These Be Brave Spirits Indeed

On Spirit and the Imagination VII (Concludit)

Galla Placidia Mausoleum, Ravenna

We have emerged from October, from the katabasis of All Hallow’s Eve, hopefully wiser but unscathed, or at least intact. It is a dangerous thing to descend, since, after all, we might either bring back with us some needed knowledge to get home, like Odysseus in Book XI of Odyssey, or some shadowed oracle we misinterpret as our good to our own ill, as “oftentimes, to win us to our harm / The instruments of darkness tell us truths” (Macbeth I.3.135-136). Whatever the case, we come now to All Saints’ Day, which is a day in turn of anabasis. And there, I will contend, we find as many dangers as opportunities too, such that to contemplate heaven aright requires a certain degree of parrhesia.