803. Including the bird and the beast and the wild animal and every crawling thing crawling on the earth symbolizes their self-deceptions. Birds symbolize an attachment to falsity, the beast symbolizes corrupt desires, the wild animal symbolizes sensual pleasure, the crawling thing crawling symbolizes bodily and earthly yearnings, and these different impulses are contained within the self-deceptions. The symbolism here is established by earlier demonstrations of the meaning of birds and beasts. A treatment of birds appeared at §40 and above at verses 14-15 of this chapter [§§776-778]. A treatment of beasts also appeared in the latter place [§774] and at §§45, 46, 142, 143, 246 as well.

Because birds symbolize matters of understanding, reason, and fact, they also symbolize the opposites of these — corrupt reasoning, falsity, and attachment to falsity.

These words portray the self-deceptions of a pre-Flood person in their entirety, specifically the feelings of attachment to falsity, corrupt desires, sensual pleasures, and bodily and earthly yearnings that their self-deceptions carried with them. All these impulses are inherent in a person's delusions, although no one realizes it. We tend to consider a false premise or conviction an irreducible unit, or else a single generalized concept, but we are very wrong. The situation is completely otherwise. Each of our feelings derives its manifestation and its nature from resources in our intellect and in our will. Our whole being, then, with all that we understand and all that we will, enters into every emotion that we have and in fact into the most detailed, minute aspects of our emotions.

This has become clear to me from a wealth of experience.

[2] To mention a single example, in the other life spirits can be recognized by just one of the individual ideas that go into their thinking. The angels even receive from the Lord an ability merely to look at a person and fathom immediately what the person's character is, without making the slightest mistake. ¹ This shows clearly that every one of our ideas, every one of our feelings, and indeed every shred of feeling in us, no matter how small, is an image and portrait of us. To put it another way, each of these contains an element — whether closely or distantly related — of every thought in our intellect and every impetus of our will.

These verses, then, describe the appalling convictions of a pre-Flood person and how they carry with them attachment to falsity, attachment to evil (corrupt desires), sensual pleasure, and bodily and earthly yearnings. All these impulses are inherent in such convictions, in which bodily and earthly yearnings predominate — and not only in those convictions as a whole but in the most detailed, minute aspects of them.

If we realized the extent of the consequences for one false assumption or one false persuasion, we would be horrified. Each is like an effigy of hell. But if we adopt it in all innocence or ignorance, the falsity of it is easily dispelled.

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142. Genesis 2:19-20. And out of the soil Jehovah God formed every animal of the field and every bird in the heavens and brought it to the human to see what he would call it. And whatever the human called the living soul, that was its name. And the human gave names to every beast and to the bird in the heavens and to every wild animal of the field; but for the human no aid was found that seemed to be his.

Animals symbolize emotions of a heavenly type; birds in the heavens symbolize emotions of a spiritual type. To put it another way, animals symbolize the contents of the will, birds the contents of the intellect. Bringing them to the human to see, so that he could call them by name, means granting humankind the ability to recognize the nature of those feelings; the fact that he gave them names means that people recognized the nature of the feelings. At the same time, even though they recognized the nature of the virtuous emotions and true concepts given them as gifts by the Lord, they still strove for autonomy, as expressed in the same words used before: he did not find an aid that seemed to be his.

40. The creeping animals that the waters breed symbolize facts that the outer self knows. Birds in general symbolize logical reasoning; they also symbolize matters that we truly understand, which belong to the inner self.

The following verses in Isaiah demonstrate the symbolism of the creeping animals of the waters — fish — as facts:

I came and there was no man. ¹ In my censure I will dry up the sea; I will make the rivers a desert; their fish will stink from lack of water and die of thirst; I will dress the heavens in black. (Isaiah 50:2-3)

[2] Evidence still clearer appears in Ezekiel, where the Lord describes a new temple, ² the general meaning of which is a new church and an adherent of the church or person reborn (since everyone who is reborn is a temple to the Lord).

The Lord Jehovah said to me, "That water, which will go out to the boundary toward the east and go toward the sea, will be channeled down into the sea, and the water [of the sea] will be cured. And it will come about that every living soul that creeps out in any place where the water of the rivers goes will survive; and the fish will be very numerous, because that water goes there and will be cured, and everything will live, wherever the river goes. And it will happen that the fishers will stand over it from En-gedi to En-eglaim; they will be there spreading their nets. Their fish will be of all kinds, like the fish of the great sea, very numerous." (Ezekiel 47:8-9, 10)

"Fishers from En-gedi to En-eglaim spreading their nets" symbolize people who are to teach the earthly plane of the human mind about the truths that make up faith. ³

[3] Passages in the prophets establish the fact that birds symbolize logical reasoning and concepts truly understood. In Isaiah, for example:

I am calling the winged creature from the sunrise, the man I planned on, from a faraway land. (Isaiah 46:11)

In Jeremiah:

I looked and there, not a human! And every bird of the heavens had fled. (Jeremiah 4:25)

In Ezekiel:

I will plant a cutting of the tall cedar, and it will lift its branch and make fruit and become a majestic cedar. And every bird of every wing will live under it; in the shade of its branches they will live. (Ezekiel 17: [22,])

And in Hosea, where the subject is a new church, or the regenerate person:

And I will strike a pact with them on that day — with the wild animal of the field, and with the bird in the heavens and the creature that moves on the ground. (Hosea 2:18)

The wild animal obviously does not mean a wild animal or the bird a bird, because the Lord is sealing a new pact with them.

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