247. The serpent's traveling on its belly means that the sensory level could no longer look up toward heavenly values as it had before, but only down toward bodily and earthly ones. This can be seen from the fact that in ancient times people used belly to symbolize the things that are closest to the earth, chest to mean things higher than the earth, and head to mean the highest things of all. So here it says that the sensory plane, which by its nature is the lowest plane of the human mind, would travel on its belly because it turned toward earthly things. In the Jewish religion too a tendency toward lower things was symbolized by pressing one's belly down to the ground and by sprinkling dirt on one's head. 1 David puts it this way:
Why do you hide your face, why forget our misery and our oppression? For our soul has bowed down to the dirt and our belly clings to the earth. Rise up as a helper to us and ransom us for the sake of your mercy. (Psalms 44:24-25, 26)
Here again we can see that when we turn away from Jehovah's face, our stomach begins to cling to the dirt and the earth.
The belly of the big fish that Jonah was cast into symbolizes the underground realm, 2 as a prophecy in the Book of Jonah shows:
From the belly of hell I shouted; you heard my voice. (Jonah 2:2)
In this verse, hell stands for the underground realm.
Footnotes:
1. For biblical references to sprinkling dirt (or dust) on one's head, see Joshua 7:6; 2 Samuel 1:2; 15:32; Lamentations 2:10; Ezekiel 27:30. [LHC]
2. The Latin phrase here translated "underground realm" is infera terrae, literally, "low areas of the earth." When the English phrase "underground realm" appears again at the end of the passage, it stands for a slightly different Latin phrase: terra infera, "the low earth." These Latin phrases are two of six similar, more or less interchangeable ways in which Swedenborg denotes "the underground realm," a low-lying area below the world of spirits (see note 3 in §0) but above hell. The other four phrases are:
1. that which Swedenborg uses most often, terra inferior, literally, "the lower earth," paralleling the Hebrew phrase אֶרֶץ תַּחְתִּי ('ereṣ taḥtî), which appears in Ezekiel 31:14, 16, 18;
2. terra inferiorum, literally, "the land of low places," paralleling the Hebrew phrase אֶרֶץ תַּחְתִּיּוֹת ('ereṣ taḥtiyyôṯ), which appears in Ezekiel 26:20; 32:18, 24;
3. inferiora terrae, literally, "low places of the earth," paralleling the Hebrew phrase תַּחְתִּיּוֹת אָרֶץ (taḥtiyyôṯ 'āreṣ), which appears in Psalms 63:9; 139:15; Isaiah 44:23; and
4. simply infera, "low areas."
The underground realm is an area for good people who are nevertheless strongly attached to false ideas. As Swedenborg describes the spiritual geography of the underground realm, it is surrounded below and on all sides by the hells themselves; the people there are unwittingly subject to the negative influence of the hells. Yet from above, it enjoys support from and contact with angels and heaven. In the underground realm, and particularly in pits within that realm (to which biblical mentions of "the pit" correspond), people undergo a process called "devastation" to disabuse them of their false notions. This involves sometimes lengthy, painful, shattering experiences, but afterward the people who undergo them are lifted up into heaven with a great sense of consolation and relief. See Arcana Coelestia, 4940-4950, 7090; Heaven and Hell 513 and its note a; Revelation Unveiled 845:2. [JSR]
