824. CHAPTER 8

THE HELLS — continued

Here, the hells of people who have gone through life committing adultery and acts of unrestrained lust; also the hells of deceivers and witches.

Beneath the heel of the right foot there is a hell where there are people who have taken delight in being cruel and at the same time in committing adultery. They have felt in such behaviour the chief joy in their lives. It is a surprising fact that people who have been cruel during their lifetime have also been the worst adulterers. Such is the nature of the people who inhabit that hell. There they carry out acts of cruelty by unmentionable methods. By means of their delusions they make vessels for themselves resembling those in which herbs are crushed to bits, and also crushing instruments, with which they crush and torment whomever they can. They also so to speak make broad axes for themselves, like those used by executioners, and drilling tools as well, which they use mercilessly on one another, in addition to other dreadful acts of cruelty. In that place are some of the Jews who in the past treated gentiles in this cruel fashion. And today this hell is growing, chiefly from persons who belong to the so-called Christian world and who have found all the joy of life in committing adultery, and who too are for the most part cruel people. Sometimes their joy is converted into the stench of human excrement which is given off voluminously when this hell is opened up. I have smelt it in the world of spirits and have collapsed practically unconscious as a result of it. That foul stink of excrement by turns invades hell and then leaves off. It is the joy they take in committing adultery which is converted into so foul a stink. In the process of time, having spent a definite period of time with such things, they are left all alone, living in torment and becoming like hideous skeletons, though they are still living.

8237. 'And Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore' means the sight of the damned dispersed this way and that. This is clear from the meaning of 'seeing' as the sight or catching sight of something; from the representation of 'the Egyptians' as those steeped in falsities arising from evil; from the meaning of 'the dead' as the damned, dealt with in 5407, 6119, 7494; and from the meaning of 'the seashore' as round about the outermost parts of hell. 'The shores' of something are plainly its outermost parts; and it has been shown previously that 'the sea' means hell. So it is that 'seeing them dead on the seashore' means the sight of the damned dispersed this way and that.

[2] Since the expression 'the sight of the damned' is used some explanation of what is implied by it is called for. Those in any one hell are not visible to the inhabitants of any other hell, not even to those in the nearest or immediately neighbouring hell, since they have been completely separated from one another. But they are visible to those in heaven, as often as the Lord pleases; for the Lord rules the hells too, by means of angels to whom the ability is given to see, from the place where they are, everything happening there. This is done to the end that in hell too order may exist, and also to the end that no one may do violence to another beyond the permitted limit. This function is entrusted to angels, and through it they exercise control over the hells. Sometimes good spirits as well are allowed to see into the hells and witness what is going on there; for it is quite in order for things on lower levels to be seen from a higher one, but not for those on a higher level to be seen from lower ones. Thus the hells and those who are there can be seen by those in heaven, but not vice versa. Consequently forms of evil can be seen from good, but not forms of good from evil, since good is higher and evil lower.