320. So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. (6:8) This symbolizes an understanding of the Word destroyed as to both goodness and truth.

A horse symbolizes an understanding of the Word (no. 298), and paleness symbolizes a lack of vitality.

The Word lacks vitality for people who are without goods of life in accordance with doctrinal truths. For the Word in the sense of the letter is not understood apart from doctrine, and doctrine is not seen without a life in accordance with it. That is because a life in accordance with doctrine drawn from the Word opens the spiritual mind, and light from heaven flows into the mind, enlightening it and giving it the ability to see. The reality of this is not known by one who is acquainted with truths of doctrine, and yet does not live according to them.

It was the fourth living creature that displayed the pale horse because that living creature was like a flying eagle, and it therefore symbolized the Divine truth of the Word in respect to its concepts and the understanding they afford (no. 244). It showed, therefore, that the people now seen were without any concepts of goodness and truth from the Word, and without any understanding of them. And people of that character appear pale in the spiritual world, like people without life.