day he went out with a friend (without his oxygen tank) to supervise the moving of a refrigerator. The week before he died he did a two-hour interview with a local radio reporter. Up to two days before his death, he was grooming himself as carefully as always. Then, suddenly on Tuesday night, July 20, he began to stumble, sat down in a bedroom chair, and never got up or spoke again. I was all alone and wasn’t sure what I should do. There didn’t seem to be any point in calling anybody. So I kept stroking him and saying to him over and over: You are a helluva guy. You raised a whole lot of hell—and a helluva lot of questions. You made a helluva lot of friends—and a helluva lot of enemies. You had a helluva lot of ideas— And wrote a helluva lot of books and pamphlets. You made a helluva lot of difference to a helluva lot of people.

Heaven entails hell, and ‘going to heaven’ is no more liberation than is the descent into horror. Heaven is merely a vantage point from which the divine Ground can be more clearly seen than on the level of ordinary individualized existence.

FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNI. It means ‘Shadowhunters: Looking Better in Black Than the Widows of our Enemies Since 1234' It means, said Jeremiah, The descent into Hell is easy.

a disciplined team can slow down the pace of its descent toward monolithic hell. Team members can work hard to maintain the modularity of their application. They can write comprehensive automated tests. On the other hand, they can’t avoid the issues of a large team working on a single monolithic application. Nor can they solve the problem of an increasingly obsolete technology stack. The best a team can do is delay the inevitable.

Christ reaches to all people everywhere in all time, space, heaven, and hell.

This world is not heaven, but it doesn't have to be hell.

diurnal death can be a nightly descent into a very private hell. We spoke

We began this book with a passage from Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, in which we accompanied Antisthenes in his descent to Hades. We now conclude this chapter with yet another passage from Lucian, in which we find Antisthenes already in Hades. Antisthenes, Diogenes, and other Cynics, Lucian tells us, persist in doing in the underworld exactly what they did while in this physical world, namely, raising hell about whatever they saw and heard. That and only that is what they are still doing after death, in fact, in so loud and harsh a fashion that those whose fate has been to share with them the same place in Hades beg the gods of the underworld to segregate the Cynics to some remote comer where their shouting cannot be heard. The gods, however, ignore this request, because they know that an important component of the punishment for those who passed their time on earth seeking pleasure, amassing fortunes, exploiting the weak and the poor, confusing people through deceptive language, and in other subhuman forms of behavior, is that they need to be reminded of how empty their lives were on earth. The Cynics wait at the gates of Hades for new arrivals, men and women who, while alive, turned themselves into less than human creatures and who now are about to suffer the unhappy consequences of their actions. As Diogenes invites Antisthenes to rush with him to the gates because new arrivals are entering, Antisthenes remarks: Let us be off at once, Diogenes, for, indeed, the spectacle will surely be an amusing one-to see them weeping and lamenting, and some begging to be let go, and some making their entrance with reluctance, and, regardless of how hard Hermes pushes them in, resisting and struggling, but all to no purpose.

Hushabye baby lulled by the storm if you don’t harm her she’ll do you no harm

A hundred years of scholarly thinking has stretched back a millionfold the age of the earth. But these same divines, antiquarians and scholars are thinking now as they did a hundred years ago, when it comes to the age of civilisations; they can’t even begin to concede that civilisations might have very old histories.

SLEEP, for you are not yet dead.

We sleep our lives away.

Yet within a few minutes of waking, that country of dream has gone, its taste and reality has drained away into ordinary life. All you have left is an intellectual conviction held in a set of words. You want to remember. You try to remember. You have a set of words to offer your friend, or repeat to yourself. But the reality has gone, evaporated.

...our society was dominated by things, artefacts, possessions, machines, objects, and that we judged previous societies by artefacts—things. There was no way of knowing an ancient society’s ideas except through the barrier of our own.

It is only in love and in war that we escape from the sleep of necessity, the cage of ordinary life, to a state where every day is a high adventure, every moment falls sharp and clear like a snowflake drifting slowly past a dark glistening rock, or like a leaf spinning down to the forest floor.

the next destination in our descent into hell. The days pass with the relentless march of time. We can’t stop it, slow it, or reverse it. Minutes last hours, hours last days, and the world no longer makes sense. With only suffocating darkness to pass the time, I lose more and more of my sanity with each passing day.

Passion is a downward inclination and tendency, and thus God says, “by the star when it declines,”¹⁴ that is, “when it descends.” It is also said that this verse refers to the return of the Prophet, upon whom be peace, from his ascension, and his descent to the lower from the higher world. This downward inclination and tendency is a property of water and earth. Anger, by contrast, is self-exaltation, arrogance, and dominance, these being the attributes of wind and fire. The two essential attributes of passion and anger are, then, inherited by the soul from its mother. They are also the substance of which hellfire is made and from them are derived the degrees of hell. Nonetheless, they must of necessity be present in the soul so that through passion it may attract benefit and through anger repel harm. Thus its being survives and is nurtured in the world of generation and corruption.

If I'm going to Hell, I might as well have a good time on my descent.

It means, said Jeremiah, The descent into Hell is easy.

I honestly, perhaps guilelessly believe that the doctrine of eternal hell is prima facie nonsensical, for the simple reason that it cannot even be stated in Christian theological terms without a descent into equivocity so precipitous and total that nothing but edifying gibberish remains.

In the end however, a voluntary descent into the realm of chaos is risky even if we arm ourselves with tools that can make navigation of this realm easier. So knowing that a radical personality change is possible and that a sacrifice may engender a psychological rebirth, do we make the leap, or do we instead stick to the less risky approach of the gradualist method of change? This is a question each of us must face for ourselves. But if we are already trapped in our own personal hell, the question that may be more appropriate is whether not making the sacrifice is perhaps the greater risk? For the realm of chaos is not only entered by means of a voluntary sacrifice. More typical is an involuntary descent into these depths. If we persist in our dysfunctional ways, if we remain in the words of Jung an “immovable pillar of the past” then eventually the fragile order of our life may give way to chaos whether we like it or not. A sacrifice of our old ways will be forced upon us, but an involuntary sacrifice is, according to Jung, an “unmitigated catastrophe”; it is more likely to result in a psychological breakdown than a psychological rebirth. Therefore, if we feel our life is moving in this direction, if chaos and disorder are already creeping in, we may want to take control of the process and make the voluntarily sacrifice that may save us from a more dire outcome.

He clung to flying twigs and underbrush to steady his uncertain descent, his bruised hip aching when he slipped.

ONE DISCOVERY It is easy to go down into Hell …; but to climb back again, to retrace one’s steps to the upper air—there’s the rub.… —VIRGIL, Aeneid

It tasted like ass, and Rick knew ass. They considered human anuses to be a gourmet treat in Hell.

The horror equivalent of the Hero’s Journey: some Poor Bastard’s Descent into Hell.

Implicit in Torres's statement, and worked out in great detail by many contextual theologians is, third, an emphasis on commitment as “the first act of theology” (Torres and Fabella 1978:269)—more specifically, commitment to the poor and marginalized. The point of departure is therefore orthopraxis, not orthodoxy. Orthopraxis, says Lamb, aims at transforming human history, redeeming it through a knowledge born of subject-empowering, life-giving love, which heals the biases needlessly victimizing millions of our brothers and sisters. Vox victimarum vox Dei. The cries of the victims are the voice of God. To the extent that those cries are not heard above the din of our political, cultural, economic, social, and ecclesial celebrations or bickerings, we have already begun a descent into hell (1982:22f).

I always had a tender heart for the afflicted and especially those suffering in like manner, or the drug victims, of which there are over sixty thousand in Chicago—opium, morphine, laudanum, cocaine, chloral, hasheesh, etc. They are not alone in the slums, but you will find them in the palatial homes of our fair city, and the only institution that is holding out a helping hand is The St. Luke Society, where hundreds have been cured and both the slum and palace homes made happy.

In 1894, while attending to some legal matters, my lawyer, who noticed that I was suffering from a severe cold, advised me to try Birney’s Catarrh Remedy. He gave me a bottle and that started me on my downward course. From a well-balanced Christian woman, I became a haggard and wretched physical and mental wreck.

These and other incidents only go to show that drug fiends have a sort of superhuman smartness in evading the detection of crime.

I never used any other drug but the clear cocaine and I believe that I am the only living person in the world to-day who ever took two hundred grains in twenty-four hours and survived.” Annie C. Meyers The autobiographical Eight Years in Cocaine Hell (1902) recounts in shockingly straightforward style the transformation of Annie C. Meyers, affluent and well-connected Chicago widow, to junkie, thief, forger, inventor of the ‘Cocaine Dance’, and ultimately authoress of the first drug confessional written by a woman.

Her book established a literary genre, and her case helped to outlaw cocaine.” Stuart Walton, Intoxicology

The victims of these drug and liquor habits need care and sympathy and should be gathered into such places as The St. Luke Society, of which I shall speak more further on, instead of sending them to the Bridewell, or jails where they are hardened and every good impulse is soon forgotten.

The moon was bright; he stood at the edge of his own skull’s platform; desire to hate and desire not to hate struggled in him. In the moonlight, visible, audible, arm in arm, talking and laughing, they came. He saw them pass; his eyes grew blind. Presently he turned and went home. That night when at last he slept he dreamed, more clearly than ever before, of his steady descent of the moon-bright rope.

It means, said Jeremiah, “The descent into Hell is easy.

To such ignorance of God and His divine commandments were they brought down who were begotten of dust from the man of dust, that the honor which they ought to have rendered to God they gave instead to this visible creation, and not just to earth and sky and sun, moon and stars, fire and water and the rest, but they even made gods of those shameful passions themselves which ought not even to be imagined, let alone practiced, and which God had forbidden them. These they set up and – O, the shamelessness! – worshipped as gods. What were they? Fornication, adultery, homosexuality, murder, and whatever else is similar which, not God – away with the blasphemy! – but the devil enjoins and suggests and approves, by which the whole race of mankind was and is enslaved, by which the devil has made and makes us his slaves and subject to his control. Whence, even if there were someone among those thousands and tens of thousands who had not stooped to these shameful ordinances and precepts, since he, too, because of his descent from the seed of those who had sinned, was yet a slave of the tyrant, death, he would also be given over to its corruption and sent without mercy to hell. There was no one, you see, who was able to save and redeem him. For this very reason, therefore, God the Word Who had made us had pity on us and came down.

John Calvin writes, in one of the best paragraphs you’ll ever read, “We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ [Acts 4:12]. We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else. If we seek salvation we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is ‘of him’ [1 Cor. 1:30]. If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in his anointing. If we seek strength, it lies in his dominion; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth. For by his birth he was made like us in all respects [Heb. 2:17] that he might learn to feel our pain [cf. Heb. 5:2]. If we seek redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross [Gal. 3:13]; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment, in the power given to him to judge. In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain and from no other” (Institutes 2.16.19).

There is thus a twofold restriction put upon pure truth: on the one hand an aspect of the truth is invested with the character of integral truth, and on the other hand an absolute character is attributed to the relative. Furthermore this standpoint of expediency carries with it the negation of all those things which, being neither accessible nor indispensable to everyone indiscriminately, lie for that reason beyond the purview of the theological perspective and must be left outside it—hence the simplifications and symbolical syntheses peculiar to every exoterism. Lastly, we may also mention, as a particularly striking feature of these doctrines, the identification of historical facts with principial truths and the inevitable confusions resulting therefrom. For example, when it is said that all human souls, from that of Adam to the departed souls of Christ’s own contemporaries, must await his descent into hell in order to be delivered, such a statement confuses the historical with the cosmic Christ and represents an eternal function of the Word as a temporal fact for the simple reason that Jesus was a manifestation of this Word, which is another way of saying that in the world where this manifestation took place, Jesus was truly the unique incarnation of the Word. Another example may be found in the divergent views of Christianity and Islam on the subject of the death of Christ: apart from the fact that the Koran, by its apparent denial of Christ’s death, is simply affirming that Christ was not killed in reality— which is obvious not only as regards the divine nature of the God- Man, but also as regards his human nature, since it was resurrected—the refusal of Muslims to admit the historical Redemption, and consequently the facts that are the unique terrestrial expression of universal Redemption as far as Christian humanity is concerned, simply denotes that in the final analysis Christ did not die for those who are “whole”, who in this case are the Muslims insofar as they benefit from another terrestrial form of the one and eternal Redemption. In other words, if it is true in principle that Christ died for all men—in the same way that the Islamic Revelation is principally addressed to everyone—in fact he died only for those who must and do benefit from the means of grace that perpetuate his work of Redemption; hence the traditional distance separating Islam from the Christian Mystery is bound to appear exoterically in the form of a denial, exactly in the same way that Christian exoterism must deny the possibility of salvation outside the Redemption brought about by Jesus. However that may be, although a religious perspective may be contested ab extra, that is to say, in the light of another religious perspective deriving from a different aspect of the same truth, it remains incontestable ab intra inasmuch as its capacity to serve as a means of expressing the total truth makes of it a key to that truth. Moreover it must never be forgotten that the restrictions inherent in the dogmatist point of view express in their own way the divine Goodness, which wishes to prevent men from going astray and which gives them what is accessible and indispensable to everyone, having regard to the mental predispositions of the human collectivity concerned.

He needn’t have worried. ‘Before long I found myself swimming like a parcel of Escher lizards through the lines of a purple jigsaw of increasing and then decreasing size. “What the hell’s going on?” I asked, crying with laughter. “You’re tripping,” said Joan, with a new vocabulary already. Tripping? Me? … “Are you tripping?” I asked Joan. She nodded lovingly. “We all are,” George said. “Everyone is.”’ As the effects of the double dose peaked, it proved too much for Taylor, who was assailed by disturbing visions and dark thoughts. Harrison, with enough experience to spot the warning signs, and the calmness – despite tripping himself – to provide reassurance, talked Taylor back from his descent into misery. ‘Derek, create and preserve the image of your choice,’ Harrison told him. ‘It’s up to you. The thing is to see what you want to see. Do you want to create something nice? Then look into the fire and see something nice.’ The intervention worked, and much of the remainder of Taylor’s trip was filled with talking, laughter and visions. He and Joan bonded over the shared experience, and led a singalong on Epstein’s grand piano. Late into the night Taylor was cornered by Harrison, who reiterated his words of wisdom: ‘Derek, I love ya. I just want you to know that. I love ya and it’s going to be OK. Create and preserve the image of your choice. Don’t forget, Derek. Gandhi said that. Pick your own trips.

Before leaving the city I purchased $75 worth of cocaine. Had the whole police force been at my back I would not have left the city until I had my cocaine.

Cocaine gives an exhilarating feeling, brightens up the intellect for the time being, and makes one very fluent in conversation. I am informed that a great many of our speakers use cocaine before they step on the platform, and many of our best writers do their best work while under the influence of the drug. It is commonly reported that Edgar Allan Poe was an opium eater, and Dante’s Inferno was written while under its influence.

Cocaine has only been used about twenty years and has made more wrecks and caused more havoc than all the other drugs combined, as it is the only drug that will soften the bones and eat the flesh. It is worse than leprosy and many thought I had leprosy, as the bones were coming out and I lost my teeth and part of my jaw bone while using it.

While patent medicines are largely responsible for the increase of these pernicious habits, reputable physicians are not by any means free from blame. Most of them are altogether too ready to prescribe them for the relief of pain, even when it is but a slight twinge, and the habit of flying to this temporary relief soon be comes confirmed and cannot be shaken off. It was indeed recently asserted in an eastern paper that a large number of physicians are victims themselves to the cocaine and morphine habit. A large percentage of the patients treated at The St. Luke Society are physicians in good standing.

Eight Years in Cocaine Hell was published in 1902 and is viewed by historians as the first memoir of addiction to be written by a woman.

found her lying on the bed, turned over on her face, frothing at the mouth and in spasms. I sent for Doctor Rittenhouse. He came and said, ‘she has taken some deadly poison.’ He administered all the aid in his power, but thinking the case hopeless, made out a death certificate, so that I would not have any trouble, and she lay in this condition one week before she recognized me.

So, if we cling on to life so hard and value it so much, how deep do depression and despair have to drag someone before they reach a place where they can’t bear to go on? It must have been a slow descent into hell that my mother endured before she could bear it no longer

He chose rebirth over descent into Hell.

When one dies they neither ascend to the heavens nor descent to hell, they instead become cured—freed from an illness and healed from the suffering of mortality.

The descent became more steep. Yadiel’s hope faded. He leaned over to see out the window. He wasn’t sure why. No one can ever prepare you for how it all goes; the strangeness of it all. “¿Lio?” Lio looked at him. “Yeah?” “Let’s try to hang out in Hell.

There was something devious yet playful in his eyes, like he’d make your descent into hell the most fun you ever had.

Virgil, ‘Facilis est descensus Averno’ – ‘easy is the descent into Hell’.

They [humans] have not yet evolved into an understanding of their individual selves as merely parts of a whole, first of all humanity, their own species, let alone achieving a conscious knowledge of humanity as part of Nature; plants, animals, birds, insects, reptiles, all these together making a small chord in the Cosmic Harmony.

For God’s sake, tell me this thing happened,” LBJ told Bundy that night, “because I have scheduled a speech to say it happened, I have told the Congress I am going to go after a resolution, and if I cancel this speech, the press is going to say, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ So I sure as hell hope this is right.” “The Lyndon Johnson pressure to get the answer ‘Yes, it happened’ was on very heavy,” recalled Bundy.93 As noted earlier, it is rarely possible to have all of the facts. We live in a world of considerable complexity and uncertainty, and we simply don’t have the time or capacity to calculate all of the probabilities and risks inherent in every choice. Cornell University’s Thomas Gilovich has explained this dilemma. “Instead of providing us with clear information that would enable us to ‘know’ better,” notes Gilovich, the world “presents us with messy data that are random, incomplete, unrepresentative, ambiguous, inconsistent, unpalatable, or secondhand . . . It is often our flawed attempts to cope with precisely these difficulties that lay bare our inferential shortcomings

I'd take your hand and dance with you till the coals of hell burned my heels and crumbled my bones to ash.

We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ. . . . If we seek strength, it lies in his dominion; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth. . . . If we seek redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment, in the power given to him to judge. In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other.9

We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ. We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else. If we seek salvation we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is “of him." If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in his anointing. If we seek strength, it lies in his dominion; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth. For by his birth he was made like us in all respects that he might learn to feel our pain. If we seek redemption, it lies in his passion: if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment, in the power given to him to judge. In short, since rich store of every good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other.