3206. CONCERNING GEHENNA. ((((Gehenna appears to those who rush [appellunt] thither, as a fire; and indeed that it is like a fire was granted [me] to know from the heat that flowed thence into my face. Spirits said, and lamented, that such offensive smell [foetor] exhales thence from burnt bones and hairs, as it were, so that they could not endure it. Something of it was also brought to me, but I felt little of it. The most deceitful are there, especially sirens, who by a species of piety enter the minds of others, and most deceitfully delude and seduce [mislead] [them], so that never can anyone resist unless the Lord protect him; companies [phalanges] of sirens flew out of thence, and were perceived through [per] the hairs and topmost [supremum] skin of my head, which they caused to quiver [tremiscenter movebant]. These are also such as esteem the conjugial [principle] as of no account, [being] in the greatest [summa] persuasion, that it is of no account, [and] so regard adulteries as proper. Again, there came a blast [afflabat] thence to the nostrils, like the offensive smell [foetor] of bones and hairs, together with heat. Such [spirits] greatly persecute the innocent, and entice them to lusts, harlotries, and finally to adulteries, under the pretext of propriety [honesti]. There also are those principally who were reputed in the world as leading a becoming life, [also] a few of the lower sort; and they there feel sweetness as if in their atmosphere, which is of such a nature; but afterwards it is changed into dreadful serpents, that bite and devour their breasts and genital members, as they report to me. I have heard them thence, when only a few serpents begin to arrive there [es tangere], [saying] that they care for nothing, because they prefer death to losing the pleasantness of that atmosphere: with such most disgraceful, lustful [venera] frenzy are they smitten. - 1748, September 19.))))