4594. CONCERNING THE CREW OF SIRENS AND THEIR HELL. Those women become sirens, who devise nothing else than how they may enter into the affections of men, over whom they wish to rule and by whom to profit, by enticing their self-love or even self-esteem, so that, being by-and-by captivated, they may suffer themselves to be ruled by them, and devote all their powers to them, when yet these women have not even the least love towards the men, but in their heart, wholly despise them. They thus act with many in succession, or even simultaneously. Hence, in the other life, as soon as they come to spirits, they enter into their thoughts, and hold the thought entirely obsessed, until they [these spirits] are liberated by the Lord. They cannot but at once intrude themselves into the thoughts and obsess them, from a habit acquired in the life of the body. There, they are spiritual vermin; and, unless the Lord should free the world of spirits from such ones, hardly any good spirit would be able to be in that world, without being led captive by them. Moreover, they do not care for right and wrong: they also practice abominable crimes, in a word, even extremely diabolical [crimes], and count them as nothing. When first they enter into the thoughts [of a man] they then follow his thought strongly; afterwards, they lead it.