Visibility

This article begins with the idea that "fantasy is a place where it rains." It talks about The Inferno and how God sends Dante images from the heavens through the rain. God is sending Dante messages through something that is so simple and so "normal" to humans in everyday life. It shows how Dante found signs and found something so special and important in such a typical, everyday occurrence. The article asks where these images come from and if it is imaginary. He sees mental images and turns them inward, without going through he senses.

Imagination is "stealing us away from the outer world and carrying us off into an inner one, so that even if a thousand trumpets were to sound we would not hear them, what is the source of the visual messages that you receive, if they are not formed from sensations deposited in the memory?"
He talks about the visions presented to him as if it were stories. Many artists try to put their emotions and what they're thinking and feeling into their art, as Dante does in The Inferno. He has to use his imagination for every aspect of work he uses. "We must make use of visual imagination of a metaphorical sort (the soul imprisoned in the corruptible body)."

Loyola says that "the person meditating has to put himself into the scene and assume the role of an actor in the imaginary scene." A person cannot fully experience his or her imagination if he or she does not put himself or herself into the scene. When a person imagines something, often times, they put themselves into the scenario they are imagining, and by doing this, it allows them to fully understand their mind and how it works. "Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation possessed a fundamental vehicle, in its ability to use visual communication... But it was always a matter of starting from a given image, one proposed by the Church itself and not 'imagined' by the believer."