440. And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but who in Greek has the name Apollyon. (9:11) This symbolically means that those caught up in falsities springing from lusts, who by a total falsification of the Word destroyed the church, are in a satanic hell.

The angel of the bottomless pit as king does not signify that some angel is king there, but that falsity reigns in it. For a king in its genuine sense symbolizes someone who possesses truths owing to an affection for goodness, and abstractly truth itself (no. 20); and in an opposite sense, therefore, a king symbolizes someone who is caught up in falsities owing to a lust for evil, and abstractly falsity itself. The bottomless pit symbolizes the satanic hell where such people reside (nos. 387, 421). A name symbolizes the character of someone's or something's state (nos. 81, 122, 165).

Abaddon in Hebrew is someone who destroys, or a destroyer, and likewise Apollyon in Greek, and this is falsity of the most fundamental sort, which by a total falsification of the Word has destroyed the church.

Abaddon in the Hebrew text means destruction in the following places:

Your truth in destruction? (Psalms 88:11)

Hell is naked before Him, and destruction has no covering. (Job 26:6)

For it will be a fire that consumes to destruction... (Job 31:12)

Destruction and death say... (Job 28:22)

Elsewhere hell and the devil are called destruction or a destroyer (Isaiah 54:16, Ezekiel 5:16; 9:1, Exodus 12:13), but by using another term.

122. "'And on the stone a new name written.'" This symbolically means that thus they will have a quality of good that they did not have before.

A name symbolizes the character of a thing, as may be seen in no. 81 above, and here therefore the character or quality of good. Good has all its character from the truths with which it is united, for good without truths is like bread without wine or food without water, which do not nourish. It is also like a fruit that contains no juice. Such goods appear, too, like trees stripped of their leaves, with wizened apples left hanging on them from autumn.

This, moreover, is the meaning of these words of the Lord:

...everyone will be salted with fire, and every sacrifice will be salted with salt. Salt is good, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves... (Mark 9:49-50)

The salt there is a desire for truth.