21. I have been informed that people of the Most Ancient Church, which existed before the Flood, were of such a celestial nature that they spoke with angels in heaven, and that they were able to speak with them through correspondences. As a result, the state of their wisdom became such that whatever they saw on earth, they thought of it not only naturally, but at the same time spiritually too, thus thinking as well in conjunction with angels.

Moreover, I have been informed that Enoch, mentioned in Genesis 5:21-24, with his contemporaries, made a collection of correspondences from those earlier people’s utterances and transmitted a knowledge of them to their posterity. It came about as a consequence that a knowledge of correspondences was not only known in many Asiatic kingdoms, but also cultivated, especially in the land of Canaan, in Assyria, Chaldea, Syria, and Arabia, and in Tyre, Sidon, and Nineveh; and that it subsequently spread from the coastal areas into Greece —only in Greece it was turned into fables, as can be seen from the writings of the earliest peoples there.