Selection from Arcana Coelestia ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
The hells of those who have passed their lives in
ADULTERIES AND LASCIVIOUSNESS
Also concerning the hells of
THE DECEITFUL, AND OF SORCERESSES
Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.(Prov. 27:22)
And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon. So David and all the people returned unto Jerusalem.
(2 Sam. 12:31)
Moreover there [were] axes of iron, concerning which [it is spoken] in the same place, 2 Sam. 12:31. By the axes of iron are understood instruments, which similar infernal [spirits] also in the same place make use of through phantasy. The axes are like the broad [ones] employed by executioners, and they do not amputate or kill man, but open him in the belly, and draw out his intestines, and take them out with the broad axe of iron, and roll them about, and so draw them out until every intestine has been extracted.By their phantasies 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; not to mention other direful cruelties.(Spiritual Diary 2639)
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 delight of their life in adulteries, who also are for the most part cruel. Sometimes their delight 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; for it is their delight 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.
In the plane of the soles of the feet, at a considerable distance in front, there is a hell which is called Gehenna, where are shameless women who have placed all their delight in adulteries, and have regarded adulteries as not only permissible but honorable, and who under various pretenses of honorableness have allured the guileless and innocent to such things. A kind of fiery glow 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 bones and hair. Sometimes this hell is changed into direful 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; but 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, by which 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.
There were some, of both sexes, from the so-called Christian world, who in their life of the body had believed adulteries to be not only lawful but even holy, and so held collective marriages, as they impiously call them, under a show of sanctity. I saw that they were sent into Gehenna; but when they came there a change took place; the fieriness of Gehenna, which is ruddy, at their coming became whiter; and it was perceived that they could not agree together. 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 from there would be conveyed into a new Gehenna appointed for them. There was heard in Gehenna a kind of hissing that cannot be described; but the hiss or buzz of Gehenna was grosser than that of those who had defiled holiness by their adulteries.
Those who ensnare by pretended regard for conjugial 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 pretenses the more safely commit adultery, are in a hell under the buttocks, in the filthiest excrement; and are vastated until they become as bones, because they rank with the deceitful. Such do not even know what conscience is. I have talked with them, and they were surprised that anyone should have conscience and should say that adulteries are contrary to conscience. They were told that it is as impossible for such conscienceless adulterers to come into heaven as it is 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 delight is turned into a 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 a life of such a character that when they lose it, very little of truly human life remains.
They who are possessed with the lust of defloration, and who find their greatest delight in virginities and the theft of them, without any purpose of marriage and offspring, and who when they have robbed virginity of its flower, afterwards forsake, loathe, and prostitute their victims, suffer the most grievous punishment in the other life, because such a life is contrary to order - natural, spiritual, and celestial; and because it is not only contrary to conjugial love, which is held in heaven to be most holy, but is also contrary to innocence, which they violate and kill by enticing the innocent, who might otherwise be imbued with conjugial love, into a meretricious life; for it is the first flower of love which introduces virgins into chaste conjugial love, and conjoins the minds of a married pair. And because the holiness of heaven is founded in conjugial love and in innocence, and such men are therefore 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. Afterwards they appear to themselves to be under the belly of the 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 desires. Respecting their offspring I have been told that they are worse than other children, because they derive from the father something of a like heredity; and therefore children are rarely born from such intercourse, and those that are born do not remain long in this life.
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 or think and speak differently in the other life; and as there their thoughts are communicated, and sometimes come forth into obscene representations before other spirits, they give offense. Their punishment is, that in the presence of the spirits whom they have offended they are thrown prostrate and rapidly rolled over and over like a roller from left to right, and then transversely in another position, and so in another-naked before all, or half naked, according to the nature of their lasciviousness, and at the same time they are inspired with shame. Then they are whirled about by the head and feet, horizontally, as upon an axis. Resistance is induced, and at the same time pain; for there are two forces acting, one whirling around, the other backward, so that the punishment is attended with the pain of being torn asunder. After undergoing these penalties, an opportunity is afforded the miserable sufferer of withdrawing himself from the sight of other spirits, and a sense of shame is instilled into him. Yet there are those who try him to see whether he still persists in such things; but so long as he is in a state of shame and distress he is on his guard. Thus he seems to himself to be hidden, although they know where he is. This punishment appeared in front, at some distance.
There are also boys, youths, and young men who from the madness and hot desire of their age have conceived abominable principles: as that wives, especially those that are young and beautiful, ought not to be for a husband, but for themselves and their like, the husband remaining only head of the household and educator of the children. These are distinguished in the other life by the boyish sound of their speech. They are behind at some height there. Those of them who have confirmed themselves in such principles, and in actual life conformable thereto, are grievously punished in the other life, by having their joints put out of place and back again, or twisted one way and the other, by spirits who can by their art induce upon them the phantasy of being in the body, and at the same time make them feel bodily pain. By these violent alternations, together with their struggles in resistance, they are so rent that they seem to themselves as if dismembered and torn to bits, with frightful pain; and this time after time, until being struck with horror at such principles of life they cease to think in that way.
They who beguile men by subtle deceit, wearing a pleasant face and manner of speech, but concealing envenomed guile within, and thus captivating men for the purpose of ruining them, are in a hell more dreadful than the hells of others, even more dreadful than the hell of murderers. They seem to themselves to live among serpents; and the more pernicious their deceit has been, the more dreadful and venomous and the more numerous the serpents appear which surround and torment them. They know not but that they are serpents; they feel similar pains and similar torments. Few perhaps will believe this, but yet it is true. These are they who practice deceit with premeditation, and feel therein the delight of their life. The punishments of the deceitful are various, each according to the nature of the deceit. In general such persons are not tolerated in societies, but are expelled; for whatever a spirit thinks, they who are near instantly know and perceive; thus they perceive whether there is anything of deceit, and what sort of deceit. Therefore, being at length expelled from societies, they sit in solitude; and they then appear with a broad face, the breadth equaling that of four or five faces of others, and with a broad fleshy cap turning white, sitting as images of death, in torment. There are others who are deceitful by nature, thus not so much from premeditation, and not clandestinely under a feigned countenance. They are known at once, and their thought is plainly perceived. They even boast of it, as if they would appear shrewd. These have not such a hell. But, by the Divine mercy of the Lord, more will be said about the deceitful hereafter.
There are women who have lived in the indulgence of their natural inclinations, caring only for themselves and the world, and making the whole of life and the delight of life to consist in outward decorum, in consequence of which they have been highly esteemed in polite society. They have thus, by practice and habit, acquired the talent of insinuating themselves into the desires and pleasures of others, under the pretense of what is honorable, but with the purpose of gaining control over them. Their life therefore became one of dissimulation and deceit. Like others they frequented churches, but for no other end than that they might appear virtuous and pious; and moreover they were without conscience, and very prone to shameful acts and adulteries, so far as these could be concealed. Such women think in the same way in the other life, knowing not what conscience is, and ridiculing those who speak of it. They enter into the affections of others, whatever these may be, by simulating virtue, piety, pity, and innocence, which are their means of deceiving; but whenever outward restraints are removed, they rush into things most wicked and obscene.
These are the women who become enchantresses or sorceresses in the other life, some of whom are those called Sirens; and they there become expert in arts unknown in the world. They are like sponges that imbibe nefarious artifices; and are of such talent that they quickly put them in practice. The arts unknown in this world which they learn in the other are these. They can speak as though they were in another place, so that their voice is heard there as from good spirits. They can as it were be with many at the same time, thus persuading others that they are as if present everywhere. They can speak as several persons at the same time, and in several places at the same time. They can turn aside what flows in from good spirits, even what flows in from angelic spirits, and in diverse ways pervert it instantly in favor of themselves. They can put on the likeness of another, by the ideas of him which they conceive and fashion. They can inspire anyone with an affection for themselves, by insinuating themselves into the very state of another's affection. They can withdraw suddenly out of sight, and escape unseen. They can represent before the eyes of spirits a white flame about the head, which is an angelic sign, and this before many. They can in diverse ways feign innocence, even by representing infants whom they kiss. They also excite others, whom they hate, to kill them (for they know they cannot die), and then divulge it and accuse them of murder.
They have called up out of my memory whatever of evil I have thought and done, and this most skillfully. While I was asleep they have talked with others, just as if from me, so that the spirits were persuaded of it, thus of things false and obscene. And many other arts they have. Their nature is so persuasive that no room is left therein for any doubt; therefore their ideas are not communicated like those of other spirits. And their eyes are like those ascribed to serpents, seeing and paying attention every way at once. These sorceresses or sirens are grievously punished, some in Gehenna, some in a kind of court among snakes; some by wrenchings and various collisions, attended with the greatest pain and torture. In course of time they are separated from all society and become like skeletons from head to foot.
(Arcana Coelestia 824-831)
* The Swedenborg speaks of places in the spiritual world as being situated in accordance with their correspondence to the human body. [Reviser.]