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.

6359. 'And their wrath, for it is hard' means an aversion to the truth that is derived from good - a firm and determined aversion. This is clear from the meaning of 'wrath' as an aversion to truth - 'wrath' is used in reference to truth and 'anger' to good, see 3614; and from the meaning of 'hard' as firm and determined. For when a false idea has been accepted so firmly that a person is convinced it is right it is then hard and fast. I have been allowed from experience to know of such hardness, for among spirits and angels truth from good looks like and presents itself as something soft, whereas falsity from evil does so as something hard, becoming ever harder as such falsity from evil becomes more firmly accepted. Once firm proof based on much evidence has led to utter conviction that it is right, that hardness among them seems to be like the hardness of a bone. Such hardness is also like the hardness of an object in the world, in that rays of light rebound from it. In the same way when the light of heaven flowing from the Lord falls on the hardness that falsity from evil produces, it rebounds; but when on the other hand the light of heaven flowing from the Lord falls on the softness that truth from good produces, it is taken in.