The next stage of Dante’s journey leads to a meeting with Virgil, who will act as his guide through the first two parts of The Divine Comedy. Beck refers to Virgil’s role as “soul teacher” or “soul guide,” and encourages her readers to be on the lookout for their own soul teachers, which could appear in the form of a person, a book, or some other means.

Having come to the realization that we are lost and that we should turn away from chasing the temptations of Mount Delectable, we are now open to other sources of guidance that can point us to a more fulfilling way. A soul teacher fills this role by pointing the way forward, but not by doing the work for us: “No one can give us pure integrity […] The role of the soul guide is simply to put us in touch with our innate ability to sense the truth” (43). Soul teachers can usually be identified by the way that they seem to speak to our deepest intuitions about the truth—often in a manner that might strike us as a bit magical—while taking a different

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