425. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. This symbolizes their power to persuade that their falsities are true.

A scorpion symbolizes a deadly persuasiveness, and a scorpion of the earth a deadly persuasiveness in matters having to do with the church, as the earth symbolizes the church (no. 285). For when a scorpion stings a person, it produces a numbness in the limbs, and if it is not treated, death. Persuasiveness does something similar to the intellect. A scorpion, moreover, has the same symbolism in the following places:

...do not be afraid of them or... of their words; they are... thorny..., ...you dwell among scorpions... ...they are brazen-faced and hard-hearted... (Ezekiel 2:4, 6)

(Jesus said to the seventy He had sent out,) "Behold, I give you the power to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, even so that nothing whatever hurts you. (Luke 10:19)

6311. As has been stated, it is by that inferior light that hell sees, and it is by that light too that some people who are not so wicked see, that is to say, people who have not been avaricious, adulterers, or mere pleasure-seekers, but who have come to see by that light because they have not cultivated the rational degree of their mind. I have been allowed to see those spirits living in a kind of twilight. I saw them in a market-place, crowds of them, where they were bringing sacks containing raw materials; they were weighing them and carrying them away. Some sirens were not far away at that time, and I heard them saying that they wanted to be there because they could see people with their own eyes. For since sirens more than any others have been given to adultery and have also been opposed to everything celestial or spiritual, they are unable to see any other spirits except those who see by the inferior light of the senses. For the sirens themselves see by that kind of light.