Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 7803

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7803. With regard to the talking of spirits to the inhabitants of the planet Jupiter, there are spirits who chastise, those who instruct, and those who rule them. The spirits who chastise come to the left side of a person's body and lean round towards the back of it. Once they are there they draw from the person's memory all his deeds and thoughts; for spirits do this with ease, because on reaching a person they immediately enter into all his memory, 6192, 6193, 6198, 6199, 6214. If they find that he has behaved badly or thought wrongly they reproach him and also chastise him with pain in the joints of his feet or his hands, or with pain around the region of the epigastrium. Spirits can also do this with great skill when they are allowed to. When such spirits come towards a person they strike horror and fear into him; this is how one knows of their arrival. Evil spirits can strike fear when they approach someone, especially those who were robbers when they lived in the world. To enable me to know how those spirits act when they come towards a member of their planet one such spirit was also allowed to approach me. When he was near I was plainly seized by horror and fear; yet I did not shake inwardly with fear, only outwardly, because I knew he was one of their kind of spirits. I also saw him; he looked like a dark cloud with little moving stars in it, moving stars being a sign of falsities, but fixed stars a sign of truths. He came to my left side towards my back, and also began to reproach me because of my deeds and thoughts, which he drew from my memory and started to misconstrue. But angels who were also present put a stop to what he was doing. When he realized that he was with someone other than a member of his own planet, he began to talk to me, saying that when he went towards a person he learned every single thing that person had done or thought. He reproached that person severely too, and also chastised him with various pains.


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