De Conjugio (On Marriage) · 8 of 25

Various Things Concerning Marriage and Adulteries

13.VARIOUS THINGS CONCERNING MARRIAGE AND ADULTERIES (1) Heaven is marriage and adultery is hell.

14.(2) Marriage descends from the marriage of good and truth, and adultery from the marriage of evil and falsity.

15.(3) Therefore there is given priestly adultery which in external appearance is similar.

16.(4) In heaven they abhor adulteries, and therefore heaven is closed to adulterers; and hell is opened wide according to the quality and quantity of the adultery.

17.(5) A man by conjugial love receives the form of love in the mind, and therefrom in the body, thus the form of heaven.

18.And a man by adulteries receives the form of adultery, thus the form of hell.

19.(6) Conjugial love is the fundamental love of all heavenly loves, and it is the image of heaven, thus of the Lord.

20.(7) Heavenly joy is founded upon conjugial love.

21.(8) Hence the heavenly joys which the angels have solely from thence are innumerable; and scarcely one of those innumerable joys is known in the world, because at this day adultery reigns there even from falsity of doctrine, but that they were known in part to the ancients.

22.(9) Angelic wisdom grows by marriages, and it is in the place of procreation to them; for which reason it is a procreation of wisdom, whence daughters, sons, father, and mother in the Word signify such things as are of good and truth, thus which are of wisdom; passages may be adduced from the Word.

23.(10) From adulteries all ignorance and stupidity in spiritual things grow, because it is the marriage of falsity and evil. The falsification and adulteration of the truth and good of the Word is signified by whoredoms there, may be proved from the Word.

24.(11) To love the consort is to do good before the Lord, because this is chastity itself; and the church itself is called virgin and daughter, as the daughter and the virgin of Zion and Jerusalem. Passages may be quoted.

25.(12) Conjugial love has communication with heaven, and the organs of generation have correspondence with the third heaven; especially the womb, concerning which correspondence.

26.Even intercourse from conjugial love communicates.

27.(13) That love arises from the Lord’s influx alone through the third heaven.

28.(13) (a) The third heaven is the conjugial of heaven; thus marriages are held as most holy in heaven; and adulteries profane.

29.(14) What adulteries are, considered.

30.(15) Conjugial love increases in potency and effect to eternity, insomuch that it is love as to all power and effect, thence is the life of their souls; but with adulteries love decreases as to power and effect, even so that it becomes impotence and a stock, and scarce of any life.

31.(16) No one can be in conjugial love unless he be spiritual by combat against evils and their falsities, and unless he acknowledges the Lord and His Divine.

32.(17) The wife and husband are consociated as to mind as one flesh. It is my bone and my flesh, as Adam said.

33.(18) Conjugial love continually unites, that they be (one man).

34.(19) Conjugial love depends on the love of the wife, and such is the love of the husband in reciprocation, and the love of the wife does not depend on the love of the husband; the reason is, because like as the will actuates the understanding, good actuates truth, hence it is that it is said that the husband ought to cleave to the wife; the contrary is the case with those who are not in conjugial love.

35.(20) The wife wills to think and will as the husband, and the husband as the wife, and because each wills this, each is led by the Lord as one, and the two are one angel; for when the will and the understanding are not one’s own, but the other’s, and this mutually and reciprocally, it cannot be otherwise than that they be led by the Lord as one.

36.(21) Hereditary evil becomes by adulteries continually more malignant, which is on account of adulteries which are considered allowable.

37.(22) Adulteries are most filthy may appear only from this, that the seed of the man as to its spiritual, and also as to its interior natural, adds itself to the body of the woman, for the man’s life is in it; what, then, can it be, when the lives of several men are introduced at the same time, but filthiness and interior putridity.

38.(23) An example that one acquires such a nausea and disgust against his wife, as not to be able to look at her, merely when he doubted about God and the Word, was the priest, i. . . .

39.(24) Conjugial love is such love, such delight, and such wisdom to those, that heaven is in it; that so far they are men, is confirmed by angels of heaven by a living voice. Afterwards they looked into hell, and said that there was all filthiness, and that especially adulterers and adulteresses appear like swine and hogs, and those who are like swine and hogs delight in ordure; and they said that one of them delighted in it so much that he wished to eat it. This coincides with the prophet who was ordered to make for himself a cake with dung.

40.(25) By conjugial love the interiors of the mind are opened, because the influx into it is from the Lord through the third heaven; thence a man becomes receptive of all celestial loves and likewise of truths.

41.(26) In conjugial love is the inmost of conscience.

42.CONJUGIAL LOVE WITH THE ANGELS. I have spoken concerning conjugial love with angels, and they said that it is the inmost of all loves, and that it is such that a consort sees his consort in his soul and in his mind, so that his spiritual image is there; and thus that a consort has the consort as if in himself, and this is cohabitation in the spiritual sense. This also was represented by angelic ideas which cannot be expressed. Hence their conjunctions are delicious.