Dispater and The Second Layer of Hell

Dispater and the City of Dis: Welcome to the Iron City of Hell

The second circle of Hell is a flat, black, barren wasteland, with only one outstanding geographical attribute: the City of Dis, where the Archduke Dispater sits upon an iron throne inside a fortress no mortal army could hope to breach. Or at least that's the version of Hell we're interested in.

Dispater

Like most good infernal geography, the story of Dispater and the City of Dis gets considerably stranger the farther backward you follow it. Pagan religion, Roman mythology, medieval Christianity, Dante, demonology and modern fantasy have spent centuries borrowing from one another until Dis has become less a single location than a city continually rebuilt in the human imagination. Somewhere in the middle of it all sits Dispater, who began his career not as a devil at all, but as a god.

Before He Was a Devil

The name comes from the Roman Dis Pater, usually interpreted as "Father of Riches." That might seem like an odd name for an underworld god until you remember where ancient people believed riches came from. Gold, silver, gemstones and other mineral wealth were taken from beneath the earth. The god who controlled the world below therefore controlled not only the realm of the dead, but the treasures buried underground.

Dis Pater became closely associated with Pluto, the Roman counterpart of the Greek Hades, and eventually the identities became difficult to separate. This is an important distinction because the ancient Dis Pater wasn't Satan and wasn't necessarily evil. The classical underworld wasn't simply the Christian Hell with different management. Death had its gods just as the sea, harvest and sky did. As Christianity absorbed and reinterpreted the mythology of the ancient Mediterranean world, however, pagan gods and underworld figures had a tendency to acquire considerably more sinister résumés. Dis was headed downstairs.

Dante Builds the City of Dis

Then came Dante Alighieri. In The Divine Comedy, written in the early fourteenth century, Dante created what became the most influential guided tour of Hell in Western literature. His Inferno transformed Hell into an enormous physical landscape with rivers, cliffs, storms, swamps, monsters, gates, towers and carefully organized punishments. Deep within this landscape stands the City of Dis.

There is an important distinction between Dante's geography and the version of Hell that later fantasy inherited. Dante does not put the City of Dis in the second circle. His second circle is the realm of the lustful, where souls are eternally driven through a supernatural storm. Dante and Virgil don't approach Dis until after crossing the swamp of the Styx in the fifth circle. The city represents a major boundary in Dante's Hell: outside its walls are the upper circles, while beyond the gates begins the much more terrible territory of lower Hell.

The city announces itself from a distance. Its towers and structures appear red, as though heated by eternal fire. Fallen angels guard its gates and initially refuse Dante entrance. The Furies appear and threaten him with Medusa before a heavenly messenger arrives and forces the gates open. Dante has reached something different from the circles he has already traveled through. He has reached the fortified interior of damnation.

Immediately within the walls lies the sixth circle, where heretics occupy burning tombs. Beyond them Hell descends toward increasingly deliberate forms of violence, fraud and betrayal. That's what makes Dis so interesting. It isn't merely another neighborhood in Hell; it is a border. Dante distinguishes between sins associated with uncontrolled appetite and weakness and darker sins committed deliberately through violence and deceit. Passing through the gates of Dis therefore feels like crossing from ordinary human failure into something colder, more intentional and more organized. Hell itself becomes a fortress.

Dispater Takes Over

The figure modern fantasy fans know as Dispater, ruler of an infernal city and lord of an impregnable iron fortress, owes more to later fantasy mythology than directly to Dante. Modern fantasy, most notably the cosmology developed around Dungeons & Dragons, took the ancient name Dis Pater and transformed it into Dispater, one of the great archdevils of Hell.

Here the geography changes again. The Nine Hells become nine distinct layers, each with its own ruler and character. Dis is the second layer, and Dispater is its lord. This is probably where the idea of Dispater ruling the "second circle" comes from. Dante's circles and the fantasy Nine Hells have become crossed in the popular imagination. The two systems aren't actually the same, but they fit together so naturally that it's easy to see how one version of Hell began bleeding into the other.

In this later tradition, Dispater doesn't simply live somewhere in Hell. He owns the place. Dis becomes a vast infernal metropolis dominated by iron, stone, smoke and oppressive architecture, and at its center rises Dispater's great fortress, commonly known as the Iron Tower. From there the archdevil watches his domain and, more importantly, watches everyone who might someday attempt to take it from him.

The Iron Duke

Dispater is traditionally portrayed in fantasy as one of Hell's great survivors, and that may be his most interesting characteristic. Hell is full of ambitious supernatural beings plotting against one another, forming alliances, betraying those alliances and waiting centuries for an opportunity to destroy a rival. Dispater's response is essentially to build the greatest fortress imaginable, remain inside it and become extraordinarily difficult to kill. It's hard to argue with the strategy.

He is patient, suspicious and calculating. Where another infernal ruler might seek glory through conquest, Dispater's great talent is remaining Dispater. His paranoia and his fortress complement each other perfectly. Every wall requires another wall, every conspiracy suggests another spy, every visitor might be an assassin and every ally is potentially a future enemy. The Iron Duke survives because he assumes everybody is eventually coming for him. In Hell, this probably qualifies as common sense.

The result is a particularly effective vision of evil because Dispater isn't the romantic rebel represented by some versions of Lucifer or the raging monster we might expect from a demon lord. He's something colder: an immortal ruler who has had eternity to think about security. His kingdom is a city, his city is a fortress and his fortress is an expression of his own personality. Dis is what paranoia looks like when given unlimited labor, unlimited iron and unlimited time.

All Roads Lead to Dis

There is something wonderfully bleak about imagining the landscape outside the city: black plains stretching toward the horizon, smoke obscuring whatever passes for a sky, no vegetation, no birds and no water worth drinking. Wherever you travel, eventually the iron towers of Dis appear in the distance. You might walk away from them for days only to look back and discover they don't seem to have become any smaller.

Perhaps there aren't really any roads across the wasteland. Perhaps there don't need to be. If there were roads in Hell, sooner or later they would all lead to Dis, and above the city would rise the Iron Tower. Somewhere inside it, behind enough gates, guards, traps, walls and conspiracies to make eternity itself feel insecure, Dispater would still be sitting on his throne, watching his kingdom and waiting for the attack he has always known will eventually come.

That's ultimately what makes Dispater interesting. Satan gets the poetry. Lucifer gets the tragic grandeur. Mephistopheles gets the clever dialogue. Dispater gets the fortress. He is the paranoid landlord of an infernal metropolis, an ancient pagan name transformed across two thousand years into an immortal ruler sitting behind walls nobody can breach. The god became an archdevil, the underworld became a city, and the city became a prison.

Much like the Hotel California, you can check in anytime you like, but leaving is another matter entirely.

Chort, The Russian Demon

I'm primarily interested by demons that appear in Hebrew, Christian, or Milton's fictional tales, but today on Face Off I saw a Russian demon named Chort. Each team of contestants in this special effects make-up competition was given a demon from a different culture to portray, and Chort was the Russian demon. I know all cultures have versions of demons, and there's actually a great deal of similarity in how different cultures view the demonic, but information on Chort is scarce. Let's begin with the make-up the team of Eric and Wayne did for Chort.

And compare that to a brief description. Chort is considered to be a demon of total evil, with horns, hoofs, skinny tail, and a pig-face in Slavic mythology. His closest comparison in appearance is said to be Pan. A claim is made Chort is a character in Christian folklore and is a minion of Satan, but I don't find any evidence of this. here's your change-up demon for the day... Chort. 

That's a scary demon, but not nearly as scary as...

The Trump demon!

Glasya of the Copper Skin

The daughter of Asmodeus and a mortal woman, Bensozia, Glasya in a consort of Mammon and very powerful for a non Arch devil. She is a good friend of Fierna, a daughter of Belial. Incredibly beautiful, her skin is a copper color and the copper scourge is her symbol. her servants will typically be female demons. 

Like her father Asmodeus, Glasya is very interested in causing unrest in the political arena, particularly by corrupting mortal women and showing them the art of becoming a power behind the throne.

A nice picture, but Glasya's skin would have more of a copper tone to it. 

Asmodeus The Demon

It is commonly thought to be an error in judgement to invoke the name of a demon lest that demon hear its name spoken and have the option to visit the invoker of his/her name by means of the window such an invocation opens. One of my favorite demons in literature is Asmodeus. 

He appears in Milton's Paradise Lost as one of the fallen angels. That's some heavy street cred. It is thought that Solomon himself called upon Asmodeus to help him in the construction of the Temple. That's also a pretty heavy item to list on your bad dudes resume. Asmodeus was there in many of the Hebrew fables, too, where he was said in The Book of Tobit to have murdered seven husbands of a woman named Sarah and was only confounded when God sent the angel Raphael to intervene, which he did after Asmodeus fell victim to the smell of fish liver and heart, which he is said to find repugnant. 

Always stylish, Asmodeus is devoted to oppression and might through subversive action. Asserting power over others through power, cunning, self-mastery, and discipline is paramount to followers of Asmodeus. Finally, Asmodeus is an ancient schemer and deadly manipulator, orchestrator of the most Machiavellian of schemes. He lays plans millennia in advance, patiently biding his time until his machinations come to fruition. In short, use great care when invoking the name of this Arch Devil. 

Speaking of demons, if you like death metal, Church of the Necronomicon is for you. But it's more than just death metal. Check out this recent interview with Cheap Trick drummer Bun. E Carlos. Reviews, interviews, up and coming bands. 

Belial and His Ranseur

Belial is less a demon than a devil, if such differentiations make a whit of difference once something with glowing red eyes and horns is standing in front of you.

In the older demonological tradition, Belial occupies an unusually elevated position among the infernal ranks. His name appears much earlier than the elaborate hierarchies of Hell that later occult writers constructed around him, and its meaning evolved considerably over the centuries. The biblical word belial originally carried a sense closer to worthlessness or wickedness than the proper name of one particular supernatural being. Eventually Belial became personified: not merely evil, but an individual representative of it.

And apparently a very handsome one.

Belial is frequently imagined as beautiful, aristocratic and diabolical rather than monstrous. He is the devil who doesn't particularly need to frighten you. He can persuade you. Later occult traditions make him a king among demons, associated with power, status, influence and corruption. Artists and writers have consequently had plenty of room to imagine him as infernal royalty: tall, imposing, richly dressed and entirely aware of his own magnificence.

Which brings me to his fork.

The weapon Belial is carrying in the illustration above is most accurately described as a ranseur, one of the enormous family of polearms humans spent centuries inventing before apparently deciding we had finally developed enough different ways to put a sharp piece of metal on the end of a stick.

I became interested in these weapons after seeing examples at the Art Institute of Chicago. Halberds, bills, partisans, ranseurs, military forks—each is essentially a variation on the same basic proposition, yet each develops its own personality. Some chop. Some stab. Some hook. Some catch another weapon. Some appear designed primarily to make the person holding them look like somebody you shouldn't approach with a complaint.

A ranseur is especially interesting because of its trident-like head. A long central blade is accompanied by two smaller lateral projections, producing something halfway between a spear and a fork. Those side pieces weren't necessarily intended simply to make three holes instead of one. Depending upon the weapon's construction, projections on polearms could help catch, control or deflect an opponent's weapon.

But I'm less interested in exactly what the ranseur did on a medieval battlefield than in what it looks like.

It looks like a devil's weapon.

That got me thinking about weapons as appendages of personality. Give the same mythological creature a sword and you change him. Give him an axe and you change him again. A dagger suggests intimacy. A sword can suggest nobility or martial authority. An axe suggests force. A scythe arrives already carrying centuries of symbolism concerning harvest and death.

But what type of creature uses a fork?

Poseidon has his trident. The traditional Christian devil eventually acquired his pitchfork. Demons are forever being depicted with barbed, hooked and forked instruments. Perhaps there's something fundamentally unsettling about dividing the point of a weapon. A spear has a single intention. It points directly at you.

A fork gives you options.

There is also something vaguely agricultural about it. The devil's pitchfork probably owes at least some of its visual ancestry to ordinary farming implements and older representations of pagan gods. Christianity was exceptionally good at taking the symbols of earlier religions, attaching them to its villains and allowing everyone a few centuries to forget where they came from.

The result is one of the strangest visual transformations in Western culture. An implement associated with gods, fishing, farming or the practical business of moving things around becomes an emblem of Hell.

And then somebody hands one to Belial.

Looking at historical polearms in a museum makes the whole subject even stranger because the fantasy suddenly becomes physical. These weren't objects invented by illustrators for demons to carry. Human beings actually designed them. Human beings forged all those hooks, spikes, blades and forks, attached them to long wooden shafts, and developed specific ideas about what each configuration was supposed to accomplish.

The assortment pictured below demonstrates just how creative we became once somebody discovered the basic formula:

stick + sharp thing = weapon.

After that, apparently, we couldn't leave it alone.

Eventually the sharp thing branched.

Then it grew hooks.

Then somebody added another blade.

And somewhere along the way we invented a weapon sufficiently diabolical-looking that centuries later an artist could put it into the hands of Belial and nobody would ask why.

Except me.

I want to know why.

Because if a weapon really can function as an appendage of personality, then Belial's ranseur tells us something about him before he ever says a word.

A handsome devil doesn't carry a club.

He carries something complicated.