An Extraordinary Passage from Dante's Inferno

During my studies of Dante's Inferno, I came across this passage. I thought I would share it with you all.

Its meaning is deeply veiled, and I believe it is Gnostic.

Perhaps an instructor familiar with the passage would care to shed light...


Lines 76-123, from Canto XIV of The Divine Comedy: Inferno

In silence we had reached a place where flowed
a slender watercourse out of the wood -
a stream whose redness makes me shudder still.
As from the Bulicane pours a brook
whose waters then are shared by prostitutes,
so did this stream run down across the sand.
Its bed and both its banks were made of stone,
together with the slopes along its shores,
so that I saw our passageway lay there.
"Among all other things that I have shown you
since we first made our way across the gate
whose threshold is forbidden to no one,
no thing has yet been witnessed by your eyes
as notable as this red rivulet,
which quenches every flame that burns above it."
These words were spoken by my guide; at this,
I begged him to bestow the food for which
he had already given me the craving.
"A devastated land lies in midsea,
a land that is called Crete," he answered me.
"Under its king the world once lived chastely.
Within that land there was a mountain blessed
with leaves and waters, and they called it Ida;
but it is withered now like some old thing.
It once was chosen as a trusted cradle
by Rhea for her son; to hide him better,
when he cried out, she had her servants clamor.
Within the mountain is a huge Old Man,
who stands erect - his back turned toward Damietta -
and looks at Rome as if it were his mirror.
The Old Man's head is fashioned of fine gold,
the purest silver forms his arms and chest,
but he is made of brass down to the cleft;
below that point he is of choicest iron
except for his right foot, made of baked clay;
and he rests more on this than on the left.
Each part of him, except the gold, is cracked;
and down that fissure there are tears that drip;
when gathered, they pierce through that cavern's floor
and, crossing rocks into this valley, form
the Acheron and the Styx and Phlegethon;
and then they make their way down this tight channel,
and at the point past which there's no descent,
they form Cocytus; since you are to see
what that pool is, I'll not describe it here."

...