Week 5    Day 4

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The Madness of Satans

TCR 80. Once a satan was given leave to come up from hell together with a woman, and he approached the house where I was. Seeing them I shut the window but talked with them through it. I asked the satan where he came from, and he said from the company of his own people.

And I asked where the woman came from, and he made the same answer. She was from a crowd of sirens, who are skilled in putting on every appearance of beauty and every adornment of dress. At one time they assume the beauty of Venus, at another the charm of face of Parnassian nymphs, at another they deck themselves out like queens with crowns and royal robes, and walk majestically leaning on silver staffs. Such in the world of spirits are harlots, and they specialize in fantasies. Fantasy arises from sensual thought when the ideas springing from any interior thought have been excluded.

I asked the satan if she was his wife. He replied, “What is a wife? I do not know and my society does not; she is my harlot.” Then she inspired lewdness in the man, which sirens know how to do skillfully. And on receiving it, he kissed her and said, “Ah, my Adonis!”

[2] But to more serious matters. I asked the Satan what his calling was. He said, “My calling is learning. Don’t you see the laurel wreath on my head?” His Adonis had conjured this up by her magic arts and put on his head from behind.

“Since you come from a community where there are schools of learning,” I said, “tell me what you and your companions believe about God.”

He replied, “God for us is the universe, which we also call nature. Simple folk in our country call it the atmosphere, by which they mean the air; but the intelligent mean the atmosphere which is also the ether. God, heaven, angels and the like, the subject of many tales in this world, are idle words and fictions inspired by meteors, which many people here have seen flash before their eyes. Is not everything to be seen on earth the creation of the sun? Every time the sun draws nearer in springtime are not insects born, with and without wings? Does not its heat make birds love each other and reproduce? And does not the earth, warmed by its heat, cause seed to sprout and produce fruits as its offspring? Does this not mean that the universe is God, and nature a goddess? And she as the wife of the universe conceives, bears, rears and nurtures these things.”

[3] I asked further what he and his society believed about religion. He replied, “To us, who are more learned than the masses, religion is nothing but a bewitchment of the common people. Like an aura, it encompasses the sensitive and imaginative powers of their minds, and in that aura notions of piety fly about like butterflies in the air. And their faith, which connects these ideas as it were in a chain, is like a silkworm in his cocoon, from which he comes forth as king of the butterflies. For the unlearned masses, from a desire to fly, love to imagine things above their bodily senses and their thought from them, in this way making wings for themselves, with which they may soar like eagles and cry boastfully to those on the ground, ‘Look at me!’ But we believe what we see, and we love what we touch.” With that he touched his harlot and said, “This is something I believe in because I see and touch it. But we throw that other nonsense out of our windows and blow it away with a breath of laughter.”

[4] Then I asked what he and his companions believed about heaven and hell. He replied with a loud laugh, “What is heaven but the ethereal firmament above? And what are its angels but spots wandering around the sun? And what are archangels but comets with long tails, on which a crowd of them dwell? And what is hell but bogs where, in their imagination, frogs and crocodiles are the devils? Everything beyond these ideas of heaven and hell is mere nonsense brought forth by some prelate for the purpose of winning glory from the ignorant multitude.”

All this he said precisely as he had thought upon these subjects in the world, not knowing that he was then living after death, and having forgotten all that he had heard when he first entered the spiritual world. So again he replied to a question about a life after death, that it was a thing of the imagination; and that perhaps some effluvium arising from a buried corpse in the shape of a man, or a thing called a ghost, about which some tell stories, had introduced such a notion among men’s fancies.

[5] When I heard this I could no longer keep from bursting out laughing. And I said, “Satan, you are raving mad. What are you now? Are you not now in the form of a man? Do you not talk, see, hear, walk? Recall to mind that you have lived in another world which you have forgotten, and that you are now living after death, and that you have been speaking just as you formerly did.”

And recollection was given him, and he remembered and was embarrassed. And he cried out, “I am mad! I saw heaven above, and I heard angels there uttering things ineffable, but that was when I first came here. I will now keep this in mind to tell my companions from whom I came, and maybe then they will be embarrassed like me.”

And he held it on the tip of his tongue, that he would call them insane. But as he went down, forgetfulness drove out remembrance, and when he was there, he was as mad as they were, and he called the things he had heard from me madness.

Such is the state of thinking and conversation among satans after death. Those are called satans who have confirmed falsities with themselves until they believe them; and those are called devils who have confirmed in themselves evils by their life.

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