2967. CONCERNING THE DRAGON, CHANGED INTO THE FORM OF AN INTERIOR SPIRIT. Inasmuch as the dragon continually harbors malice [wickedness] and plots deceits against the faithful, and about two days before even plots with others a new deceit [to wit], that he wished to call out the cut-throats; therefore he fled to my back [posteriora], and was treated miserably by the cut-throats, and was there for about a day. Today he invents another deceit, in order to deceive the innocent, and so lead them away, to wit, that he might turn himself into the form of an interior spirit, which can easily be done, and so deceive under that form. Wherefore from permission, he was turned into such a form, into which, they say [he has not been turned] before, and so flies away on high towards anterior [regions], and, meanwhile, spoke with me through interiors; but inasmuch as myriads of such are evil, he was sent among them, and harshly treated, but, was liberated by the Lord. Therefore being reduced into [his] original form of an exterior spirit, such as he is, and was then; in order that I might know the state of those who are interior, when they resume the exterior form, he spoke with me, from his own form, and remembered nothing of those things which happened to him in the form of an interior spirit; so that he had forgotten everything, and if he had not known from me, that he has been of [in] such a sort [state], and that he has been amongst such evil spirits, and many [other things], he would not have known what he then did. From this, it can be evident that interior spirits, and angels, when they become spirits, are ignorant what was transacted in heaven, yea, that they have been spirits or angels.