Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 5394

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5394. People who have been both cruel and adulterous like nothing more in the next life than filth and excrement. To them the stink of these is most sweet and pleasant, and they prefer such odours to all other delights. The reason why lies in their correspondence. Those hells lie partly beneath the buttocks, partly beneath the right foot, and partly in a frontal direction, deep down. These are the hells to which the path through the rectum leads. Once a certain spirit was brought there, from where he spoke to me. He said there was nothing else in sight but latrines. Those there talked to him and led him to various other latrines, which were very numerous there. After that he was taken to another place situated a little to the left, and while he was in that place he said that an absolutely dreadful stench was emanating from caverns there and that he could not move a foot without almost falling into a cavern. The stink of dead bodies was also emanating from the caverns. The reason for this was that cruel and deceitful spirits were there, to whom the stink of dead bodies is most delightful. But these spirits are to be dealt with later on when the hells, especially the excrementitious and dead-body hells, will be the subject.


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