Serpents represent what we know from our bodily senses, and the reasoning based on our senses. Since the people of the Most Ancient Church had become more external, they were susceptible to the lure of trusting their senses more than they trusted the leading of the Lord. That was particularly true for the sense of self the people had been given, which is represented by the woman. Eating of the trees in the garden represented taking in desires for good and true ideas from the knowledge granted them by the Lord.

So here, for the first time, we see people, from their own senses, actually questioning the Lord. From their senses they wished to explore the knowledge represented by fruit of the garden, but wondered why they were denied the tree of knowledge.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 194, 195, 196, 197)

576. The Malice and Unspeakable Skills of Hellish Spirits

Anyone who thinks deeply and knows anything about the workings of the human mind can see and understand how significantly superior spirits are to other people. In a minute, we can consider and turn over and decide in our minds more than we can express in speech or writing in half an hour. This shows how much better we are when we are in the spirit and therefore when we become spirits, since it is the spirit that thinks and the body is what the spirit uses to express its thoughts in speech or writing.

This is why people who become angels after death have access to indescribable intelligence and wisdom relative to the intelligence and wisdom they had while they were living in the world. While they were living in the world, their spirits were confined in a body and by that means were in the natural world. So when the spirit did think spiritually, the thoughts flowed into natural concepts that are relatively general, crude, and hazy. This means they are not open to the countless elements characteristic of spiritual thought. They also immerse them in the thickets of the cares of the world. It is different once the spirit has been freed from the body and has arrived at its own spiritual state, which happens when it crosses from the natural world to the spiritual world that is appropriate to it. We can see from what has already been said that its state in regard to thoughts and affections is far better than its former state. This is why angels think thoughts that are unutterable and indescribable, things that cannot come through to our natural thoughts. Yet in fact, every angel was born a person on earth and lived as such, and then seemed to himself or herself to be no wiser than anyone else.