 had witnessed while visiting Sicily in 1637, this copperplate engraving demonstrates Kircher’s vulcanological theories. The surface of the globe is shown dramatically with erupting volcanoes belching smoke into a cloudy atmosphere agitated by four windheads who aggressively circulate the ash through the sky. The volcanoes are connected via flaming subterranean shafts and nodes, depicted like arteries, that tunnel downward to a fiery core at the centre of the earth. According to Kircher, this volcanic system interacted with a hydro system, illustrated in a separate engraving (see SC-TM-1665-Kircher-Water) which it superheated in parts, causing the movement of water on the surface such as ocean currents, tides, and springs.   

 (1602–1680) was a German Jesuit scholar and polymath who published around forty major works of comparative religion, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fellow Jesuit Roger Joseph Boscovich and to Leonardo da Vinci for his vast range of interests. His ‘Mundus Subterraneous’ (1665) was an extraordinary encyclopaedia of subterranean geography, in which he illustrates his theories of how the three elements – water, air, and fire – flow through a system of channels before reaching the Earth’s surface. As such it is one of the earliest works on speleology.

This fantastical image, a cross-section of the Earth, was published in 

’s ‘Mundus Subterraneous’ (1664–1665), his extraordinary encyclopaedia of subterranean geography, in which he illustrates his theories of how the three elements – water, air, and fire – flow through a system of channels before reaching the earth’s surface. As such it is one of the earliest works on speleology.

On a visit to Sicily in 1637–1638, Kircher had been greatly affected by witnessing the eruption of Mounts Aetna and Stromboli, and his own terrifying descent into the crater of Vesuvius. As a Jesuit, Kircher rejected, for Scriptural reasons, the Cartesian notion of a slowly evolving earth, but he nevertheless displayed a great interest in the internal structure of the globe. He suggested that the earth had a central fiery region that was connected to the crust at many points and that the earth also contained vast reservoirs of water. When the water and fire interacted, earthquakes, volcanoes, springs, and storms were the result.

For centuries scholars had speculated on how the world was made. Advances in cartography which, by the mid-seventeenth century, were describing and illustrating the Earth’s surface with increasing scientific precision, had growing influence on this ancient debate. Leading thinkers, like 

, were simultaneously studying natural sciences, medicine, philosophy, and religion in new light and attempting to combine their findings with pre-existing theological concepts. Kircher rejected, for Scriptural reasons, the Cartesian notion of a slowly evolving Earth, but he nevertheless displayed a great interest in the internal structure of the globe. Although Kircher was an ardent collector of fossils and amassed a sizeable collection for his museum, he did not see them as evidence of changing ocean levels or geological catastrophes but simply as signs and marvels of the Creation.

’s apocalyptic image of the fiery nature of our planet, in which a central inferno erupts at the surface via volcanoes, spilling noxious fumes into the atmosphere, all but overpowering the four classical windheads that are doing their best to counteract the cataclysm.

Kircher’s Volcanic World View