Dante Alighieri was a 14th century, exiled Italian politician who wrote a poem that terrifies us
to this day. It is called The Divine Comedy, but we know its first section best: Inferno.
On the surface, it is a tour of the Christian afterlife—a journey down through the nine circles
of Hell to see how sinners are punished. But if you strip away the medieval theology, you realize
that Dante wasn't just mapping the afterlife; he was mapping the geography of human suffering.
Dante begins his story not in Hell, but in a "Dark Wood." He writes:
"Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark,
for the straightforward pathway had been lost." This is the psychological state we have all felt.
The anxiety. The depression. The moment you wake up and realize you don’t know who you
are or where you are going. To get out of this dark wood, Dante can’t climb up the mountain of
happiness directly. He has to go down. He has to face the darkest parts of himself first.
So hell isn’t a place you go when you die. It’s a headspace. Right now, many of us are walking
through Dante’s circles without even knowing it. We build these infernos within our own minds—brick
by brick, habit by habit—eventually mistaking our cage for normal life.
So, let’s descend. Here are the 9 Circles of "Mental Hell" that
you might be creating for yourself, and how to climb your way back to the stars.
The Upper Hell: Sins of Incontinence The first layers of Dante’s Hell aren't
for "evil" people. They are for what he called “the sins of Incontinence” - where your passions
override your reason. Circle 1: Limbo
When Dante enters this first circle, he expects to hear screaming. Instead,
he finds a noble castle surrounded by seven high walls. Inside, he sees the
absolute elite of human intelligence: Homer the poet, and the philosophers Socrates, and Plato.
And they’re not being tortured or anything. They are simply walking slowly,
carrying themselves with a somber dignity in a dim, grayish light. Their punishment
is Poena Damni—the Pain of Loss. They live in a permanent state of "longing without hope."
They represent the limit of human reason without spiritual action—trapped in the
"Golden Cage" of the intellect. This is the trap of Intellectualization. These men treated life as
a puzzle to be solved rather than a mystery to be lived, analyzing virtue from a safe distance
without ever being vulnerable enough to practice it. They are the "Perfect Observers"—knowing
the definition of everything, but the taste of nothing. They stand eternally on the sidelines,
experts of a game they are too afraid to play. In the modern world, this is the Hell for someone
who spends months researching the perfect workout routine but never actually steps foot in a gym.
It is the person who has a perfect checklist for a partner but refuses to be vulnerable enough to go
on a date. It is the viewer watching endless hours of travel vlogs, but too afraid to book a ticket.
It is the safe, "rational" path. But it leads to a gray existence where you analyze life on paper but
feel nothing in your heart. The lesson is that you can be the smartest person in the room, but if you
never leave the castle and find something bigger, you are just as dead as the sinners in the fire.
Circle 2: Lust Dante descends into the
Second Circle. The silence of Limbo is shattered by a roaring, chaotic sound like a hurricane.
The air is black and moving violently. Dante sees thousands of souls being whipped around the sky,
blasted up, down, and sideways by a "Hellish Hurricane" that never stops.
He speaks to Paolo and Francesca, two lovers caught in the wind. But do not be fooled by
the romance. They were adulterers. Francesca was married to Paolo's own brother. They were
betraying their family for a stolen moment. Francesca explains that they were reading a
romance novel, lost control, and in that moment of surrendered reason,
they were caught by her husband—and slaughtered. The punishment is a literal manifestation of
their internal state. In life, they let their fluctuating emotions blow
them around like leaves. They said, "I can't help it, I'm, I'm swept away by passion." So,
in Hell, they are swept away forever. They have no footing. They have no anchor.
In Dante’s psychology, lust is the Surrender of Agency to Impulse. People often view themselves
as victims of circumstance: "I couldn't help it," or "The vibe was just there." Francesca
blames "Love" and the book she was reading, refusing to take responsibility for her own mind.
We see this hurricane today in the person who destroys a stable, ten-year family because they
got bored and craved the chemical high of a new affair. It is the entrepreneur who starts five
businesses but finishes none, because the 'excitement' faded and the work got hard.
You are whipped around by the wind of 'Newness.' You are constantly chasing the high of the spark,
but you never stay long enough to build the fire. The lesson is clear: If you do
not anchor yourself with discipline, your own feelings will blow you away.
Circle 3: Gluttony The howling wind of Lust vanishes,
replaced by a heavy, suffocating silence broken only by the sound of freezing rain.
The air is thick with a disgusting mix of black snow, hail, and dirty water. The ground has
turned into a deep, stinking slush. Here, the souls are not flying;
they are drowning in the mud. Standing over them is Cerberus, the monstrous three-headed dog,
barking and clawing at the sinners, representing a hunger that can never be satisfied.
Notice the shift in temperature. Lust was "Hot"—it was active, fiery energy. But Gluttony,
well that’s "Cold." It is freezing, damp, and heavy. This is the geography of Addiction.
Gluttony is the attempt to fill a spiritual void with material things. The Glutton tries
to "eat" the world to feel whole. But because material things that’s food,
drugs, and digital content—cannot satisfy a spiritual hunger, the soul
must consume more and more just to feel "okay." The cold rain represents the ultimate isolation of
the addict. Addiction might start as a party, but it ends with you alone, paralyzed in the filth,
indistinguishable from the sludge around you. It always begins innocently. You drink with
friends, you binge-watch shows to bond, you eat to celebrate. The "High" is active and
shared. It tricks you into thinking you are having a good time. But as the hunger grows,
the other people disappear. You stop drinking to be social; and instead you start to drink to
cope. You stop watching TV with family; and you stay up until 3 AM alone because you can't sleep.
Gluttony erases your individuality; you stop being a person with dreams and become a "mouth" that
just needs to be fed—not for nourishment, but for anesthesia. Dante describes this state not as a
life, but as a coma. You slowly sink into the mud of your own comforts, trapped by the very things
you thought would save you. Circle 4: Greed
Dante enters the Fourth Circle and sees that place is crowded and violent. Thousands of
souls are split into two groups. Each person is pushing a massive stone with their chest.
The stones are heavy and round, meant to be gold. They push in opposite directions along a curved
path. When the two groups meet, the stones slam together. The people crash into each
other and start yelling. One side shouts, “Why do you hoard?” The other shouts back,
“Why do you waste?” Then they turn around and push again. It never stops.
This circle punishes two behaviors: hoarding and wasting. Dante puts them together because
they come from the same problem—obsession with money. One clings to it. The other burns through
it. Different actions, same mindset. The Hoarder acts out of scarcity,
terrified to spend a dime. Whereas the Waster acts out of insecurity, terrified to be seen without
status. They are trapped in a Zero-Sum Game, literally fighting each other and blaming the
"other side" for their misery. They never realize that the problem isn't the other people—it’s the
heavy rock they have chosen to push. Today, this is the "Rat Race" where
you work 80 hours a week to make a number go up on a screen—this is Hoarding—or you buy things
you can't afford to impress people you don't like—this is Wasting. Dante notes that these
souls are so consumed by their obsession that they are "unrecognizable." They have no faces.
This is the ultimate price of greed. You lose your identity. You become your net worth,
your car, your zip code. You just become another faceless worker pushing a rock, confusing your
"standard of living" with your "quality of life." The lesson here is simple: Money is an excellent
servant, but a terrible master. If your identity is tied to what you have rather than who you are,
you have already lost. Circle 5: Anger
Dante arrives at the River Styx but it isn't a river; it’s a stagnant,
black swamp. The punishment here is split into two layers, showing the two faces of Rage.
Above the surface, the Wrathful. They are naked, covered in slime, tearing each other apart with
their teeth and fists in a chaotic, endless brawl. But the true horror lies beneath. Completely
submerged in the slime are the Sullen. They are invisible; their presence is known only
by the bubbles rising to the surface as they choke on the mud. As they gargle, they recite
a terrifying confession: "We were sullen in the sweet air... now we lie sullen in the black mire."
The trap is thinking one is better than the other. The screamer thinks he is strong;
the silent brooder thinks he is noble. But both are drowning in the same filth.
We see the Wrathful everywhere—in the screaming arguments online and the road rage, the constant
need to find fault. But we also see the Sullen—the people who say “I’m fine” while resentment
quietly shapes every decision they make. Anger doesn’t punish the person you’re mad
at. It punishes you. Expressed without control, it turns you violent. Buried without release,
it turns you hollow. And the either way, you sink. The Lower Hell: Sins of Malice
Dante crosses the swamp and enters the iron walls of the City of Dis. We leave behind the
sins of weakness and enter the sins of the Intellect—people who used their God-given
reason to choose evil. Circle 6: Heresy
Inside the city gates, Dante finds a vast, eerie cemetery. Hundreds of stone tombs stand with their
heavy lids propped open, glowing red-hot. From one of these tombs rises Farinata,
a proud politician. Even while burning from the waist down, he maintains an air of immense
arrogance. He ignores the flames to argue with Dante about politics, lineage, and the outcome of
a war that ended years ago. He is obsessed with "winning" an argument that no longer matters.
The punishment is the Burning Tomb. The fire represents their fanaticism; the stone
represents the rigidity of their thinking. The tragedy is that the lid of the tomb is
open. Farinata could look up at the stars; he could climb out. But he chooses to look
only at his enemy. He is literally too proud to leave his own hell.
Psychologically, this is the political fanatic who views every disagreement
as a war. It is the intellectual egoist who falls in love with their own intelligence and
surrounds themselves only with people who agree. If you cannot listen to opposing views, or if you
would rather be "right" and miserable than "wrong" and free, you are standing in Circle 6 my friend.
You are burning to death inside the coffin of your own opinions, trapped by a lid that you
are holding down yourself. Circle 7: Violence
Dante enters the Circle of Violence, which is divided into three concentric rings. This
circle maps the three directions in which human aggression can flow: outward, inward,
and against the nature of reality itself. Ring 1: Violence Against Others
Here, murderers and tyrants boil in a river of boiling blood. The psychological justice
is brutal: if you live by blood, you drown in it. This represents a person who creates a toxic
environment at home or at work, thinking that they are asserting dominance. Dante shows the truth:
eventually, the toxicity rises above your own neck. You drown in the chaos you created.
Ring 2: Violence Against Self Dante crosses the river and enters
a forest. But there are no leaves, only black, thorny branches. He snaps a twig,
and the tree screams, bleeding dark sap. These are the souls who rejected their bodies,
so they are rooted to the spot as plants. They are constantly eaten by
Harpies—mythological bird-women who represent the Inner Critic. This is the Hell of Self-Sabotage.
Self-hatred paralyzes you. You root yourself in the past, unable to move. You let the voice
in your head, the Harpy, tear at your self-esteem, eating your potential. Dante notes a heartbreaking
detail: these trees can only speak when they are broken. This is the tragic state
of depression where a person can’t communicate their needs unless they are bleeding or in
crisis—using pain as their only voice. Ring 3: Violence Against Nature
Finally, Dante reaches a sterile desert of red sand where fire rains from the sky. Nothing
grows here. This represents the "Sterility" of violence and here lie two types of sinners
relevant to us: Blasphemers and Usurers. The Blasphemer represents the Hell of
Entitlement. This is the chronic Victim, cursing the universe for their misfortunes,
refusing to accept the reality of their situation. Instead of adapting to reality,
they rage against it, burning energy on "what should be" rather than working with "what is."
The Usurer represents the Hell of Commodification. Dante warns us that when you obsess over the
reward rather than the work, you lose your face. You stop being a person and become a
walking résumé—defined not by your character, but by the logo on your shirt and the number
in your bank account. Circle 8: Fraud
Dante arrives at the Malebolge, The Evil Ditches, a massive stone amphitheater
divided into ten deep trenches. This is the Circle of Fraud. Fraud requires human
intellect. It is the specific act of using your God-given reason to trap and deceive others.
Dante describes ten different trenches of fraud here—ranging from sorcery to
political corruption—but three of them are particularly dangerous for us today.
First is the trench of The Flatterers. Here, Dante sees souls wading in a river of human
excrement. The stench is unbearable. These are the Flatterers. In life, they filled the world
with fake compliments and self-serving lies to manipulate powerful people, so in Hell,
they are forced to wallow in it for eternity. Think of the classic corporate "Yes-Man" or
the internet "Clout Chaser" who only says what they say in order to get a
specific outcome - Whether they agree with or even believe what they say is secondary
to getting what they want. They willingly degrade themselves, complimenting people
they hate just to get access they don't deserve. So Dante is telling us that when you speak words
you don't mean just to please others, you aren't being "polite"—you are polluting your own soul.
Second is the trench of The Hypocrites - In this trench, Dante sees a long line of people
moving slowly forward at a crawl. Each one wears a bright, golden cloak that shines in
the dark. But their heads are down. Their steps are short and forced. And when he looks closer,
he understands why. The cloaks aren’t really gold. They’re lined with lead.
Incredibly heavy metal. Every step takes more and more effort. Some can barely stay upright.
This is the punishment for false appearances. These are the people who built a polished image
for the world: Perfect relationships. Perfect careers. Perfect lives on display. Everything
looking successful from the outside. But keeping that image intact took constant effort. Lies
stacked on top of more lies. Pressure that never let up. The outside still looks impressive,
but the inside is unbearable. The more convincing the image, the heavier the burden. What was meant
to impress others now slows them down and breaks them. Pretending costs more than people think.
A life built on appearances doesn’t collapse all at once—it grinds you down step by step,
until even moving forward feels impossible. The third trench of note is the trench of The
False Counselors. Finally, Dante looks down into a dark valley lit by thousands of flickering flames,
like fireflies. But inside each flame is a soul, burning. He meets Ulysses from Homer’s
Odyssey trapped inside a "Tongue of Fire." Why? Because he used his "silver tongue"
to trick his men into a journey that killed them, just to satisfy his own curiosity. This
is the Hell of the Charismatic Manipulator. These are the fake gurus, the scam artists,
and the demagogues. They have weaponized their intelligence.
They use their brilliance not to enlighten others, but to blind them. The punishment fits perfectly:
because they set the world on fire with lies, they are now consumed by the very flames they created.
Circle 8 teaches us that intelligence without integrity is not a gift;
it is a curse. It does not make you a leader; it just makes you a more efficient monster.
Circle 9: Treachery And so we have finally reached the absolute bottom
of the universe. Here, Dante finds a vast, frozen lake called Cocytus. The wind here is a blast of
pure hate that freezes everything it touches. The souls here are frozen inside the ice like insects
in amber. This is the Hell of the Cold Heart. Dante realizes that while Violence is "Hot",
Treachery is "Cold." To betray your brother, your guest, or your benefactor, you can’t be
angry. You must be numb. You have to extinguish every spark of human empathy in your heart.
Dante encounters Count Ugolino—a political schemer who betrayed allies to gain power, only to be
betrayed himself in return and then starve to death in prison alongside his own sons. In Hell,
he takes revenge by endlessly chewing on the skull of the man who locked him away. This represents
the grudge. Ugolino isn’t just punishing his enemy; he is feeding on his own resentment.
His entire identity is frozen around what was done to him. The message is brutal and clear:
when you hold onto a grudge, you don’t destroy the person you hate—you slowly destroy yourself.
Then he meets Fra Alberigo—a monk who invited his own family to a feast, only to have them butchered
the moment the fruit was served. Alberigo reveals that Treachery is a sin so dark that the moment
you commit it, your soul falls instantly to this ice, and a demon takes over your body on Earth.
Finally, at the very center of the earth, is Satan. He is not a cool, charming ruler. He
is a pathetic, weeping beast trapped waist-deep in the ice. He has three faces, and his giant,
bat-like wings flap desperately, trying to escape. But here is the irony: The wind generated by his
wings is exactly what freezes the lake. The harder he tries to rise, the more trapped he becomes.
In the modern world, this is the Hell of the Narcissist. Like Satan, their constant attempts
to dominate others creates the "cold wind" that drives everyone away. They are left frozen in a
prison of their own making, weeping tears that freeze on their face. Circle 9 teaches us the
ultimate lesson: The opposite of Love isn't Hate, which is still a feeling; it is Indifference.
The Conclusion: The Way Out And with that, the map is complete.
We have traveled from the gray sighing of the Comfort Zone through the raging fire of anger,
to the frozen silence of the Sociopath… And what we discovered is that the architecture
of Hell is a funnel, a downward spiral where gravity pulls you toward the sins of malice...
And it requires zero effort to fall. But Dante didn't write Inferno just to
scare us. He wrote it to save us. The most important part of the poem is the Exit.
At the bottom of the pit, facing the frozen Satan, Dante realizes there is no back door. To escape,
he has to do the unthinkable. He has to climb down the hairy flank of the
Beast itself. He has to grab onto the very thing he fears most and use it as a ladder.
This is a rather fantastical illustration of a practical psychological principle:
The only way out is through. You cannot solve a problem by ignoring it,
numbing it, or running away. Whether you are dealing with addiction, anger, or depression,
the only way to recover is to confront the source of the suffering directly. You must
turn around and face the "monster." The poem ends with Dante climbing
out to "see again the stars." Why stars? Because Hell is a place
of looking down—at yourself, your addictions, your pain, your mud. Freedom is the ability to
look up. To see a purpose bigger than your ego. To see a beauty that makes the suffering worth it.
So, the question is not "Which circle are you in?" I mean we are all in one of them,
at some point. The question is: "Are you going to stay here?" or Grab the ladder.
Climb the beast. And get back to the stars. And that’s our video - As ever, I’ve been Dan,
you’ve been awesome and if you enjoyed what you saw or found it helpful, why not check out our
full philosophies for life playlist? And for more videos to help you find success and happiness
using beautiful philosophical wisdom, don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much for watching.