"Dante was standing near the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge that crosses the Arno River in Florence. It was just before 1300, a time of great awakening in the collective unconscious of the Western world. Dante saw Beatrice standing on the bridge. He was a young man, she even younger, and that vision contained the whole of eternity for him. It was a vision of completeness.
Dante did not speak to her. He saw her very little. And then Beatrice died, carried off by plague. Dante was stricken with the loss of his vision. She was the intermediary between his soul and Heaven itself.
When you are ready to listen,
Beatrice will appear.
A man I knew who was at this point on his journey asked me where his guide was.
He needed her so badly.
I suggested he look for her in his active imagination.
When he did, she appeared instantly and she told him,
“I’ve been waiting for you for twenty years. You only had to ask.”
Beatrice will be there the moment you ask and are truly ready to listen.
Beatrice shows Dante the vision of the unitive world. She takes him through the rest of Purgatory and into Heaven. Then, at the last moment, she gives way to another guide, St. Bernard, which is puzzling.
But Beatrice is the psychopomp— a wonderful medieval word for soul guide— who leads Dante through the deep levels of Purgatory into the vision of Heaven, a journey of wholeness and healing.
Dante owes his success initially to Virgil, but primarily to Beatrice, who leads, inspires, and awakens him spiritually."
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