959. One night I awoke from sleep and heard around me spirits who had wanted to ambush me while I lay asleep. Soon drifting off, I had a nightmare but then woke up again, and suddenly, to my surprise, found some scourging spirits at hand. They inflicted bitter punishment on the spirits who had plotted against me in my sleep, by giving them a kind of body — a visible one — and physical sensation and then torturing them by violently knocking their limbs back and forth. They also enhanced the pain by inducing resistance. The scourgers fully intended to kill the spirits, if they could, so they used extreme violence.

Most of them were sirens, who are described in §831. ¹ The punishment lasted a long time and spread out around me to include many other gangs. What amazed me was that all of the spirits who had ambushed me were tracked down, even though they wanted to hide.

Because they were sirens, they tried many tricks for escaping punishment, although they failed at the attempt. First they wanted to slip away to a more hidden plane of existence. Then they wanted to pretend they were someone else. Then they tried to divert the punishment to others by projecting their thoughts. Then they created the illusion that they were babies, whom the castigators were punishing, then good spirits, then angels. They attempted many other ruses too, but all in vain.

Although I was surprised to see how severely they were disciplined, I perceived that this kind of behavior is intolerable because of our need to sleep in safety, since if we could not sleep safely, the human race would die out. That was why the penalty simply had to be so harsh.

I sensed that the same events also occur in the vicinity of other people whom spirits endeavor to attack by stealth in their sleep, although the people themselves are unaware of it. If they are unable to talk with spirits and be present with them by way of an inner perception, they cannot hear, still less see, any such thing, despite the fact that similar occurrences are taking place around them.

The Lord guards us with utmost care when we sleep.

Footnotes:

831. There are women who lived a life of indulgence, focusing their energies on themselves and the world and centering their whole lives and all the pleasure of life on external decorum. As a result polite society valued them more than others. From practice and habit they learned to behave in socially acceptable ways in order to tap into others' desires and sensual pleasures. This they did under a pretense of respectability but with the desire to control. Consequently their lives became a sham and a lie. They attended church just as others did, but for no reason except to appear honorable and devout. Furthermore, they lacked any conscience and were very much drawn to immoral and adulterous conduct, so far as it could be kept hidden.

Their thinking remains the same in the next life. What a conscience is they do not know, and they scoff at people who use the word. They get inside others' feelings, whatever those may be, simulating honesty, piety, mercy, and innocence, and using these as covers for deception. Whenever outward restraints are removed from them, they plunge into the most criminal obscenities.

[2] In the other life, these women become sorceresses or witches, some of whom are called sirens. ¹ There they eagerly take up arts unknown in the world. They are like sponges that soak up wicked and cunning methods, for which they have such a talent that they put them directly into practice. The stratagems unknown in this world that they learn there are these:

They can throw their voices, so that it seems as though the sound were coming from good spirits somewhere else.

They can seem to be with several people at once, convincing others that they are present almost everywhere.

They can speak as though they were many people talking simultaneously and in many places at once.

They can deflect what flows in from good spirits and even from angelic ones and immediately twist it to their own advantage in a variety of ways.

They can impersonate another by seizing on the person's patterns of thought and mimicking them.

They can induce affection for themselves in anyone by worming their way into the actual emotions the person is feeling.

They can suddenly drop out of sight and turn invisible.

They can create the appearance of a dazzling white flame — the sign of an angel — around their head, and this in front of a large number of spirits.

They have different ways of pretending innocence, even causing babies to appear and kissing them.

And they inspire the people they hate to kill them (since they know they cannot die) and then publicly accuse them of being murderers.

[3] In my case, using consummate skill they dredged up out of my memory everything bad that I had ever thought or done. While I was sleeping, they talked to others exactly as if I were speaking, managing to dupe those spirits; and what they said was false and lewd. They have many other devices as well.

Their nature is so persuasive that not a trace of hesitation can be detected in it. For this reason their thoughts are not shared generally, as other spirits' thoughts are. Their eyes are like snakes' eyes, as people say, looking everywhere and projecting mental images in all directions.

These witches or sirens are punished severely, some in Gehenna, some surrounded by snakes in a kind of assembly hall. The punishment of some consists in being torn apart and buffeted in various ways, with the greatest pain and anguish. After a while they are ostracized and turn into seeming skeletons from head to toe.

More on this subject follows at the end of the chapter [§§938-946].