439. And there were stings in their tails, and their power was to hurt men five months. This symbolizes their clever falsifications of the Word, by which for a short time they darkened and enchanted the intellect, and so deceived and captivated it.

Stings in the tails symbolize clever falsifications of the Word - stings symbolizing cunning and guile, and tails the Word's truths falsified (no. 438). Their power to hurt means, symbolically, that they could induce a mental numbness, or in other words, that they could darken and enchant the intellect and so deceive and captivate it. For their tails were like scorpions, and scorpions have this symbolism (no. 425). Five months means, symbolically, for a short time, as in no. 427 above.

Such is the case when people like this take some things from the Word and apply them. For the Word was written in terms of things that correspond, and the correspondent expressions are partly apparent truths, which conceal genuine truths within them. If these genuine truths are unknown in the church, it is possible for people to take from the Word many things which at first appear to support heresy. But when genuine truths are known in the church, then the apparent truths are laid bare, and the genuine truths come into view. Before this comes about, however, a heretic may use various things from the Word to draw a veil over the intellect and enchant it, and so to deceive and captivate it.

This is what those people do who assert that a person's sins are forgiven him so that he is justified, by an act of faith of which no one is at all aware, and this in a moment - if not before, then in the last hour of dying. This also can be illustrated by examples, but here is not the place for it.

Stings symbolize falsities arising from evil and doing harm also in Amos:

Behold, the days shall come upon you when they will take you away with stings... (Amos 4:2)

And in the book of Numbers, that the people should drive out the inhabitants of the land, lest they be thorns in their eyes and stings in their sides (Numbers 33:55).

Thorns, briers, nettles, and thistles also symbolize falsities accompanying evil because of their stings.

438. They had tails like scorpions. (9:10) This symbolizes the Word's truths falsified, by which they induce a mental numbness.

A tail symbolizes the last extension of the head, because the brain extends through the spinal column into the tail. Consequently the head and the tail are united as their first and last elements. Consequently, when the head symbolizes a justifying and saving faith alone, the tail symbolizes in summary all its proofs, and as these are taken from the Word, it symbolizes the Word's truths falsified.

Everyone who assumes some principle of religion on the basis of on his own intelligence and puts it at the head of the rest, also takes proof passages from the Word and puts them at the tail, thus inducing a mental numbness in others and so doing them injury. That is why we are told that "they had tails like scorpions," and next, that "there were stings in their tails," and that "their power was to hurt men." For a scorpion symbolizes a persuasiveness that induces a numbness in the intellect (no. 425).

To be assured that the tail is an extension of the brain through the spinal column to its final point, ask any anatomist and he will tell you. Or look at a dog or some other fierce animal that has a tail, and if you treat it kindly and make yourself agreeable to it, you will see its stiffened back soften and its tail move in a corresponding manner. But on the other hand, if you annoy it, its backbone stiffens.

[2] The primary tenet of the intellect that is assumed as a principle is symbolized by the head, and its final expression by the tail, also in the following passages:

...He will cut off head and tail from Israel... The elder and honorable man is the head; but the prophet who teaches lies is the tail. (Isaiah 9:14-15)

There will not be any work for Egypt that the head or tail... may do. (Isaiah 19:15)

Nothing else is symbolized by the dragon's seven heads and the tail by which it drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth, in Revelation 12:3-4; and also by the tails like serpents, having heads, with which they do harm, in verse 19 of this chapter.

Since the tail symbolizes the final element, and the final element embraces all the rest, therefore Jehovah said to Moses,

"...take (the serpent) by the tail." And he... caught it, and it became a rod... (Exodus 4:3-4)

The priests were also commanded therefore to remove the whole tail close to the backbone and to sacrifice it with the fat on the entrails, the kidneys, the intestines, and the liver (Leviticus 3:9-11; 8:25; 9:19, Exodus 29:22).

To be shown that the final element contains and embraces all the prior ones, see The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, nos. 38 65, and Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom, nos. 209-216 217-222.