Doctrine of Holy Scripture - Swedenborg Foundation

DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE 170houses, not to be worshiped, but to call to remembrance theheavenly things they signified. Consequently in Egypt andelsewhere there were images of calves, oxen, serpents, also ofchildren, old men, maidens; because calves and oxen signifiedaffections and powers of the natural man; serpents, the sagacity ofthe sensuous man; children, innocence and charity; old men,wisdom; and maidens, affections of truth; and so on. When theknowledge of correspondences had been blotted out ofremembrance, their descendants began to worship as holy, and atlast as deities, the images and emblems set up by the ancients,because they stood in and about their temples.[2] So with other nations; as, with the Philistines at Ashdod,Dagon (concerning whom see 1 Sam. 5:1 to end), whose upperpart was like a man, and his lower like a fish. This image was sodevised because a man signifies intelligence, and a fish knowledge,which make a one. It was also because they possessed a knowledgeof correspondences that the ancients worshiped in gardens andgroves, in accordance with the kinds of trees in them; and alsoupon mountains and hills. For gardens and groves signified wisdomand intelligence, and each particular tree something relatingthereto; as the olive, the good of love; the vine, truth from thatgood; the cedar, rational good and truth. A mountain signified thehighest heaven; and a hill, the heaven under it.[3] The knowledge of correspondences survived among a numberof the orientals, even until the Lord’s advent, as is evident from thewise men of the east who came to the Lord at his birth; and thiswas why a star went before them, and why they brought with themas gifts gold, frankincense, and myrrh (Matt. 2:1–2, 9–11). For the“star that went before them” signified knowledge [cognitio] fromheaven; “gold,” celestial good; “frankincense,” spiritual good; and“myrrh,” natural good; from which three is all worship.[4] Nevertheless there was no knowledge of correspondenceswhatever among the Israelitish and Jewish nation, althougheverything in their worship, and all the judgments and ordinancesdelivered them through Moses, and all things of the Word, were