7 thoughts on “Etna erupts, lava pours down mountain”

1. In the ancient world, volcanoes with their incinerating lava, accompanied by earthquakes and tidal waves, were feared as ill omens, a sign of divine wrath and punishments to come.
   We think of the cataclysmic explosion on the Aegean Island of Santorini, stone and ash spreading more destruction and death than the debilitating Trojan War going on at the same time, and ushering in “Dark Age” Greece with its demographic collapse, its palaces and cities robbed, destroyed, abandoned, for 300 years.
   We think of the last days of corrupt Pompei and Herculaneum before the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. burned and buried untold thousands “in a darkness darker and thicker than any night.” A year later, the Flavian Caesars opened the infamous Colosseum and celebrated with 100 days of human and animal slaughter. For the next three centuries, it (and copies built throughout the empire) symbolized Roman anti-Christ dictatorship, the right to do anything in the interest of the State, control of all things human, public, private, paranoid obsession with security: unrelenting, merciless purge of any real or perceived threat.

   Fast forward to July 13, 1917, when Our Lady of Fatima prophesied: “When you shall see a night illuminated by unknown light, it is the great sign God gives you that He is going to punish the world for its crimes…” Indeed, on January 25, 1938, “the night sky was illuminated with an unknown red light perceived throughout the Northern hemisphere. At the time, everyone believed it was a gigantic fire; buildings seemed to be ablaze; the Alps were seen in a red glow. The following year, World War II began with the invasion of Poland and did not end until the ultimate volcano, the atomic bomb, forced the surrender of Axis Japan in 1945.

   On the eve of Ash Wednesday, Mt.Etna and environs, ablaze with red smoke and blackened deadly cinders, should give urgent reason to pray!

2. why aren’t the people racing out of town to safety? I would be.

   1. Because the lava is pouring down into the Valley of the Bove (bull), which is like a bowl and diverts it from Aci Reale

      1. that is amazing, very smart design.

3. How often does this volcano erupt? I’m wondering how unusual an event, this is?

   1. Every few years, but it often gives a year’s or so notice to major earthquakes in mainland Italy.

      1. Thank you

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