430. The locusts in appearance. (9:7) This symbolizes the appearance and likeness of those people who affirmed in themselves a faith divorced from charity.

The appearance symbolizes their appearance in a representative image. Locusts symbolize falsities of the lowest sort (no. 424); and because falsities are inseparable from the people who possess them, those people too are symbolically meant by locusts.

That locusts mean people who have affirmed in themselves faith alone, or the falsities of those people, was made clearly apparent to me from seeing church elders who espoused that faith embracing and kissing those who looked like locusts, and wishing to invite them into their homes. For likenesses, which are forms representative of the affections and thoughts of angels and spirits in the spiritual world, seem to be alive, in like manner as animals, birds and fish, as previously described.