Hermes in the sky
We spend time with the trickster Hermes, bringing along Alec Guinness reading from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, some genuine music from Ancient Greece, Joseph Campbell talking about Sacred Space, Leonard Cohen taking us “A Thousand Kisses Deep”, Robert Bly’s tricksy poetry, Mike Scott and the Waterboys singing “Open”, the password to the Hermes Field, and a little digression with a story about the origins of Evening under Lamplight, which surely came to me as a Hermes message. You are invited to attend.
Jurgen, pleased with himself
Mother Sereda, bleaching out the colour, and beauty, and strangeness of all things
Wednesday: the middle of the week, suggesting all kinds of middleness, and messiness, and incompleteness, and also featuring the story of Jurgen (pictured) who through the gift of Mother Sereda, Guardian of Wednesday (pictured), who bleaches all things drab, regained his youth for one Wednesday, twenty years earlier, and the delights and disappointments he experienced there. (Stuck in the middle with you, where Mama told me not to come.) You are invited to attend.
We come now with Dante and Virgil to the very centre of Hell, and, after encountering a cannibal and a zombie, we confront the Rex Inferni, the King of Hell, in all his gruesome idiocy. And then we pivot and climb out of there. Thus we end Series 4 of Evening under Lamplight, inviting you to attend, and thanking you for coming along this journey with us.
Dante takes us to the transitional place between simple Fraud and the more complex Fraud of treachery and betrayal. There are frightening giants here, and somehow Dante and Virgil have to negotiate their way. And we too negotiate our way, together, attending to Dante’s Inferno and much else. You are invited to attend.
We come to the Valley of Disease, the pit of the worst kinds of falsifiers: “modifiers” of the material of the world, impersonators, counterfeiters, perjurers, each with their own appropriate disease. It’s pretty awful, but we attend with our usual good cheer, and interruptions from the Kinks, Firesign Theatre, Fraggle Rock, and others. You are invited to attend.
Dante gives us the bloodiest episode yet, but we handle it gracefully, and examine what happens to those who promote divisions and factions and all kinds of splits in society – both in the past and, of course, in our present world. A variety of music from Martha and the Vandellas, Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, Leonard Cohen, Snatam Kaur, Frank Zappa, and Simon and Garfunkle. You are invited to attend.
You are invited to attend with us to Dante’s images of flattery, and related subjects, such as bluffing (bull), and alternative facts, and fake news. (Also fake orgasms – another form of flattery.) And warning: Dante brings us some disgusting imagery this time.
“There was a wicked messenger” – lots of wicked messengers, and Dante shows what becomes of them in Hell, and all those prophets who are out to make a profit. You are invited to attend and join us in this week’s episode.
Dante and Virgil come to a new section of fraud, and hear the story of the death of Ulysses, who could not settle into retirement, and the story of the famous general Guido da Montefeltro, the fraudster who was befrauded by a fraudulent pope, and at whose death a devil came and snatched him from out of the hands of St Francis, dragging him into Hell. Why? Come along and find out. There’s also a bit of Montaigne, and Tennyson, and a famous chapter from Primo Levi. You are invited to attend.
Shape-shifting with thieves and serpents, as Dante looks on in horror – but also brags about his superlative poetic talent, able to describe things never before attempted. You are invited to attend the latest episode of Evening under Lamplight.
