Coronis, or Appendix,
to True Christian Religion

Emanuel Swedenborg

SECOND PROPOSITION (36 - 38)

36. (f) The sixth state of the men of this church, which was the elevation of the faithful to God after the Last Judgment, from whom a new heaven was formed, and the removal of the unfaithful from God from whom a new hell was formed. In the preceding propositions (from n. 10-13 and from n. 14-17), it was explained that after consummation, a Last Judgment was executed upon all who were of the four churches above named, and after this a new heaven and a new hell formed from them, and thus that there have been in this earth four judgments upon its inhabitants, and four heavens and hells formed from them; and it has been granted me to know, that both those heavens and those hells are so entirely separated from each other, that one can by no means pass out of his own into that of another. All these heavens have been described in the work on Conjugial Love; and, as the spiritual origin of love truly conjugial is from no other source than the marriage of the Lord and the church, thus from love of the Lord towards the church and of the church to the Lord (as was shown in that work from n. 116-131); and, as the most ancient people were in both these loves so long as they retained in themselves the image of God, therefore, I will transcribe from that work the following things respecting that heaven, to which I was at the time then granted admission; which are as follow:

37. "Once when I was meditating on conjugial love, the desire seized my mind of knowing what that love had been with those who lived in the Golden Age, and what it was afterwards in the succeeding ones called Silver, Copper and Iron. And, as I knew that all who lived well in those ages are in the heavens, I prayed to the Lord that it might be permitted me to converse with them and be instructed.

"And, lo! an angel stood by me, and said, `I am sent by the Lord to be your guide and companion; and first I will lead and accompany you to those who lived in the first era or Age, which is called the Golden.' (The Golden Age is the same as the age of the Most Ancient Church, which is meant by `the head of good gold,' on the statue seen by Nebuchadnezzar in a dream (Dan. 2:32), of which we have spoken before.) The angel said, `The way to them is difficult; it lies through a dense forest, which no one can traverse unless a guide be given him by the Lord.'

[2] "I was in the spirit, and girded myself for the way; and we turned our faces to the east; and in going along, I saw a mountain, whose summit towered beyond the region of the clouds. We crossed a great desert, and reached a forest crowded with various kinds of trees, and dark by reason of the density of them, of which the angel informed me beforehand. But that forest was intersected by many narrow paths. The angel said that these were so many windings of error, and that unless the eyes were opened by the Lord, and the olive trees girt about with vine tendrils seen, and the steps directed from olive tree to olive tree, the traveler would stray into Tartarus. This forest is of such a nature, to the end that the approach may be guarded; for no other nation but a primeval one dwells on that mountain.

[3] "After we entered the forest, our eyes were opened, and we saw here and there olive trees entwined with vines, from which hung bunches of grapes of a dark blue color, and the olive trees were arranged in perpetual circles; wherefore, we circled around and around according as they came into view; and at length we saw a grove of lofty cedars, and some eagles on their branches. When he saw these, the angel said, `Now we are on the mountain, not far from its summit.'

"And we went on, and lo! Behind the grove was a circular plain, where male and female lambs were feeding, which were forms representative of the state of innocence and peace of those on the mountain.

"We passed through this grove, and lo! There were seen many thousands of tabernacles to the front and on each side, in every direction, as far as the eye could reach. And the angel said, `Now we are in the camp where dwell the armies of the Lord Jehovih, for so they call themselves and their habitations. These most ancient people, while they were in the world, dwelt in tabernacles; for which reason they also dwell in them now.' But I said, `Let us bend our way to the south, where the wiser of them dwell, that we may meet someone with whom we may enter into conversation.'

[4] "On the way, I saw at a distance three boys and three girls sitting at the door of their tabernacle; but as we drew near, they were seen as men and women of a medium height. And the angel said, `All the inhabitants of this mountain appear at a distance like infants, because they are in the state of innocence, and infancy is the appearance of innocence.'

"On seeing us, these men ran towards us, and said, `Whence are you, and how have you come hither? Your faces are not of the faces of those belonging to this mountain.'

"But the angel replied, and told the means by which we obtained access through the wood, and the reason of our coming.

"On hearing this, one of the three men invited and introduced us into his tabernacle. The man was clothed in a mantle of a hyacinthine color, and a tunic of white wool; and his wife was dressed in a crimson robe, and under it, had a tunic about the breast of fine embroidered linen.

[5] "But, since there was in my thought the desire of knowing about the marriages of the most ancient people, I looked at the husband and the wife by turns, and observed as it were a unity of their souls in their faces; and I said, `You two are one.'

"And the man answered, `We are one; her life is in me, and mine in her. We are two bodies, but one soul. There is between us a union like that of the two tents in the breast, which are called the heart and the lungs; she is the substance of my heart, and I am her lungs; but because by heart we here mean love, and by lungs wisdom (we understand the latter by the former on account of their correspondence) she is the love of my wisdom, and I am the wisdom of her love. Hence, as you said, there is the appearance of the unity of souls in our faces. Hence, it is as impossible to us here to look upon the wife of a companion in lust, as it is to look at the light of our heaven from the shade of Tartarus.'

"And the angel said to me, `You hear now the speech of these angels, that it is the speech of wisdom, because they speak from causes.'

this conversation, I saw a great light on a hill among the tabernacles, and I asked, 'Whence is that light?'

"He said, 'From the sanctuary of our tabernacle of worship.'

"And I enquired whether it was allowed to approach; and he said that it was allowed. Then I drew near, and saw the tabernacle without and within, exactly according to the description like the Tabernacle which was built for the sons of Israel in the desert, the form of which was shown to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exod. 25:40; 26:30). I also asked, `What is there within its sanctuary, whence there is so great a light?'

"And he answered, `There is a tablet, on which is written, The covenant between the Lord Jehovih and Heaven.'" He said no more.

"Then I also questioned them about the Lord Jehovih, whom they worship; and I said, `Is He not God the Father, the Creator of the universe?'

"And they replied, `He is; but we by the Lord Jehovih, understand Jehovah in His Human; for we are not able to look upon Jehovah in His inmost Divinity, except through His Human.' And then they explained what they meant, and also what at this day they mean, by:

The seed of the woman trampling the serpent's head (Gen. 3:15);

namely, that the Lord Jehovih would come into the world, and redeem and save all who believed in Him, and who hereafter should believe.

"When we had finished this conversation, the man ran to his tabernacle, and returned with a pomegranate, in which was an abundance of golden seeds, which he presented to me, and I brought it away: this was a sign that we had been with those who lived in the Golden Age." [See the work on Conjugial Love, n. 75.] For an account of the heavens of the remaining churches, which succeeded the Most Ancient in their order, see in the same work on Conjugial Love (n. 76-82).

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.