Overview
Dante's Eight Circle is called Malebolgia, and consists of ten concentric ditches, or Bolgia, each lower than the previous. Each of these trenches is the home to a different kind of practitioner of Simple Fraud. (The more despicable Compound Fraud is punished in the Ninth and final Circle).
My version of the Eighth and Ninth Circles also focuses on a theme of Fraud - the ultimate Fraud that is revealed religion. My Malebolgia also consist of ten ditches devoted to the variety of destructive behaviors that belief in Imaginary Superbeings propagates and supports.
Dante's Panderers and Seducers in First Bolgia are forced to ever keep moving in circles, prodded on by demons. So too here. The sheep are ever kept moving by watchful demons. As hey form the pyramidal base that allows religious idiots to thrive, so here they form the inverted base of the inverted funnel of Malebolgia.
I'll say it many times, that the majority of religious folks are good, kind-hearted and well-meaning people. But these virtues would be there independent of the belief in nonsense. And by their sheer numbers, they empower people like this guy, Ted Haggard.
