By Kimberly Berlinghoff

The angels climb Jacob's Ladder on the west front of Bath Abbey.

    ladder, n. 1. a. An appliance made of wood, metal, or

rope, usually portable, consisting of a series of bars (‘rungs’) or steps fixed between two supports, by means of which one may ascend to or descend from a height.

 3. a. Applied to things more or less resembling a ladder. Often with qualifying words, as cheese, cooper's, paring ladder ; fish ladder

   Additions series 1997:    [1.] d. fig. A route leading to benefit or advantage, as in the children's board-game snakes and ladders.

Bible "Jacob's ladder”Jacob experienced a vision of a ladder or staircase reaching into heaven with angels going up and down it. From the top of the ladder he heard the voice of God, Who Landscape with

Jacob's Dream, c. 1690, by Michael Williams

repeated many blessings and proclaimed Jacob’s people to be the chosen ones. Jacob

woke and said: "This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Book of Genesis (28:17)

Jewish Christian Muslim

Jacob's Ladder William Blake

The Jewish philosopher Philo (d. ca. 50 CE) allegorical interpretation of the ladder in the first book of his De somniis.

The angels represent souls descending to and ascending from bodies .

The ladder is the human soul and the angels are God's logoi, pulling the soul up in distress and descending in compassion.

Dream depicts the ups and downs of the virtuous believer

Continually changing affairs of men.

The location where Jacob’s dream occurred was Mount Moriah, eventually to be the site of the Temple in Jerusalem. The ladder is a connection between Heaven and earth, the Temple provided a sacred location for prayers and sacrifices to be offered between God and the Jewish people.

"And he said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.“Gospel of John 1:51

Jesus is referencing Jacob's dream (Genesis 28:12), and implicates himself as being in the dream.

In the 3rd century Origen explains that two are the ladders in the Christian life:

Ascetic ladder that the soul climbs on the earth increasing the virtues

Travel that the soul does after the death, climbing the heavens up to the light of God.

In the 4th century Saint Gregory of Nanzianzus speaks of ascending Jacob's Ladder by successive steps towards excellence, interpreting the ladder as an ascetic path

Saint John Chrystostom also believes in an ascetic interpretation :

"And so mounting as it were by steps, let us get to heaven by a Jacob’s ladder. For the ladder seems to me to signify in a riddle by that vision the gradual ascent by means of virtue, by which it is possible for us to ascend from earth to heaven, not using material steps, but improvement and correction of manners."

The journey that Muhammad took to the heaven, the Isra and Mi′raj, can be connected to Jacob's Ladder because mi'raj literally means ladder. This theme was developed in 11th century Muslim text Kitab al-Miraj , that was translated in Latin in the 13th century with the title "Liber Scale Mahometi (the Book of the Ladder of Muhammad)".

Plato Plato’s Cave (Republic VII.) Allegory used to explain the relationship between our

perception of reality and perceptions. This can be seen as climbing out of the dark into the light of intellectual understanding

The Sympsosium --Diotima's ladder of love True love is a desire for self-immortalization and for

perpetual possession of the Good and Beautiful spiritual higher than physical universal ranks above the particular truth and inner beauty are ultimately far superior to

superficial attractiveness.  

"

According to David L. Simpson 1998, the Symposium is a dialectic process of statement and counter-statement that resembles "the Socratic method"--, that progresses through incremental stages to the essence of Beauty and Goodness; love as a set of steps, successive rungs in a quest for personal immortality; love as a universal creative principle or sacred force

Dante

The Divine Comedy

Part Three Paradiso is a rising from sphere to sphere of a concentric, ten-sphered universe, with the earth at it center. It is a metaphysical path of intellectual light, teaching the relation of human life to eternal being, and of human judgment to absolute truth; leading finally to a momentary glimpse of the ordering and limiting principle of all existence.

Beatrice tells Dante that the natural urge of men's souls is to rise to Heaven, but they can kill this urge by sin and false joys - it is their not rising which is un-natural.

In 1919 Professor Miguel Asín Palacios, a Spanish scholar and a Catholic priest, published La Escatología musulmana en la Divina Comedia ("Islamic Eschatology in the Divine Comedy"), an account of parallels between early Islamic philosophy and the Divine Comedy. Palacios argued that Dante derived many features of and episodes about the hereafter indirectly from the spiritual writings of Ibn Arabi and has some slight similarities to the Paradiso, such as a sevenfold division of Paradise.

Anthony Price Here be Monsters 1985 i. 22 “Here was a

snake or a ladder, and she could choose whether to go up or down.”

This is a strong reference to sin and heaven: Satan is depicted as a snake in the Garden of Eden causing Mankind’s fall, Perhaps an allusion to Milton’s Paradise Lost; the ladder could allude to Jacob’s ladder in the Bible or Dante’s Divine Comedy

Paul Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress from This

World to That Which Is to Come

A Christian allegory

Similar in form to Dante: Pilgrim on a journey to find eternal life and escape hell, has guides (Statius) along the way though the Evangelist (Beatrice) is the main guiding character; eventually he comes to the cross and his burdens are lifted.

William Spencer Fowre Hymnes Such is the powre of that sweet passion,

   That it all sordid basenesse doth expell,   And the refyned mynd doth newly fashion    Unto a fairer forme, which now doth dwell     In his high thought, that would it selfe excell;    Which he beholding still with constant sight,    Admires the mirrour of so heavenly light.

(An Hymne in Honour of Love 190– 96)William Oram suggests these lines formulate the

neoplatonic ideal that the lover has recreated a purified image of the beloved in his mind—an image closer to the absolute Beauty that has shaped the beloved in the first place.

Literature Frost After Apple Picking My long two-pointed ladder's sticking

through a tree/ Toward heaven still (1-2) The image of the ladder is a

representation of his life and his continuation of his journey not quite finished. Dante’s journey …

W. S. MERWIN In the Winter of My Thirty-Eighth YearIt sounds unconvincing to say When I was youngThough I have long wondered what it would be likeTo be me nowNo older at all it seems from hereAs far from myself as ever Walking in fog and rain and seeing nothingI imagine all the clocks have died in the nightNow no one is looking I could choose my ageIt would be younger I suppose so I am olderIt is there at hand I could take itExcept for the things I think I would do differentlyThey keep coming between they are what I amThey have taught me little I did not know when I was

young 

There is nothing wrong with my age now probablyIt is how I have come to itLike a thing I kept putting off as I did my youth There is nothing the matter with speechJust because it lent itselfTo my uses Of course there is nothing the matter with the

starsIt is my emptiness among themWhile they drift farther away in the invisible

morning

Plato’s Cave walking in fog and rain then coming out to see the stars.

Art Blake Michael Williams

Music Huey Lewis Rush Modern ideas ‘Working your way up the corporate ladder’ Moving from a lesser position to something

better/ an improvement in your life.

Coming over the airwaves The man says I'm overdue Sing along, send some money Join the chosen few Well mister I'm not in a hurry And I don't want to be like you And all I want from tomorrow Is to get it better than today

Step by step, one by one, higher and higher Step by step, rung by rung climbing Jacob's ladder

The image of the ladder in literature, composition, art, or the everyday, whether denoting the metaphysical or the concrete, is a vehicle used by the author to deliver a message. The implication is one of movement, either in the spiritual realm or the physical, and the movement itself could be down or up. Regardless the contexts in which the image of the ladder is used, authors’ reference other works and in effect communicate with each other.

http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.umw.edu:2048/cgi/entry/50128844/50128844se28?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=ladder-travelling+&first=1&max_to_show=10&hilite=50128844se28

http://condor.depaul.edu/~dsimpson/tlove/symposium.html

Brandeis, Irma. "The Ladder of Vision." The Ladder of Vision: A Study of Dante's Comedy. Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1962.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Divine_Comedy

The map of Heaven and the Universe used in this presentation does not belong to me but was instead found on the Web unsited.

Oram, William "Edmund Spenser“. Twayne's English Authors Series Online. New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1999.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=182776