145. VI. THAT WITH THOSE WHO ARE MADE SPIRITUAL BY THE LORD, CONJUGIAL LOVE IS MORE AND MORE PURIFIED AND MADE CHASTE. The reasons are: 1. Because the first love, by which is meant the love before the nuptials and just after them, partakes somewhat of love of the sex, thus of an ardor belonging to the body, not yet moderated by the love of the spirit. [2] 2. Because man from being natural becomes spiritual successively; for he becomes spiritual according as his rational, which is midway between heaven and the world, begins to draw its soul from influx out of heaven. It does this in the degree that it is affected and gladdened by reason of wisdom (of which above, no. 130). So far as this takes place, man's mind is elevated into a superior aura which is the containant of heavenly light and heat, or, what is the same thing, of the wisdom and love wherein are the angels; for heavenly light acts as one with wisdom, and heavenly heat with love. As wisdom and its love increase with the partners, so conjugial love with them is purified; and since this takes place successively, it follows that the love becomes more and more chaste. This spiritual purification can be compared with the purification of natural spirits which is effected by chemists and is called defecation, rectification, castigation, cohobation, fractionation, decantation, sublimation; and the wisdom purified can be compared with alcohol, which is a spirit most highly rectified. [3] 3. Now because, regarded in itself, spiritual wisdom is such that it grows more and more warm with the love of becoming wise, and from this love takes increase to eternity, this being done as it is perfected as though by defecations, castigations, rectifications, fractionations, decantations, and sublimations; and because these operations are effected by withdrawals and abstractions of the understanding from the fallacies of the senses, and of the will from the allurements of the body; it is evident that conjugial love, whose parent is wisdom, is successively made more and more pure, thus chaste, in a like way. That the first state of love between married partners is a state of heat not yet tempered by light, but that it is successively tempered as the husband is perfected in wisdom and the wife loves that wisdom in her husband, may be seen in the Memorable Relation no. 137.