2. FIRST INDEX.

ADULTERIES (Adulteria). (See also LASCIVIOUSNESS.)

Concerning the three degrees of adulteries (386-388) [Conjugial Love 432, 485-499]. (see DEGREES.)

Concerning adulterers seen as satyrs, in company with harlots, in a wood, and in a cavern there; and afterwards in a house, where they were conversing together about marriage, nature, and religion (Memorabilia 407) [Conjugial Love 521].

They who have no religion have not conjugial love; but lust which is worse than the lust of a wild beast (439-445) [Conjugial Love 79, 239, 240].

Of the closure of the mind with adulterers and the evil (various things, 562-565) [Conjugial Love 203].

Conjugial similitude and dissimilitude are not regarded with those who are in scortatory love (818-822).

Conjugial love and scortatory love are altogether opposite to each other (847-851) [Conjugial Love 423-429].

Concerning a young man who boasted of his whoredom; he was conducted into heaven; he was held by turns in externals and internals; and thus he saw opposite things (Memorabilia 852) [Conjugial Love 477].

An internal cause of coldness between consorts is, that the evil of whoredom is not believed to be sin; still more, if it is confirmed that it is not sin (913-917) [Conjugial Love 240].

A cause of coldness is, whoredom before marriage with the wives of others; also meretricious love and concubinage after marriage: in general, all libidinousness by which the conjugial perishes (918-928).

A cause of coldness between consorts is, that conjugial love is believed to be one with scortatory love (958-961) [Conjugial Love 247].

Whoredom is the genuine cause of divorce (985-993) [Conjugial Love 255].

Adulterers do not acknowledge God (Memorabilia 1300) [Conjugial Love 500].

Whoredoms in general correspond to falsifications of truth and profanations of good, by means of the Word (1399-1403) [Conjugial Love 77, 80, 517, 518].

Heinous adulteries within the prohibited degrees correspond to certain heresies confirmed by the Word (1405-1407) [Conjugial Love 519].

The internal and spiritual cause of conjugial love is to shun adulteries from religion (1602-1606) [Conjugial Love 147-149].

An external or natural cause of love and friendship between consorts, is abstinence from whoredom from any cause, excepting impotence only (1611-1614).

Concerning angels of innocence, who did not understand what scortatory love is (Memorabilia 1738) [Conjugial Love 444].

Concerning fornication (see FORNICATION, MISTRESS).

There are several kinds of adulteries; there are those that are mild, those that are grievous, and those that are most grievous (1876) [Conjugial Love 479, 487, 491, 493].

Simple adultery is that of an unmarried man with the wife of another, or of an unmarried woman with another's husband (1877-1879) [Conjugial Love 480].

It can be seen from reason that adultery is unjust (various things, 1778) [Conjugial Love 481].

Duplicate adultery is the adultery of a husband with the wife of another, or of a wife with another's husband (1880-1885) [Conjugial Love 482].

With whom there is such adultery (carious things, 1882) [Conjugial Love 483].

There is such in England (1883) [Conjugial Love 483].

Triplicate adultery is with blood-relations (1884, 1885) [Conjugial Love 484].

There are adulteries of will, and there are adulteries of deed; and adulteries of the will in themselves are like those that are actual when opportunity offers and various fears do not prevent (1886, 1887) [Conjugial Love 490].

There are actual adulteries which are of the will, and there are adulteries which are not thus of the will; the latter are mild, but the former grievous (1889-1892) [Conjugial Love 486, 491-494].

Causes that certain adulteries are not committed in man's interior will (1892) [Conjugial Love 486].

Adulteries that are actual and of the will make man natural, sensual, and corporeal, as to the will, its inclinations and affections (1894-1896) [Conjugial Love 495, 496].

Their effect is, that man does not acknowledge God, the Divinity of the Lord, the holiness of the Word, and consequently the other things that belong to the church and to religion (1897-1903) [Conjugial Love 497].

Adulterers have the capacity to understand, equally with those who are not adulterers; but they abuse their rationality to confirm their adulteries (1904-1908) [Conjugial Love 498, 499].

How adulterers converse in favor of adulteries and against marriages (1908) [Conjugial Love 500].

The opposition of conjugial love and scortatory love (1910-1947) [Conjugial Love 423-443].

Scortatory love is opposite to celestial love, because scortatory love is infernal, and conjugial love is heavenly (1911-1914) [Conjugial Love 429].

Scortatory love is in the enjoyment of evil and falsity, but conjugial love in the enjoyment of good and truth (1915-1919) [Conjugial Love 427].

The uncleanness of hell is from scortatory love, and the cleanness of heaven is from conjugial love (1920-1924) [Conjugial Love 430].

So with what is unclean and what is clean, in the church (1925-1931) [Conjugial Love 431].

Scortatory love begins from the flesh, but conjugial love from the spirit (1932-1938) [Conjugial Love 440, 441].

Scortatory love makes a man (homo) not man; yea, the man not a man: but conjugial love makes a man (vir) more and more a man; yea, the man more and more a man (1939-1942) [Conjugial Love 432, 433].

The delights of scortatory love are pleasures of insanity, and the delights of conjugial love are enjoyments of wisdom (1943-1947) [Conjugial Love 442, 443].

Correspondence of whoredoms and adulteries with the violation of spiritual marriage, which is that of good and truth (1950-2000) [Conjugial Love 515-520]. (See CORRESPONDENCE.)

Adulteries are infernal (various things, 1999) [Conjugial Love 356, 477, 483]. (See CORRESPONDENCE.)

Some things respecting adulterers and adulteries in hell (2000) [Conjugial Love 500, 520].

Concerning those who lived after the four ancient ages; they were whoremongers and adulterers (Memorabilia 2034) [Conjugial Love 79, 80].

Concerning the hells of adulterers, in the west; where they appear like lakes of fire and brimstone (Memorabilia 2035) [Conjugial Love 79, 80].

137. The second account:

While I was once thinking about conjugial love, I suddenly caught sight of two naked little children in the distance, with baskets in their hands and turtledoves flying around them. Then, as they came closer, they looked like naked little children modestly decked out in garlands of flowers. Their heads were decorated with little chaplets of flowers, and their breasts were adorned with sash-like wreathes of blue-colored lilies and roses that hung diagonally from their shoulders to their hips. And round about the two of them appeared what looked like a shared chain of little leaves woven together and interspersed with olives.

When they drew nearer still, however, they did not appear as little children or naked, but as two adults in the bloom of their early youth, dressed in robes and tunics of shining silk, with beautiful-looking flowers woven into them. Moreover, when they stood next to me, a springlike warmth wafted down from heaven through them with a sweet-scented fragrance, like the fragrance of first growth in gardens and fields.

The two were a married couple from heaven, and they then spoke to me. And because I was still thinking about the things I had just seen, they asked, "What did you see?"

[2] So I told them how they had first appeared to me as naked little children, then as little children decked out in garlands, and finally as people more grown up, dressed in garments decorated with flowers. I also told them how an atmosphere of spring had then instantly wafted over me with its delights.

They laughed pleasantly at this and said that on the way they had not appeared to themselves as little children or naked or wearing garlands, but the whole time had looked the same as they did now. Their appearing as they had at a distance, they said, represented their conjugial love, its state of innocence being represented by their appearing as naked little children, its delights by the garlands, and these same delights now by the flowers woven into their robes and tunics.

"And," they continued, "because you said that as we approached, a springlike warmth wafted over you with its pleasant aromas, like those from a garden, we will tell you why this was.

[3] "We have been married for centuries now," they said, "and we have remained continually in this bloom of youth in which you see us.

"At first our state was similar to the initial state of a maiden and youth when they first come together in marriage. Moreover, we believed at the time that that state was the most blissful state we could experience in life. But we were told by others in our heaven, and we afterwards perceived for ourselves, that it was a state of heat not yet tempered with light. We found that it is gradually tempered as the husband is perfected in wisdom and as the wife grows to love that wisdom in her husband, which is achieved through and according to the useful services which each of them performs in society with the other's help. We also found that new delights then follow as heat and light or wisdom and its accompanying love are tempered each with the other.

[4] "A seemingly springlike warmth wafted over you when we approached because in our heaven conjugial love and that warmth go hand in hand. For with us, warmth is love, and light with warmth joined to it is wisdom, and useful service is like an atmosphere which holds both in its embrace. What are heat and light without their containing medium? So likewise, what are love and wisdom without their expression in useful service? Without expression in useful service, there is no bond of marriage between the two, because the objective reality in which they exist is lacking.

"In heaven, one finds truly conjugial love wherever there is a springlike warmth. One finds truly conjugial love there because a springlike climate occurs only where warmth is joined to light in an even balance, or where there is as much warmth as there is light and vice versa. And we like to think that as warmth works its pleasure when accompanied by light and conversely light when accompanied by warmth, so love works its pleasure when accompanied by wisdom and conversely wisdom when accompanied by love."

[5] With us in heaven, the man said further, the light is constant, and we never experience the dusk of evening, still less darkness, because our sun does not rise and set like your sun but stands continually midway between a point overhead and the horizon, or as you would say, at an elevation of 45 degrees.

"That is why," he said, "the heat and light emanating from our sun result in perpetual spring, and this inspires a perpetual springlike state in those in whom love is united in even measure with wisdom.

"Through the eternal union of heat and light, moreover, our Lord inspires nothing that is not productive and useful. That, too, is why the sproutings of plants on your earth and the matings of your birds and animals take place in springtime. For the warmth of spring opens up their inner capabilities even to the inmost forces which are called their souls, stirring them, and imparting to them its own inclination to unite, and causing their reproductive instinct to come into its delight from a continual effort to produce fruits of use, which is the propagation of their kind.

[6] "In the case of human beings, however, there is a never-ending influx of springlike warmth from the Lord. Consequently they can experience the delights of marriage in any season, even in the middle of winter. For men were created to be receivers of light from the Lord, meaning the light of wisdom, and women were created to be receivers of warmth from the Lord, meaning the warmth of love for the wisdom in a man.

"That now is why as we approached a springlike warmth wafted over you with a sweet-scented fragrance, like the fragrance of first growth in gardens and fields."

[7] Having said this, the man gave me his right hand and took me to houses where married couples lived in the same flower of youth in which they were. And he told me that the wives, who now looked like young girls, had once been wrinkled old ladies in the world, and that the husbands, who now looked like adolescent youths, had once been decrepit old men there. They have all been returned by the Lord to the bloom of this youthful age, he said, because they loved each other and out of religion abstained from adulterous affairs as enormous sins.

He added as well that only those people know the blissful delights of conjugial love who reject the horrible delights of adultery. And no one can reject these except one who is wise from the Lord, and no one is wise from the Lord unless he performs useful services from a love of doing them.

I also caught sight then of the implements in their houses. These were all in heavenly forms, and they shone of gold that was practically ablaze with intermingled rubies.

482. 3. Double adultery is the adultery of a married man with the wife of another, or vice versa. We call this double adultery, because it is committed by each of the two and the covenant of marriage is violated on both sides. Therefore it is doubly more grave than the first kind.

We said above (no. 480) that following the pledge and covenant, the conjugial love of one man with one wife unites their souls; that this union is the love itself in its origin; and that adultery closes it off and stops it up, like one who closes off and stops up the source and flow of a spring. It is clearly apparent that the souls of the two unite when love for the opposite sex is confined to one of the sex - as happens when a young woman has pledged herself wholly to a young man and the young man conversely has pledged himself wholly to the young woman - from the fact their two lives unite, consequently their souls, because these are their life in its beginnings. This union of souls is possible only in monogamous marriages or marriages of one man with one wife; but not in polygamous marriages or marriages of one man with more than one wife; because in the latter love is divided, in the former united.

Conjugial love in this, its highest seat, is spiritual, holy and pure, because the soul of every person from its origin is celestial; consequently it receives influx from the Lord directly; for it receives from Him a marriage of love and wisdom or good and truth, and this influx makes the person a human being and sets him apart from animals.

[2] From this union of souls, where it is in its spiritual holiness and purity, conjugial love flows down into the life of the entire body and fills it with blessed delights, so long as its course remains open, as is the case in people who from the Lord become spiritual.

Nothing else closes off and stops up this seat, source, or wellspring of conjugial love and its flow but adultery, as is apparent from the Lord's words, that only on the ground of licentiousness is it lawful for one to divorce his wife and marry another (Matthew 19:4-9); and from this statement in the same passage, that whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery (Matthew 19:9). When, therefore, this pure and holy wellspring is stopped up, as described above, it is, like a jewel in excrement or bread in vomit, encompassed by foul pollutions that are altogether opposed to the purity and sanctity of that spring which is conjugial love. From that opposition arises coldness to the marriage, and in the measure of that coldness the libidinous lasciviousness of licentious love, which spontaneously consumes itself. This is a sinful evil, because it covers over something holy and thus obstructs its course into the body, allowing something profane to take its place and open its course into the body, so that from being heavenly the person becomes hellish.