4573. About the hells of the Sirens

What sirens are like has been described several times before [see the index]. These women are extremely malicious and have learned in the world how to simulate those who are good, as if they were angels. For the purpose of doing this they radiate good affections and thus slip in among simple spirits that relate to a person's outward qualities of thought or earthly characteristics. In this way they keep themselves in the world of spirits and can be forced out only with difficulty, for such things elevate evil spirits from hell for quite a long time and through such things they enter into people's thoughts and lead them entirely. Consequently, because they are of an inward nature, they are the very worst of spirits who take possession of a person's mind, from whom a person can never be defended except by the Lord. They act very stubbornly and fear nothing, trust in their own arts, and know how to slip in by labyrinthine gyres. They speak from these, sometimes in such a way that they are heard elsewhere than where are they really are, so that they are sought in vain. It has granted me to learn this by many actual experiences.

[2] They are of two kinds. Certain ones have the goal of ruling over others and over every society to which they can gain access, doing so by possessing and leading their thoughts. These women are the most annoying. The second kind does likewise but does not have such a wild obsession with ruling. They take freedom entirely away from those who want to have good thoughts and give freedom to those who want to have evil thoughts. These are very obscene women; they are sorceresses and are against everything good and true. Where this gang comes from has been explained before [cf. 3205 ff]. Their hell was in front at some distance toward the left there; the men who want to rule, a little toward the right, in various caverns. But I saw that their hells had been changed and moved to the back toward the left, rather deep down, from which they can never again break out and attack spirits and people on earth. They are there under a thick cloud which their tricks can in no way get through. They were forced in there in crowds of between fifty and a hundred sirens. This went on for many hours.

Above the hell, there is something like a maw with jaws that open. And the moment they arrived, it opened the maw, twisting and bending it like labyrinths into which they put themselves, and it swallowed them up and then thrust them deep under the disreputable earth there, from which they cannot emerge, this appeared to me in 1752, Aug. 5, 6., for they form snakelike connections, in which they fix themselves and then cannot be moved by others except by means of similar connections. Such it is in the other life.

545. To enable me to know what heaven and heavenly joy are, and the nature of them, the Lord has allowed me frequently and for long periods to perceive the delights that accompany heavenly joys. From my actual experience therefore I can know them but in no sense describe them. However, so that people may have a rough idea of it, let me say this: It is the affection accompanying countless joys and delights which produce one general and simultaneous joy. That general joy, or general affection, consists of harmonious bands of countless affections, none of which focus clearly in one's perception, but only indistinctly, because one's perception is very general. Nevertheless I have been allowed to perceive that it contains countless things whose ordering defies description. Those countless things are such as flow from the order of heaven itself.

[2] This order extends to the smallest individual areas of the affection, which present themselves and are perceived simply as one very general whole. They present themselves and are perceived according to the capacity of the person subject to them. In a word, every general affection contains innumerable parts ordered into a perfect form. No part is devoid of life or fails to affect. This applies to the inmost parts in particular, for heavenly joys stem from things that are inmost. I have also perceived that the joy and delight went out as it were from the heart and very gently spread themselves through every inmost fibre, and from there into every cluster of fibres, doing so with such an interior sense of delight that a fibre was so to speak nothing but joy and delight; and all resulting perceptivity and feeling in like manner was alive with happiness. In comparison with those joys, the joy that accompanies the desires of the flesh is as thick choking smog to a pure and very gentle breeze.