38. The hell of those who were from the Most Ancient Church, is more atrocious than all other hells. It consists of those who in the world believed themselves to be as God, according to the deceitful utterance of the serpent (Gen. 3:5); and those are deeper in that hell who, from the fantasy that God had transfused His Divinity into men, persuaded themselves that they altogether were gods, and so that there was no longer a God in the universe. In consequence of that direful persuasion, a stinking smoke is exhaled from that hell, which infects the adjacent places with so baleful a contagion, that when anyone approaches, he is at first seized with such a mad delirium, that presently, after some convulsive struggles, he seems to himself to be in the agonies of death. I saw a certain one, in the vicinity of that place, lying as it were dead; but, on being removed thence, he revived. That hell lies in the middle region at the south, surrounded with ramparts, and on which stand some who shout out in a loud stentorian voice, "Approach no nearer." I have heard from the angels who are in the heaven above that hell, that the evil demons there appear like serpents twisted into inextricable folds, which is a consequence of their vain devices and incantations, by which they deluded the simple into admitting that they are gods, and that there is no God beside them. The ancients, who wove all things into fables, meant these by the "giants," who besieged the camp of the gods, and whom Jupiter cast down by his thunderbolts and thrust under the fiery mountain Etna, and who were called "Cyclopses." They also called the hells of these, "Tartarus," and the "pools of Acheron;" and the deeps there, "Styx," and those who dwelt there, "Lernaean Hydras," and so forth.