3699. CONCERNING SIRENS AND MAGICAL ARTS. Sirens in the world are those who have lived indulgent to their vein, wholly absorbed in the world, and reaping their highest enjoyment from the love of self; and because thus captivated by worldly things, while yet in civil society they wish to be deemed of a different character, they have placed their entire life in decorum. Consequently from actuality and habit thence, they have contracted the ability of appearing outwardly [to advantage]; moreover, by showing off the decorous in a thousand different modes they have aimed to insinuate themselves into societies; so also by a feigning of the honest, and even of the pious, when it would serve their purpose - anything in fact that would enable them to ingratiate themselves into societies where they could, at length exercise a predominant influence, so that their life has been a life of dissimulation. Thus they appear outwardly honest, as much from decorum as from assuming a feigned character. Like others also they frequent churches, and mingle in the rites, but still they are without conscience as regards the honest, the good, and the true, being inwardly wholly solicitous for themselves alone, while outwardly they pretend [to act] for the good of others, and because thus acting without conscience, or from the interior man, and being more prone to enormities than others, they esteem adulteries as nothing, in the life of which they live so far as the fact can be concealed from others, and they can make a reputable appearance before the world and its upright societies. As they make nothing of adulteries, so of course of all other evil loves.