4573. About the hells of the Sirens

What sirens are like has been described several times before [see the index]. These women are extremely malicious and have learned in the world how to simulate those who are good, as if they were angels. For the purpose of doing this they radiate good affections and thus slip in among simple spirits that relate to a person's outward qualities of thought or earthly characteristics. In this way they keep themselves in the world of spirits and can be forced out only with difficulty, for such things elevate evil spirits from hell for quite a long time and through such things they enter into people's thoughts and lead them entirely. Consequently, because they are of an inward nature, they are the very worst of spirits who take possession of a person's mind, from whom a person can never be defended except by the Lord. They act very stubbornly and fear nothing, trust in their own arts, and know how to slip in by labyrinthine gyres. They speak from these, sometimes in such a way that they are heard elsewhere than where are they really are, so that they are sought in vain. It has granted me to learn this by many actual experiences.

[2] They are of two kinds. Certain ones have the goal of ruling over others and over every society to which they can gain access, doing so by possessing and leading their thoughts. These women are the most annoying. The second kind does likewise but does not have such a wild obsession with ruling. They take freedom entirely away from those who want to have good thoughts and give freedom to those who want to have evil thoughts. These are very obscene women; they are sorceresses and are against everything good and true. Where this gang comes from has been explained before [cf. 3205 ff]. Their hell was in front at some distance toward the left there; the men who want to rule, a little toward the right, in various caverns. But I saw that their hells had been changed and moved to the back toward the left, rather deep down, from which they can never again break out and attack spirits and people on earth. They are there under a thick cloud which their tricks can in no way get through. They were forced in there in crowds of between fifty and a hundred sirens. This went on for many hours.

Above the hell, there is something like a maw with jaws that open. And the moment they arrived, it opened the maw, twisting and bending it like labyrinths into which they put themselves, and it swallowed them up and then thrust them deep under the disreputable earth there, from which they cannot emerge, this appeared to me in 1752, Aug. 5, 6., for they form snakelike connections, in which they fix themselves and then cannot be moved by others except by means of similar connections. Such it is in the other life.

4672. 'And he, still a boy' means at first. This is clear from the meaning of 'a boy' - when this expression is used to refer to a new Church - as at first, that is, as the first state of that Church. For the Church is like an infant, a boy, a man, and at length an old man, in that it passes as the individual does through its own phases of life. The Church also resembles the human being in general, and is actually called one. Furthermore, within the Church which is called 'a boy' because of the phase it is at, and which is by nature such that it soon becomes wayward, the Lord is present at first, both with those who teach and those who learn. But after a while they dissociate themselves from Him, as is also represented by the brothers throwing Joseph into the pit and selling him.

[2] Every Church which begins with faith is like this, but a Church beginning with charity is different. A Church that begins with faith is controlled solely by the understanding, and the understanding by that which has been inherited, namely self-love and love of the world. These loves induce the understanding to gather texts from the Word which support their desires, and to give its own interpretation to those which do not support them. It is different in the case of a Church which begins with charity. This Church is controlled by good, the Lord being within that good. For good which is the good of charity and love is a mediator between the Lord and faith; and unless it is there as a mediator between them no spiritual communication is possible. Without that intermediary He cannot possibly flow into faith. If evil exists there instead of good it drives away the Lord and casts aside or else perverts everything that is the Lord's and so the whole of faith; for faith comes from Him through good.