1006. Happy is he that is awake, signifies the happy state of those who look to the Lord. This is evident from the signification of "happy," as being to be in a happy state; also from the signification of "being awake," as being to acquire for oneself spiritual life (See n. 187; and this is acquired by man's looking to the Lord, because the Lord is Life itself, and from Him alone is life eternal. When a man is in life from the Lord he is in wakefulness; but when he is in life from himself he is asleep; or what is the same, when a man is in spiritual life he is in wakefulness, but when he is in natural life separated from the spiritual he is asleep; and what a man then sees is like what he sees in a dream. To live this life is meant also by "sleeping and slumbering" in the Word (as in Matthew 13:25; 25:5, 6; Mark 4:26, 27; 13:36; Isaiah 5:27; Jeremiah 51:39, 57; Psalms 13:4; 76:7 elsewhere). This makes clear what is signified by "being awake."

(Continuation respecting the Sixth Commandment)

[2] But it is to be known that adulteries are more and less infernal and abominable. The adulteries that spring from more grievous evils and their falsities are more grievous, and those from the milder evils and their falsities are milder; for adulteries correspond to adulterations of good and consequent falsifications of truth; adulterations of good are in themselves evils, and falsifications of truth are in themselves falsities. According to correspondences with these the hells are arranged into genera and species. There are cadaverous hells for those whose delights were the violations of wives; there are excrementitious hells for those whose delights were the debauching of virgins; there are direful, slimy hells for those whose delights were varieties and changes of harlots; for others there are filthy hells. There are sodomitic hells for those who were in evils from a love of ruling over others from mere delight in ruling, and who were in no delight of use.

[3] From those who have separated faith from good works both in doctrine and in life there exhale adulteries like that of a son with a mother or a mother-in-law; from those who have studied the Word only for the sake of glory, and not for the sake of spiritual uses, there exhale adulteries like that of a father with a daughter-in-law; from those who believe that sins are remitted by the Holy Supper, and not by repentance of life, there exhale adulteries like that of a brother with a sister; from those who altogether deny the Divine, there exhale heinous things with beasts; and so on. Such hells are for them because of the correspondence with the adulterations or defilements of good and truth.

Wine played a key role in the ancient world, where safe, reliable water sources were scarce. It could be stored for long periods of time; if lightly fermented it was rich in sugar content; it was high in mineral content; it tasted good and generally had intoxicating qualities. Thus it was a valuable commodity and treated with reverence.

Wine is, of course, made from grapes. Grapes – sweet, juicy, nutritious and full of energy-rich fructose – represent the Lord's own exquisite desire to be good to us. That's powerful stuff! But grapes have a short shelf life; you might eat a bunch for a burst of energy, but you can't exactly carry them around with you for long-term sustenance. And so it is with desires for good: They tend to come to us in energizing bursts, but fade away fairly quickly. We need something more stable and lasting.

At some point in the distant past people figured out that if you squeeze the juice from the grapes and let it ferment, the result is a liquid that offers that stability: wine. The spiritual meaning works the same way; if we examine our desires for good, try to understand and think about how to apply them, what we will get are concepts about what good really is, how to recognize it and how to make it happen. And just like the wine, these ideas offer stability and portability. For instance, finding a wallet full of cash on the sidewalk might severely test our desire to be honest, but the idea that "you shall not steal" is pretty hard to shake.

Wine, then, on the deepest level represents divine truth flowing from divine goodness – the true principles that arise from the fact that the Lord loves us and desires everything good for us.

Wine comes in many varieties, though, and is used in many ways. Depending on context it can represent truth that arises from a desire for good on much more mundane levels. You want your children to be healthy so you make them brush their teeth even though they complain and it's a pain in the neck; the truth that brushing their teeth is good for them is wine on a very day-to-day level.

In some cases wine can also actually represent good things that arise from true ideas, something of a reverse from its inmost meaning. This happens when we are in transitional stages, setting higher ideas and principles above our less-worthy desires in an effort to reshape our actions. In that case our principles are the things being squeezed, with good habits the result.

There is also, of course, a darker side to wine. There is a good deal of debate about just how much alcohol wine had in Biblical times, and some of it may indeed have been more like concentrated grape juice. But there are also many references to wine and drunkeness, so some of it, at least, was fairly potent.

On a spiritual level, getting drunk on wine represents relying too much on our ideas, taking logic to such an extreme that we forget the good things we were trying to achieve in the first place.

(Odkazy: Apocalypse Explained 376 [1-40], 1152; Apocalypse Revealed 316, 635; Arcana Coelestia 1071 [1-5], 1727, 3580 [1-4], 5117 [7], 6377, 10137 [1-10]; The Apocalypse Explained 329 [2-4]; The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine 219)