VISIO QUARTA, cap. IV
The Black Fire and Its Punishing Mist
The black fire of divine judgment sends a withering mist to punish sinners, and its stirring by the winds signifies how judicial testing overturns carnal desires into barrenness, consuming all that opposes God.
And from the black fire, a certain mist sometimes descends to the earth, withering the greenness of the land and drying up the moisture of the fields, because when heat and cold are stirred up in that same fire by the will of God, the mist descends — as was said before — which arises from dangerous heat as something smoky, and from harmful cold as something wet, for the punishment of sinners. For this black fire, stirred up by the south wind, burns with heat, and from the north wind it carries an excess of cold in hail, but the east wind calms both; the west wind, however, leaping through the moist air, whenever the black fire is at times stirred up, produces a dangerous flood, signifying that also from judicial testing, another punishment spreading out toward carnal desires overturns them into the dryness of contempt and completely consumes their richness, because God reduces to nothing that which sets itself against him.
The Tempering Circle of Pure Aether
The circle of pure aether gently tempers the forces above and below, restraining harm to the earth, while the smoke rising from the heated celestial waters poses a question of deeper meaning.
Because the circle of pure aether, by its own sweetness, tempers the things above and the things below, and resists the scales of the first circle and the cloud of the second, so that they don't harm the earth too much — and what the smoke that rises from the waters above when they are heated by celestial fire might mean or what purpose it might serve.
Read the original Latin
Et de nigro igne quaedam nebula aliquando ad terras descendens, viriditatem terrae arefacit et humiditatem agrorum exsiccat, quia cum in eodem igne ardor et frigus per voluntatem Dei commoventur, nebula, quemadmodum praefatum est, descendit, quae de periculoso ardore fumosa, et de nocivo algore humida, ad vindictam peccantium existit. Niger enim ignis iste vento austri excitatus ardet, de vento autem aquilonis nimietatem frigoris in grandine habet, sed utrumque ventus orientalis sedat; ventus vero occidentalis in aquoso aere saliens, cum niger ignis interdum commovetur, periculosam inundationem facit, significans quod etiam de judiciali examinatione, alia vindicta ad carnales concupiscentias se extendens, eas in ariditatem contemptus evertit, atque pinguedinem earum omnino consumit, quia Deus hoc quod se ipsi opponit ad nihilum deducit.
Quod circulus puri aetheris suavitate sua superiora et inferiora temperet, et squamis prioris et nebulae secundi circuli ne terras nimium laedant resistat, et quid fumus ab aquis superioribus coelesti igne fervefactis procedens, vel utilitatis vel significationis habeat.
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