Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 957

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957. People who during their lifetime have developed the habit of saying one thing and thinking another, especially those who beneath a show of friendship have gazed with envy on other people's wealth, wander around and ask wherever they go whether they can stay with those persons they meet. They say they are poor, and on being welcomed they gaze enviously from innate desire on all that they see. When it is discovered what they are really like, they are fined and expelled from there. Sometimes they suffer dreadful tearings apart which vary according to the habit they have developed of deceitful pretence. Some suffer it over the whole body, others in the feet, others in the loins, others in the breast, others in the head, and others only round the region of the mouth. They are hammered this way and that, back and forth, in ways defying description. Violent crushings together of parts of the body and so wrenchings apart take place, causing them to believe that they have been torn to bits. Resistance is also added so as to intensify the pain. Such are the punishments that involve being torn apart, with many variations, to be repeated again and again at intervals until a dread and horror of deceiving by lying is ground into them. Each punishment inflicted takes something away. Those who did the tearing apart said that they took such delight in inflicting punishment that they had no wish to stop even if it meant their carrying on with it for ever.


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