Understanding Dante’s Inferno with Mark Booth

Mark Booth is the author of several comprehensive books including The Sacred History: How Angels, Mystics, and Higher Intelligence Made Our World, The Secret History of the World,  The Secret History of the Universe: How Ancient Wisdom Made the Modern World, and The Secret History of Dante: Unearthing the Mysteries of the Inferno.

Mark explores the esoteric and initiatory dimensions of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, linking the poet’s vivid journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven to the ancient mystery-school traditions that survived in the Knights Templar. He examines Dante’s close connection to Brunetto Latini, the Templars’ influence on the poem’s cosmology and imagery, and the ways Dante’s unconsummated love for Beatrice elevates romantic love into a cosmic, spiritual force. Booth also discusses how Dante’s experience of initiation beneath the streets of Florence, his portrayal of contemporary figures in Hell, and his vision of a universe moved entirely by love reveal a hidden mystical current running through medieval Catholicism and Western culture.

00:00:00 Introduction

00:04:09 Dante and Beatrice

00:12:51 Knights Templar origins

00:21:08 Templars and Dante

00:27:41 Virgil as guide

00:32:37 Templar persecution

00:37:14 Church and occult

00:42:13 Popes in hell

00:44:50 Conclusion

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in "parapsychology" ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science.

(Recorded on Monday, August 31, 2026)

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