4793. Because taste corresponds to a perception of and affection for knowing, understanding, and becoming wise, and because a person's life is contained within that affection, no spirit or angel is therefore permitted to enter a person's taste, for if the spirit or angel did so he would be entering the life present inherently in that person. Yet wandering about there are spirits belonging to the hellish crew who are more lethal than any others. Because during their lifetime these spirits became addicted to entering a person's affections so as to cause harm, they also retain that desire in the next life. They endeavour in every way to enter a person's taste, and once they have done so they take control of him interiorly, that is to say, of the life belonging to his thoughts and affections; for as has been stated, these correspond, and things which correspond act as one. Very many people are under their control at the present day, for at the present day interior obsession takes place, but not exterior obsession as in former times.
[2] Interior obsession is the work of this kind of spirit. The nature of it may be seen if people pay attention to their thoughts and affections, above all to their inward intentions which they fear to reveal and which with some are so insane that if they were not kept in check by external restraints - which are position, material gain, reputation, fear for their life and of the law- they would plunge more than the obsessed themselves into murder and pillage. Who these spirits are, and what they are like, who obsess such persons interiorly, see 1983.
[3] To enable me to know all about it, those spirits were allowed to try and enter my own taste, which they strove to do with utmost endeavour. At that time I was told that if they did indeed penetrate my taste they would also take control of me interiorly, because taste is dependent through correspondence on what exists interiorly. But they were allowed to do it solely to enable me to know all about the correspondence of taste; for they were driven away from there in an instant.
[4] Those lethal spirits attempt above all to dissolve all internal restraints, which are the affections for what is good and true, right and fair; fear of God's law; and a sense of shame at doing harm to society and one's country. Once those internal restraints have been dissolved a person is obsessed by spirits of this kind. But if they cannot thus gain entrance to a person interiorly by their persistent effort to do so, they then attempt to enter by the use of magical devices which are many in the next life, totally unknown in the world. By these devices they debase the facts known by the one they possess and use only those which give support to their foul desires. Obsession like this is inevitable unless a person has an affection for good and consequently has faith in the Lord.
[5] I was also shown how those spirits were driven away, namely as follows: When they thought they would penetrate the interior parts of the head and brain, they were removed through the channels there along which waste matter is drained away to the external parts of the skin. Then they seemed to be ejected into a trench full of liquid filth. I was told that such spirits correspond to tiny holes full of filth on the surface of the skin where scabies occurs, so that they correspond to scabies.
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