“Eden” by itself stands for love, in most cases the love that comes from the Lord and our love for the Lord, which is the highest human love of all. Of course, “Eden” is closely identified with “garden,” which means intelligence and the intellect. The “Garden of Eden,” then, means the state of love and wisdom with people who are in a pure state of love to the Lord. The Garden of Eden is referred to throughout Scripture, but is described in detail in Genesis 2:8-17. Those verses, understood on a spiritual level, show the nature of what the Writings call the Most Ancient Church, in which people of pre-historic times were elevated to a state of love to the Lord and communion with heaven, a degree of innocence and love that we cannot truly imagine in the modern world.

4798. From their faces one can also identify evil spirits, for all their desires or evil affections are written on their faces. One can also identify from their faces which hells they are communicating with. For the hells are very many, their genera and species of desires for evil making each one distinct and separate. In general when their faces are seen in the light of heaven they are practically devoid of life, pallid like those of dead bodies - some black, others grotesque. For those faces are forms of hatred, cruelty, deceit, and hypocrisy. But the inferior light in which those evil spirits dwell together deludes them into seeing one another differently.