Afterlife: A Guided Tour of Heaven and Its Wonders - Swedenborg ...

Hell
Some of these hells looked like the lairs or dens of wild
animals in the woods, some like the vaulted chambers and
crypts found in mines, with caverns leading downward.
Many of the hells are threefold. The higher ones look
gloomy inside because the people there are fond of mali -
cious distortions. The lower ones look fiery, though,
because their inhabitants are devoted to malice itself.
Darkness in fact corresponds to malicious distortions, and
fire to the actual malice. That is, the people in the deeper
hells are the ones who acted from evil on a deeper level,
while the people in the hells that are not so deep acted
from evils on a more superficial level—that is, on the basis
of their malicious distortions.
In some hells you can see what look like the ruins of
houses and cities after a fire, where hellish spirits live and
hide out.
In the milder hells you can see crude huts, sometimes
grouped in something like a city, with alleyways and
streets. There are hellish spirits in these homes, with con -
stant quarrels, hostility, beating, and violence. The streets
and alleys are full of thieves and robbers.
In some hells there are nothing but brothels, foul to
look at and full of all kinds of filth and excrement.
There are also dark forests where hellish spirits roam
like wild beasts; and there are underground caves there
where they flee when they are being threatened by others.
Then there are desert areas where everything is barren
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