4545. 1 About the hells
Evil spirits are sometimes let down into the hells and led around, and in this way what they are like is shown to the angels. The spirits are taken around in accord with their desires which come from the life they had lived while in the world. I have witnessed this twice. Two were known to me in bodily life and were at the time esteemed men. By this I was also instructed concerning the location of the hells. The hells are under the earth.
[2] Beneath and in front of the left foot are adulterers, and the deeper down one goes, the more malicious and foul the adulterers are. Beneath the right foot are cruel adulterers.
[3] A little toward the front are robbers and criminals, and the deeper down they are, the more criminal they are. They dwell quite a long way off in sooty caverns filled with excrement.
Toward the front, also at a rather great distance, are the profane, especially toward the right where there is a murky cloud into which they are plunged.
脚注:
1. [NCBS Editor's Note: There's a big break in time that occurs here. Swedenborg was embarking on one of his journeys at this point. He continued recording his experiences in a separate octavo-sized manuscript that was probably more convenient to take along while he was traveling. It has sometimes been referred to as "the minor diary", since it was smaller, and J. Durban Odhner's translation calls it "Spiritual Experiences (Interim Diary)". We have adopted the title "Spiritual Experiences (Travel Diary)". Swedenborg continued the numbering series, so this diary begins with section 4545. After Swedenborg returned to Sweden, he picked up where he'd left off, with the quarto-sized manuscript again, and - instead of jumping ahead to the end of the numbering sequence in the Interim Diary, he started back at 4545 again, and went from there. So, there's a time gap, but no numbering gap, which can of course be confusing. To read them in sequence, readers will want to jump from SE 4544 to Spiritual Experiences (Travel Diary) 4545, and then from Spiritual Experiences (Travel Diary) 4792 back to Spiritual Experiences 4545.]
