Arcana Coelestia (Potts) n. 960

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960. There are certain deceitful spirits who while they lived in the body practiced their wiles in secret, and some of them in order to deceive have by pernicious arts feigned being as it were angels. In the other life these learn to withdraw themselves into a finer or more interior realm of nature [in subtiliorem naturam], and to snatch themselves away from the eyes of others, and in this way they suppose themselves to be safe from every penalty. But these, just like others, undergo the penalty of discerption in accordance with the nature and the wickedness of their deceit, and in addition to this they are glued together, and when this happens the more they desire to loose themselves-that is, to tear themselves away from one another-the more tightly they are fastened. This penalty is attended with a more intense torture because it answers to their more hidden deceptions.


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