3716. Sirens desire above all things to obsess man; but still [to do this upon] his interiors through the exteriors, which I experienced during two or three days. They labored especially to come into the senses, yea, into the taste, and those who have this desire in regard to the taste, are evidently of this quality, for thus they aim to penetrate into man's interiors. The adulterous and the cruel, concerning whom [I have spoken] before, desire to obsess man's exteriors, but these the interiors, which I learned from several days experience, by their wishing to enter into the taste, and seizing for themselves whatever [articles of food] I might eat, which are the correspondences of the interiors The corporeal memory also, thus whatever is of science and of knowledge, they wished to appropriate to themselves, [and] thus to obsess, and to return into the world through another; which obsessions are interior. Whether many persons are at this day thus obsessed may hence, it seems, be inferred: let a man examine himself [and see] whether he is in any internal bond, so that his thoughts shall abhor and turn away with loathing [from evil]; let him prevail upon himself to abstain in some way from the most wicked, abominable, and obscene practices, inwardly or as to his thoughts, and let him then consider whether they are merely external bonds that restrain him, which, if they were removed, he would desire, without the fear of the law, to perpetrate them, and would perpetrate them - if he is such a man, then he is inwardly obsessed by such sirens, which obsession prevails at this day, whereas with the Jews, and in the time of the Lord, obsession was external.