468. And his feet like pillars of fire. This symbolizes the Lord's Divinity on the natural plane in respect to His Divine love, which sustains all things.

This, too, is apparent, from the explanation in no. 49 above, where it is said of the Son of Man that "His feet were like fine brass, as though fired in a furnace."

The angel's feet looked like pillars of fire because the Lord's Divinity on the natural plane - which fundamentally is the Divine humanity that He took on in the world - supports His Divinity from eternity, as the body does the soul, and likewise as the Word's natural meaning supports its spiritual and celestial meanings, on which subject see The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, nos. 27-49. To be shown that feet symbolize something natural, see no. 49, and a pillar something that supports, no. 191.

Fire symbolizes love because spiritual fire is nothing else. Therefore it is customary in worship to pray that heavenly fire, that is to say, heavenly love, may kindle the worshipers' hearts. People know that there is a correspondence between fire and love from the fact that a person grows warm with love, and cold with its loss. Nothing else produces vital warmth but love, in both senses. The origin of these correspondences is owing to the existence of two suns, one in the heavens, which is pure love, and the other in the world, which is nothing but fire. This, too, is the reason for the correspondence between all spiritual and natural things.

[2] Since fire symbolizes Divine love, therefore on Mount Horeb Jehovah appeared to Moses in a bush on fire (Exodus 3:1-3). Moreover He descended upon Mount Sinai in fire (Deuteronomy 4:36). For this reason, too, the seven lamps of the lampstand in the Tabernacle were lit every evening, so as to burn before Jehovah (Leviticus 24:2-4). For the same reason fire burned continually on the altar and was not extinguished (Leviticus 6:13), and the priests took fire from the altar in their censers and burned incense (Leviticus 16:12-13).

Therefore Jehovah went before the children of Israel by night in a pillar of fire (Exodus 13:21-22). Fire from heaven consumed the burnt offerings on the altar, as a sign of His being well pleased (Leviticus 9:24, 1 Kings 18:38). The burnt offerings were called offerings by fire to Jehovah, and offerings by fire for a restful aroma to Jehovah (Exodus 29:18; Leviticus 1:9, 13, 17; 2:2, 9-11; 3:5, 16; 4:35; 5:12; 7:30; 21:6; Numbers 28:2; Deuteronomy 18:1).

Therefore in the book of Revelation the Lord's eyes looked like a flame of fire (Revelation 1:14; 2:18; 19:12, cf. Daniel 10:5-6). And seven lamps of fire burned before the throne (Revelation 4:5).

It is apparent from this what lamps containing oil and lamps without oil symbolize (Matthew 25:1-11). The oil means fire, and thus love.

And so on in many other places.

In an opposite sense fire symbolizes hellish love, and this is plain from so many passages in the Word that it would be impossible to cite them all because of their number. See something on the subject in the book Heaven and Hell, published in London, nos. 566-575.

567. There are two sources of warmth. One is the sun of heaven, which is the Lord, and the other is our world's sun. The warmth that comes from heaven's sun or the Lord is spiritual warmth, which in its essence is love (see above, 126-140). The warmth that comes from our world's sun, though, is a natural warmth that in its essence is not love but serves spiritual warmth or love as a vessel. We may gather that love in essence is warmth from the fact that our minds and then our bodies become warmer because of love and according to its intensity and quality. This happens to us just as much in winter as in summer. We may also notice the warming of our blood. As for the fact that natural heat arising from the world's sun serves spiritual heat as a vessel, this we may gather from the warmth of the body that is stimulated by the warmth of its spirit and abets it. We may look particularly at what the warmth of spring and summer does for all kinds of animals with their annual love cycles.

[2] It is not that the [natural] warmth makes this happen, but that it disposes their bodies to be receptive to the warmth that flows into them as well from the spiritual world. You see, the spiritual world flows into the natural the way a cause flows into its effect. People who believe that natural warmth creates these loves are quite mistaken, since the inflow is of the spiritual world into the natural world and not of the natural world into the spiritual; and all love is spiritual because it is the essence of life itself.

[3] Further, people who believe that anything happens in the natural world apart from the inflow of the spiritual world are also mistaken, since natural phenomena arise and persist only from spiritual ones. Even the members of the vegetable kingdom get their power to sprout from this kind of inflow. The natural warmth of spring and summer simply disposes their seeds into their natural forms by swelling and opening them so that the inflow from the spiritual world can have its causative effect.

I mention all this to make it clear that there are two kinds of warmth, spiritual and natural, and that spiritual warmth comes from heaven's sun and natural warmth from the world's sun, and that inflow and cooperation set up the effects that we see before us in the world. ¹

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