Knots and wheels

The horror of the mechanical in the pre-modern world

Geryon depicted by William Blake, 1922.

As Dante advances through the circles of Inferno, he reaches a point where the road is punctured. It turns out, Hell is not transitive. Evil may be on a spectrum, ranging from less to more doom, but its gradients are not smooth.

To cross from the Seventh Circle, where the violent are punished, to the Eight, called t…