448. And I heard the number of them. This symbolizes their character perceived, that it was as described hereafter.

To hear means, symbolically, to perceive. A number symbolizes the character of a thing or a state (nos. 10, 348, 364). It is the character of these people's state as described hereafter because that is what is now described in the following verses, which is why it begins, "And thus I saw."

7645. 'And one will not be able to see the land' means a darkening of the whole natural mind as a result. This is clear from the meaning of 'not being able to see as a darkening, that is, the failure to perceive truth; and from the meaning of 'the land of Egypt' as the natural mind, as above in 7644. But a brief statement must be made to explain why, when the outermost contents of the natural are laid waste, the whole natural mind is darkened as a result. The interior parts of a person's mind reach down into and are based on its lowest and outermost levels, where all its consecutive parts reside together. When there is nothing on the lowest levels but falsity and evil, truths and forms of good flowing from the interior parts into those lowest levels are flowing into evils and falsities there, as a consequence of which they are themselves turned into evils and falsities there. Therefore nothing but falsity and evil is apparent in the whole of the natural. This is what a darkening of the whole natural mind as a result, meant by 'not being able to see the land', describes. Here also is the reason why, when they have undergone vastation, hellish spirits are limited to the outermost parts of the natural. The inferior light they have, which is called the light of understanding, is not unlike the inferior light of this world, which in the next life becomes utterly thick darkness at the presence of the superior light of heaven. Since the outermost part of the natural, called the level of the senses, is filled with illusions and resulting falsities, and with self-indulgence and resulting evils, 6844, 6845, and since the hells are lit by that inferior light, the Lord provides a person when he is being regenerated with the ability to be raised above that level of the senses to more internal levels, see 6187, 6317, 7442.