NOTE The marginal figures in this edition indicate the subdivisions of the paragraphs arranged for the "Concordance to the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg by the Rev. John Faulkner Potts.” GENESIS. CHAPTER EIGHTH. CONTINUATION CONCERNING THE HELLS. THE HELLS OF THOSE WHO HAVE PASSED THEIR LIVES IN ADULTERIES AND LASCIVIOUSNESS. ALSO THE HELLS OF THE DECEITFUL, AND OF CRAFTY WOMEN. 824. Beneath the heel of the right foot is a hell where they are who have delighted in cruelty, and at the same time in adulteries, and felt the greatest enjoyment of their life in them. It is remarkable that those who were cruel in the life of the body were also, more than others, adulterers. Such are those who are in this hell. Unspeakable methods of cruelty are practised there. By their fantasies they make themselves vessels as for braying, like those used for braying herbs, and pestles, wherewith they bray* and torture whomsoever they can; and also as it were broad axes, like those of executioners; and augers, with which they do cruel violence to one another; besides other dreadful things. Some of the Jews are there who in former times so cruelly treated the Gentiles. And at this day that hell is increasing, especially from those who come from the so called Christian world and have had all the enjoyment of their life in adul*See Prov. xxvii. 22. teries, who also are for the most part cruel. Sometimes their enjoyment is turned into the stench of human excrement, which exhales excessively when that hell is opened. I perceived it in the world of spirits, and at the time almost fell into a swoon from the effect of it. This noisome, excrementitious smell by turns fills the hell, and by turns ceases. It is their enjoyment from adulteries which is turned into such offensiveness. In process of time, when they have passed through a given period in such things, they are left alone and sit in torment, becoming like unsightly skeletons, but still living. 825. In the plane of the soles of the feet, at a considerable distance forward, is a hell which is called Gehenna, where are shameless women who have placed all their enjoyment in adulteries, and regarded adulteries as not only permissible but reputable, and who under various pretences of uprightness have allured the guileless and innocent to such things. A kind of fiery glow as it were appears there, such as overcasts the sky from a great conflagration; and it is attended with fiery heat, as it was given me to feel by the warmth from it on my face; and there is a stench exhaled therefrom, as from burning of bones and hair. Sometimes this hell is changed into dreadful serpents, which bite them; and then they long for death, but cannot die. Certain women released therefrom came to me and said there was a fiery heat there; and that when they are allowed to draw near to any society of good spirits the heat is changed. to intense cold; and then burning heat and cold alternate with them, from one extreme to the other, and thereby they are miserably tormented. But yet they have their intervals during which they are in the heat of their fiery lust. But, as was said, their states vary. 826. There were some, of both sexes, from the so called Christian world, who in their life of the body believed adulteries not only lawful but even holy, and so held communist marriages, as they impiously call them, under a kind of sanctity. I saw that they were sent into Gehenna; but when they came there a change took place. The fiery heat of Gehenna, which was ruddy, at their coming became whiter; and it was perceived that they could not agree. This execrable troop was therefore separated and driven away into a region behind—into another world, it was said - where they would be immersed in stagnant pools, and thence into a new Gehenna which was for them. There is heard in Gehenna a kind of hissing that cannot be described. But the hissing or muttering of Gehenna was louder than that of those who defiled holiness by their adulteries. 827. Those who ensnare by pretended regard for marriage love and love for children, so deporting themselves that the husband shall have no suspicion but that his guests are chaste, guileless, and friendly, and under such and various other pretences the more safely commit adultery, are in a hell under the buttocks, in the filthiest excrement; and are wasted until they become as bones, because they are among the deceitful. Such do not even know what conscience is. I have talked with them, and they were surprised that any one should have conscience and should say that adulteries are against conscience. They were told that it is as impossible for such conscienceless adulterers to come into heaven as for fishes to rise into the air, or birds into the ether, because if they but approach they have a feeling of suffocation, and their enjoyment is turned into noisome stench; and that they cannot but be thrust down into hell, and become at last as of bone, with little life, because they have acquired to themselves such a life that, when they lose it, so little of truly human life remains. 828. They who lust for nothing more than to deflower virgins, and to whom virginities and the robbing of virginities are the greatest enjoyment, without any purpose of marriage and offspring, and who when they have robbed virginity of its flower afterwards forsake, loathe, prostitute their victims they who have led such a life suffer the most grievous punishment in the other life, because it is contrary to order, natural, spiritual, and celestial, and because it is not only against marriage love which is held in heaven to be most holy, but also is against innocence, which they violate and kill by enticing the innocent, who might be imbued with marriage love, into a meretricious life — for it is the first flower of love which introduces virgins into chaste marriage love and conjoins the minds of a married pair and because the holiness of heaven is founded in marriage love and in innocence, and they are such interior murderers. They seem to themselves to be sitting upon a furious horse, which tosses them up so that they are thrown from the horse, to the peril of their life as it seems such terror seizes them. Afterward they appear to themselves to be under the belly of a furious horse, and presently seem to themselves to go through the hinder part of the horse into his belly; and then suddenly it appears to them as if they were in the belly of a filthy harlot, which harlot is changed into a great dragon, and there they remain wrapped in torment. This punishment returns many times during hundreds and thousands of years, until they are imbued with a horror of such lusts. Respecting their offspring I was told that they are worse than other children, because they derive some such hereditary quality from the father; and therefore children are rarely born from such coupling, and those that are born do not remain long in this life. 829. They who in the life of the body think lasciviously, and give a lascivious turn to whatever others say, even to holy things, and this even in adult and old age when nothing of natural lasciviousness incites, do not desist and think and speak otherwise in the other life; and as there their thoughts are communicated, and sometimes come forth into obscene representations before other spirits, they give offence. Their punishment is, that in the presence of the |