4936. On several occasions spirits have appeared holding rods, who, I was told, were magicians. They are in front, a long way off on the right, deeply within caverns. Magicians who have been more malevolent ones are hidden more deeply than the rest within them. They seem to themselves to have rods, and by means of delusions they also produce many more kinds of rods, believing that they can use these to perform miracles. For they imagine that these rods have power within them, and they imagine this because the right hand and the arm, which by correspondence are embodiments of strength and power, support themselves on those rods. This has made it evident to me why people of old assigned rods to magicians, for the gentiles of old received this idea from the representative Ancient Church, in which rods, like the hand, meant power, see 4876. And because these meant power Moses was commanded, when miracles were performed, to stretch out his rod or his hand, Exodus 4:17, 20; 8:5-20; 9:23; 10:3-21; 14:21, 26-27; 17:5-6, 11-12; Numbers 20:7-10.

'Hasten,' in reference to Joseph, as mentioned in Genesis 43:30, signifies what bursts forth from the inmost. This is because his compassions were moved, which signifies mercy from love. When this bursts forth, it bursts forth from the inmost, and this at the first striking of the eye, or at the first moment of thought, therefore, 'hastening,' signifies nothing but 'from the inmost.' 'To hasten' or 'hastiness' in the internal sense, does not denote what is quick, but what is certain, and also what is full, thus every event. For 'haste' involves time, and in the spiritual world there is not time, but instead of time there is state, thus the haste of time has relation to such a quality of state that corresponds, and the quality of the state which corresponds is that there are several things which are efficient together, from which results a certain and full event.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 5284)