Hell awarded "City of Culture" title

The City of Hell (full title, Kingston-upon-Hell) has just been awarded the prestigious "City of Culture" title, fighting off stiff competition from Purgatory and Heaven (better luck next time!)

Some of Hell's cultural assets.

Said a spokesman for the judging committee, Mr Dante Alighieri, "We always thought that the Devil had the best tunes, and now that old-fashioned hymn-singing is falling out of fashion, to be replaced by Paul Inwood's Greatest Hits, the Kevin Mayhew Book of Vogon Songs, and the like, it is clear that modern Christianity, at least, is making little effort to catch up."

A modern cathedral. Heavenly, but very ugly.

In architecture, too, Heaven offers little to challenge the supremacy of Hell, as we see ancient churches converted into supermarkets, or palaces of consumerism, while "prison-style" construction inspires so many new religious buildings.

Said a prominent resident of the new City of Culture, Baron Prescott of Kingston-upon-Hell, "I am very excitable and delightful to hear the news - denigrating Hell as the City of Cultivation puts us firmly on the map, rather than just off the edge, and the working people of Hell will be calibrating tonight, no mistake. This would never have happened when we had a Tory Governess. Oh, have we?"

The James Joyce of Kingston-upon-Hell: nothing he says makes sense.

Meanwhile, spokesmen for The Church of Purgatory, such as Lord Carey and A.N. Wilson, have expressed feelings of despondency, saying "We've still got one or two nice churches - although we didn't build them ourselves - but nobody wants to attend them."

Indeed, it is hard to see what the solution could be. Modernizers have done all they can to bring the C of P up to date - they don't mention God any more, and many bishops are very happy with same-sex marriage, adultery, even a little discreet theft and murder. What more could they do?

Could glamorous vicaresses be the answer?

But enough of the problems of Heaven and Purgatory. Today is definitely a day when Hell - an increasingly attractive destination for modern youth, with its fabled lakes of brimstone, and jolly twerking demons to make them feel at home - has every right to celebrate.

Celebration in the streets of Hell.

The spiritual enneagram

Our attention was drawn to this event, advertised on the Leeds diocesan website. Note that Leeds has been sede vacante for over a year, since Arthur Roche moved to Rome - it seems that when the cat's away, the mice like to play.

Catholic paganism in Yorkshire?

For those who might find this event too exciting, other alternatives offered include "Day with Margaret Silf - The Other Side of Chaos" and "Circle Dance Weekend".

Many readers have asked me, "Eccles, what exactly is an enneagram, and how will it bring me spiritual nourishment?"

An enneagram - not to be confused with an enema.

"Yes, very helpful, Eccles," you are saying, "but what do I do with this nine-sided figure? Is it a map to help me with my liturgical dancing at Mass? Or do I wear it to repel demons?"

Well, this is tricky. Wikipedia tells us of the Enneagram of Personality, but it also says that it was criticised in a 2003 Vatican document Jesus Christ, the Bearer of the Water of Life. A Christian Reflection on the 'New Age', so of course the good Catholic folk of Ilkley, however much they may like dancing round stone circles, are not going to touch the "Enneagram of Personality" theory. No, that's right out.

How bishops are appointed. The nuncio uses the enneagram to make a random choice.

I continued my investigations, but the number 9 occurs rather rarely in the Bible, unlike, say, 7, 12 or 40. Certainly, Og of Bashan had an iron bed nine cubits long, but it was not particularly spiritual as beds go. Much later, Jesus healed ten lepers, of whom only one came back to say "thank you", prompting the words, "Were not ten made clean? and where are the nine?" Probably they were out circle-dancing.

More worryingly, there are nine circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno. But surely the damned do not indulge in circle dancing when they get there?

Just the place for some circle dancing.

We may be getting nearer the truth if we sing a popular hymn, "Green grow the rushes-O", with its reference to "Nine for the nine bright shiners". Except that nobody is sure whether these are planets or orders of angels.

The nine orders of angels. In Ilkley they speak of little else.

Certainly, nine is an important number in Hinduism (symbolising perfection) and Norse Mythology too. So if we take an ecumenical viewpoint, nine-ness is certainly something we should strive for. Perhaps it will help us to levitate...

A man with no visible means of support, except his stick.

No, I'm sorry, the whole thing smacks of New Age mumbo-jumbo. Perhaps I'm too old-fashioned - and need to accept that the world is changing. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, after all. All our cultural heritage is disappearing, as the following pictures show.

Traditional (L) and modern (R) vestments.

The Divine Comedy: Inferno

So the poet Virgil came to Eccles, who is a saved person, and said "Perhaps you'd like to take a look at Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, to see how they've been getting on since I gave Dante a conducted tour? You could write about them on your lovely blog."

Abandon Hope, all ye who enter here

So they travelled to the gates of Hell itself, and began their descent into the abyss from which no man returns.

"This could be interesting," said Eccles. "Will we see Hitler, Stalin, Bin Laden, and people like that?"

"We do have them down here of course," said Virgil, "but frankly you don't want to see the dreadful torments they suffer. When you see someone who is forced to read the Guardian all day long, you even start to feel a nagging sympathy for them."

Ted Heath

They came to a darkened room in which a big fat man was groaning pitifully as he declaimed in a booming voice: "Ohhh... notwithstanding directive LU/267/JRQ/1637, paragraph 208, on the regulations for the design of teaspoons permitted in coffee shops not exceeding 250 square metres in area, it will be necessary for the managers of such shops to buy carbon credits to the value of EUR 50 for each customer who wishes to blow on his coffee to cool it, on pain of having their toenails pulled out by a registered inspector..."

"This is one of his lucky days," said Virgil. "He's just got to read out pointless EU directives. On a bad day they get him to read out all his old speeches."

"I see you try to make the punishment fit the crime," remarked Eccles. "Do you have any interesting atheists?"

Christopher Hitchens

They came to a room in which a rather stout man was writing a book. Eccles looked at the chapter heading, which said How Mother Teresa murdered a nanny and framed Lord Lucan for it, on the instructions of Pope Paul VI. In the corner of the room was a fire, and Virgil explained that Hitchens's punishment (apart from being eternally deprived of alcohol and cigarettes) was to write books which, when completed, were thrown directly into the flames. "This happened when he was alive too, usually, but now we can cut out all the trouble of getting a customer to buy them first," explained Virgil.

"I was right, I was right, there is no God, and he hates me!" screamed Hitchens, and resumed his writing.

"How about Catholics?" asked Eccles. "Do you have any down here?"

"Lots," said Virgil. "Since the 1960s, there's been no shortage of Catholics wanting to sign up to a liberal agenda. Abortion, euthanasia, divorce, homosexual practices... so much simpler than traditional morality, it seems."

Will nobody come for a drive with me?

A fat dissolute man came past, driving a taxi. "Taxi, guv?" he asked. "A little drive to the island?"

"Heard the legend of the Flying Dutchman?" asked Virgil. "Condemned for ever to sail the seas? It's been updated - Ted here is condemned for ever to drive his taxi, unable to pick up passengers."

"He was a Catholic, wasn't he?" asked Eccles.

"When there were votes in it," replied Virgil. "But mostly he was just a fat drunken slob."

"So, where next?" asked Eccles.

"Well, you've seen some dead souls currently in torment. Next, I shall show you a vision of the future. We'll see some of the living people whom we're expecting down here in the next few years..."

Let's go and do something really evil.