Hope (Esperanza) is the substance that sustains travelers in Hell during the descent: not a feeling but a quantity spent, lent, paid and lost, and the currency of the infernal world.
| Type | Concept |
| Container | Lamp (or Lantern) of Hope |
| Spanish entry | Esperanza |
Nature
Each traveler descends with thirty-three measures of Hope, at once fuel and purse. Hell values it as the one thing not produced there. The condemned have none; demons collect and hoard it; some consume it like addicts. It is likened to a tear and a “still-strong roof” over the companions.
Uses
- It is lost only when used, not by the command of the gate: burned for powers, spells, extraordinary acts, and to bind things to a place.
- It passes between travelers, even in combat; Bertrand gave it this way.
- Lent to the condemned (eight measures, or four), it lets them move again; they follow the giver as an escort.
- It is offered in temples and pays the denizens of Hell.
- Each attuned magic item costs one measure for good, not returned if unattuned; three items at most.
- The Light of Hope can be fired as a force.
The Lamp
Its one container, the Lamp (or Lantern) of Hope, has six rhombus panels set with rubies, now empty. It burns wood from trees that grow only in Limbo; its light shielded the companions from “the blay” and the worst of the hells. If its bearer lacks faith, it dims or goes out.
Phlegyas held it and took it away whenever the companions were deposed. Its light went to Hecate’s court as part of a gift; it is lit in a ritual at the castle. As Patience Smith explained, it must be kept safe “so that hope may again summon the summoned”: whoever controls it decides where the essence of the summoned is reincorporated, and so their fate.
Inversion and rites
In the Hell of Dis the law is reversed: «acá la esperanza es muerte» (“here hope is death”). In the ritual of the crossed swords (the spark of hope), two condemned lovers pierced by a magic sword stay together forever. A bond of two hundred years preceded one recorded handing-over. At its limit: “there is no hope, only the hope of breaking these chains”.
Open questions
- How spent Hope is recovered is not recorded.
- Whether the inversion in Dis is local, temporary, or reaches Hope already spent is unresolved.
- Whether Lamp and Lantern are one object or two, what the panels held, and what “the blay” is are unknown.
- Who judges the bearer’s faith, whether addictive use differs from payment, and the lighting ritual’s steps are unknown.