832. Genesis 8

1. And God remembered Noah, and every wild animal and every beast that was with him in the ark. And God made a wind pass over the earth, and the waters subsided.

2. And the springs of the abyss and the floodgates of heaven were stopped up, and the downpour from the sky was held back.

3. And the waters receded off the earth, going and coming back, and the waters disappeared at the end of one hundred fifty days.

4. And the ark came to rest in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat.

5. And the waters were going and disappearing till the tenth month; in the tenth [month], on the first of the month, the heads of the mountains appeared.

6. And it happened at the end of forty days that Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made.

7. And he sent out a raven, and it went out, going and coming back till the water dried up off the earth.

8. And he sent a dove out from him, to see whether the water might have lessened off the face of the ground.

9. And the dove did not find a resting place for the sole of its foot, and it returned to him, to the ark, because there was water over the face of the whole earth; and he put his hand out and took it and brought it in to himself, into the ark.

10. And he waited yet another seven days and proceeded to send the dove out from the ark.

11. And the dove returned to him at evening time, and look: the torn-off leaf of an olive tree in its mouth! And Noah realized that the water had lessened off the earth.

12. And he waited yet another seven days and sent a dove out, and it never returned to him again.

13. And it happened in the six hundred first year, in the beginning, on the first of the month, that the water drained off the earth; and Noah removed the roof of the ark and looked, and indeed the face of the ground had dried up!

14. In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth dried up.

15. And God spoke to Noah, saying,

16. "Go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you,

17. every wild animal that is with you, of all flesh, including the bird and the beast and every creeping thing creeping on the earth. Take them out with you, and let them swarm throughout the earth and reproduce and multiply on the earth."

18. And Noah went out, as did his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him,

19. every wild animal, every creeping thing, and every bird — everything creeping on the earth. By their families they went out of the ark.

20. And Noah built an altar to Jehovah and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

21. And Jehovah smelled a restful smell, and Jehovah said in his heart, "I will never again curse the ground on the human being's account, because what human hearts fabricate is evil from their youth. And I will never again strike every living thing as I have done.

22. Throughout all the days of the earth to come, sowing and reaping and cold and heat and summer and winter and day and night will not end."

959, 1983; Marriage Love 505:2; and True Christianity 80:1. [LHC, RS]

832. Summary

NOW comes the second series about the people of the new church, who are being called Noah, and about the state they are in from the time following their trials until their rebirth and beyond.

80. The fifth experience.

Once a satan was given leave to come up from hell together with a woman, and he approached the house where I was. On seeing them I shut the window, but carried on a conversation with them through it. I asked the Satan where he came from, and he said from the company of his own people.

I asked where the woman came from, and he made the same reply. She belonged to the crew of sirens. Their skill is by fantasy to put on every appearance of beauty and every adornment of dress. At one time they assume the beauty of Venus, at another the charm of countenance of a Muse, at another they deck themselves like queens in crowns and robes, and pace in regal fashion leaning on silver staves. Such women in the spiritual world are prostitutes and specialise in fantasy. They induce fantasies by thinking sensually, which blocks any ideas from a more inward mode of thinking.

I asked the Satan if she was his wife. 'What is a wife?' he replied. 'This is a term unknown to me and my community; she is my woman.' Then she roused her man's lewdness, a thing these sirens are skilled in doing. On feeling this he kissed her, saying, 'Oh my Adonis!'

[2] But to more serious matters. I asked the Satan what was his calling. 'My calling,' he said, 'is learning; don't you see the laurel wreath on my head? 'This his Adonis had conjured up by her magic arts and put on his head from behind.

'Since you come from a community,' I said, 'where there are schools of learning, tell me what you and your companions believe about God.' 'God,' he replied, 'is for us the universe, which we also call nature. Simple folk in our country call it the atmosphere, by which they mean the air; but the intelligent mean the atmosphere which is also the ether. God, heaven, angels and the like, the subject of many tales in this world, are idle words and fictions inspired by meteors, which many people here have seen flash before their eyes. Is not everything to be seen upon earth the creation of the sun? Every time it approaches in springtime are not insects born, with and without wings? Does not its heat make birds love each other and reproduce? And does not the earth, warmed by its heat, cause seed to sprout and produce fruits as its offspring? Does this not mean that the universe is God, and nature a goddess, and she as the wife of the universe conceives, bears, rears and nurtures these things?'

[3] I went on to ask what he and his community believed about religion. 'We who are educated above the ordinary level,' he replied, 'look on religion as nothing but a toy for the common people. The sensory and imaginative areas of their minds are surrounded with a sort of aura, in which religious ideas flit about like butterflies in the air. Their faith, which links these ideas into a sort of chain, resembles a silk-worm in its cocoon, from which the king of butterflies flutters forth. For the uneducated masses love images which rise above the bodily senses and the thoughts they engender, because they have a longing to fly. So they make themselves wings, so that they can soar like eagles and show off in front of the earth-bound, saying, 'Look at me!' We, however, believe what we see and love what we touch.' At this he touched his woman, saying, 'This I believe, because I see and touch it. But we throw all that sort of rubbish out of our windows of mica, and waft it away on a gale of laughter.'

[4] Then I asked his opinion and that of his companions on heaven and hell. He laughed and said: 'What is heaven but the ethereal firmament on high? What are angels but spots wandering round the sun? What are archangels but comets with their long tails, on which their company lives? What is hell but marshland full of frogs and crocodiles, which their imagination turns into devils? Everything but these ideas of heaven and hell is mere nonsense, thought up by some church dignitary to seek fame among an ignorant populace.'

He said all this exactly as he had thought in the world, unaware that he was living after death, and forgetful of everything he had been told when he first entered the world of spirits. Therefore even when asked about life after death, he replied that it was a figment of the imagination, but there might perhaps be some effluvium given off by the corpse in the grave in shape resembling a person, or something like the ghosts which some tell tales about, and this had led people to fantasise on the subject.

[5] On hearing this I could no longer stop myself bursting out laughing. 'Satan,' I said, 'you really are mad. What are you now? Are you not in shape like a person? Don't you talk, see, hear and walk? Remember that you lived in another world, which you have forgotten, and now you are alive after death, yet have been speaking exactly as you did before you died.'

He was given back his memory, and on remembering he was ashamed and cried: 'I am mad. I have seen heaven up above, and heard angels there speak things beyond description. But this was when I was a recent arrival. Now I shall remember this to tell the companions I left behind, and then perhaps they will be ashamed too.' He had it on the tip of his tongue to call them mad, but as he went down forgetfulness blotted out his memory, so that on arrival he was as mad as they were, and called what I had told him madness.

Such is the state of thought and conversation among satans after death. The name of satans is given to those who have convinced themselves of falsities until they completely believe them, and the name of devils to those who have fostered evils in their characters by living a wicked life.