Spiritual Experiences (Buss) n. 1203

Previous Number Next Number Next Translation See Latin 

1203. Because this is damnable, they are for such a time separated from heaven; and when they live to the end of their life in the desire of venery alone, not of true conjugial love, and so die, they are grievously punished after death. For there are spirits who speak in a quadrupedal, as it were, pulsatory manner but more quickly and volubly than the others, who coming to the provinces of the generative organs in the man or spirit, investigate whether they are of such a quality; and when they find any that are such, they sink down from that province with the spirit or soul to a middle depth, in front, a little away from the median line opposite to the inmost heaven. They told me that they are there laid on their back on linen clothes, so that their head hangs downwards, and their breasts are as it were opened, and they are cruelly treated. But I did not see their punishment, except for this, that they are then inverted with the head downwards, and their exterior or corporeal things are drawn forth, so that they appear drawn upwards in long series; their interiors that is to say, their spiritual part however, are led upwards, and thus [they are divested] of that profane cupidity of practicing venery solely for the sake of lust alone, without any desire for offspring. For they are in this manner [as it were] killed by those spirits who say that they desire to kill them, for such is the "animus" of those spirits that they would kill such persons, wherefore they lay them on their back, and as it were cut them up with knives. The souls also suppose that they are being killed, but in this way they are divested of that cupidity.


This page is part of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church