Eridus - Fraud I Lyrics

Once you reach the waterfall
That syphons off the Phlegethon
Look down and see the guiling face
Of Gustave Dore's Geryon
The winged monster of Fraud
A cross of wyvern and scorpion
With an honest human face
Whom you will ride to reach Malebolge

The evil ditches of the ten tiers
Shaped like an amphitheater
You cross over on narrow ribs
Of rock that descend to the central well

In the first bolgia sinners in two files
March vice versa heads bowed and cowed
While their whipped for their seductions
Like false lovers that beguile

Flatterers of great eloquence
Stand in a trench of excrement
While simoniacs are stowed
In kiln like holes for their sacrilege

Fortune tellers and sorcerers
Soothsayers and astrologers
All false prophets who tried
To defy God's will by divining

To know the future
Their heads twisted, they walk backwards
Contorted in form like their arts that distort
The natural world, blinded by their own tears
See the likes of John Dee or Aleister Crowley

Next come the barrators within the fifth ditch
Immersed in a lake of boiling pitch
Any who dare to arise to the surface catch the eyes
Of the demonic guard that are called Malebranche

Insolents pierced by hooks and hauled
Out of the tar to be ripped and clawed
Crooks of the cloth, or the robes of the law
Punishment overseen by Malacoda

In Bolgia 6 are the Hypocrites
In gilded habits that are lead weighted
Listless they stamp on the man who damned
Jesus Christ to the cross, crucified Caiaphas

The pit for thieves teems with serpents
Who bite and constrict - in pursuit endless
Once they attack, conflagrate, turn to ash
Then reform or you fuse and transform anew