54. Male and female He created them. What 'male and female' is used to mean in the internal sense was very well known in the Most Ancient Church, but when among later generations the interior sense of the Word was lost, so too was this particular arcanum. Marriages gave them their highest forms of happiness and delight; and they used to liken to a marriage anything that could be likened to it, in order that from it they might feel the happiness of marriage. And because they were internal men they took delight solely in internal things. As to external things, they did no more with them than take them in with their eyes, but their thoughts involved what those things represented - so much so that external things meant nothing to them except insofar as they could reflect internal things in them, and in those internal things reflect celestial things, and in so doing reflect the Lord, who was to them everything. Consequently they reflected the heavenly marriage in those things, which, they perceived, was the source of the happiness in their own marriages. For this reason they called the understanding in the spiritual man Male and the will Female, and when the two acted as one, they called it Marriage. From that Church sprang the common usage of referring to the Church itself, because of its affection for good, as 'a daughter', and also 'a virgin' - as in Virgin of Zion, Virgin of Jerusalem - and 'a wife' as well. On these matters however see verse 23 of the next chapter, and Chapter 3:15.

377. Verses 7, 8. And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth animal saying, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with the sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the wild beasts of the earth.

"And when he had opened the fourth seal," signifies, prediction manifested still further: "I heard the voice of the fourth animal saying," signifies, out of the inmost heaven from the Lord: "Come and see," signifies attention and perception. "And I looked, and behold a pale horse," signifies not any understanding of the Word, from evils of life, and then from the falsities thence; "and he that sat upon him," signifies the Word; "his name was Death, and Hell followed with him," signifies eternal damnation; "and power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill," signifies deprivation of all good, and thence of truth, from the Word, and thence in the doctrine of their church derived from the Word; "with the sword," signifies, by falsity; "and with hunger," signifies, by deprivation, lack, and ignorance of the knowledges of truth and good; "and with death," signifies the extinction thereby of spiritual life; "and with the wild beasts of the earth," signifies evils of life, or lusts and the falsities thence arising from the love of self and of the world, which devastate all things of the church with man.