Water is the basis of life, the essential ingredient in all drinks, and in the form of rivers, lakes and oceans supports life in myriad ways. The spiritual meaning of water is similarly basic: It represents truth in general, the ideas and concepts that guide us to do good things in our lives. In a more specific sense, it represents truth at its simplest level: the ideas we learn from the Bible and simply believe. Swedenborg refers to this as “natural” truth or “truths of faith.” They are not things we have explored, figured out or confirmed through life; rather they are things that we accept to be true because we’ve been told they are true. Like water, these ideas flow to us from other sources. And like water, they are ever-changing; to build something permanent we might look to the more permanent ideas represented by stones. But water is crucial to life, and so are these accepted ideas. Water can also, of course, be threatening. Rivers, lakes and oceans are inherently dangerous, and flooding was an ever greater threat in Biblical times than it is now. These aspects represent the opposite meaning – water as falsity, twisted ideas which support evil and can overwhelm and destroy us if we’re not careful.

478. The reason he is called Adam is that the Hebrew word Adam means man. But the fact that Adam was never used as a proper name, only Man, is quite clear from the consideration that both here and earlier he is spoken of in the plural and not in the singular, and that the term refers to both man and woman. The two together are called Man. Anyone may see from these words that both are included, for it is said, 'He called their name Man on the day in which they were created', and similarly in 1:26, 28, 'Let Us make man in Our image, and they will have dominion over the fish of the sea. This shows also that the subject is not about someone who, when created, was the first human being of all, but about the Most Ancient Church.