Overview
This is the realm of Dante's Flatterers, who are forever sunk in shit. I used this image in the Seventh Circle for my peddlers of mystical nonsense.
In The Infernova, this ditch is reserved for Televangelists and other Frauds of the clergy. Their fate is to be boxed up and roasted by the hot air that they ever expel from their mouths.
Comments
Roald Dahl, who is well-known for his children's books, but wrote wonderful, imaginative stories for adults as well (such as My Uncle Oswald, a hilarious fantasy in debauchery). In his autobiography Boy, recounts that his Headmaster would later become the Archbishop of Canterbury. While he was employed at the school, he cruelly beat the students and generally made their lives unbearable.
"He was an ordinary clergyman at that time, as well as being a Headmaster….I would sit in the dim light of the school chapel and listen to him preaching about the Lamb of God and about Mercy and Forgiveness…I knew very well that only the night before this preacher had shown neither Forgiveness nor Mercy in flogging some small boy that had broken the rules… Did they preach one thing and practice another, these men of God?…It was all this, I think, that made me begin to have doubts about religion and even about God. If this person, I kept telling myself, was one of God's chosen salesmen on earth, then there must be something very wrong about the whole business."
Well, these "men of God" have done much more than physically abuse children, of course. They've bilked untold millions from credulous followers, preying upon their misfortunes and their misplaced hopes. And even when they are exposed as frauds, their faithful continue to try to believe. Have a look at the history of Peter Popoff, for example. You'd think someone that had been so thoroughly exposed would go away. No. Visit his site and you'll see that his is still "performing miracles"!
