When these are opened gloomy
and seemingly sooty caverns are seen tending obliquely downwards to
the abyss, where again there are many doors. Through these caverns
nauseous and fetid stenches exhale, which good spirits flee from
because they abominate them, but evil spirits seek for them because
they delight in them. For as everyone in the world has been delighted
with his own evil, so after death he is delighted with the stench to
which his evil corresponds. In this respect the evil may be likened
to rapacious birds and beasts, like ravens, wolves, and swine, which
fly or run to carrion or dunghills when they scent their stench. I
heard a certain spirit crying out loudly as if from inward torture
when struck by a breath flowing forth from heaven; but he became
tranquil and glad as soon as a breath flowing forth from hell reached
him.
430. With every man there are two gates; one that leads to hell and
that is open to evils and their falsities; while the other leads to
heaven and is open to goods and their truths. Those that are in evil
and its falsity have the gate to hell opened in them, and only
through chinks from above does something of light from heaven flow
into them, and by that inflowing they are able to think, to reason,
and to speak; but the gate to heaven is opened in those that are in
good and its truth.
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