Heaven and Hell - Swedenborg Foundation

HEAVEN AND HELL 400
they have loved falsities and hated truths; for such caves and
clefts of rocks, 274
as well as darkness, correspond to falsities, as
light corresponds to truths. It is their delight to dwell in such
places, and undelightful to dwell in the open country.
[2] Those that have taken delight in insidious and secret
plots and in treacherous machinations do the same thing. They
are also in such caves; and they frequent rooms so dark that
they are even unable to see one another; and they whisper
together in the ears in corners. Into this is the delight of their
love changed. Those that have devoted themselves to the
sciences with no other end than to acquire a reputation for
learning, and have not cultivated their rational faculty by their
learning, but have taken delight in the things of memory from
a pride in such things, love sandy places, which they choose in
preference to fields and gardens, because sandy places
correspond to such studies.
[3] Those that are skilled in the doctrines of their own and
other churches, but have not applied their knowledge to life,
choose for themselves rocky places, and dwell among heaps of
stones, shunning cultivated places because they dislike them.
Those that have ascribed all things to nature, as well as those
that have ascribed all things to their own prudence, and by
various arts have raised themselves to honors and have acquired
wealth, in the other life devote themselves to the study of
magic arts, which are abuses of Divine order, and find in these
the chief delight of life.
[4] Those that have adapted Divine truths to their own loves,
and thereby have falsified them, love urinous things because
274. In the word a “hole” or “the cleft of a rock” signifies obscurity and
falsity of faith (n. 10582). Because a “rock” signifies faith from the Lord (n.
8581, 10580); and a “stone” the truth of faith (n. 114, 643, 1298, 3720,
6426, 8609, 10376).