I was once meditating about conjugial love, when my mind was seized with a desire to know what this love had been like in the case of those who lived in the Golden Age, and also in the following ages, which were named after silver, copper and iron. Knowing that all who lived good lives in those ages are in the heavens, I prayed to the Lord to allow me to talk with them and be taught by them.

At once I found an angel beside me, who said: 'I have been sent by the Lord to be your guide and companion. First I shall guide and accompany you to those who lived in the first era or age, known as golden. The route to them,' he added, 'is steep, leading through a dark forest, which no one can penetrate unless supplied with a guide by the Lord.'

[2] I was in the spirit, so I prepared myself for travelling, and we set our faces towards the east. As we went I saw a mountain, the top of which was higher than the level of the clouds. We crossed a great desert and reached a forest thickly filled with trees of various kinds, so dense they made it dark, as the angel had said beforehand. But the forest was cut by numerous narrow paths, and the angel told me that all of these were a maze to lead people astray, and unless the Lord opened his eyes to see the olive-trees wreathed in grape-vines, and so to follow the path from one olive to the next, a traveller would stray into Tartarus, which is the region surrounding this at the sides. The forest is like this to guard the approach. For none but the primeval people live on this mountain.

[3] After we entered the forest, our eyes were opened and we saw here and there olive-trees entwined with vines, from which hung bunches of dark blue grapes. The olives were arranged in continuous curves, so as we spied them we went round and round. At length we saw a group of tall cedars with some eagles on their branches. On seeing them the angel said; 'Now we are on the mountain not far from the summit.' So we went on and a little beyond the cedars came upon a circular plain, where lambs of both sexes were feeding. These were forms intended to picture the state of innocence and peace among the mountain-dwellers.

We went across this plain and saw tents upon tents to the number of many thousand extending as far as the eye could see before us and to the sides in all directions. 'Now,' said the angel, 'we are in the camp where is the Army of the Lord Jehovih* - that is what they call themselves and where they live. These most ancient people lived, when they were in the world, in tents, so they continue to do so now. But let us turn aside to the south, where the wiser among them are, so that we can find someone to talk with.'

[4] As we went I saw at a distance three boys and three girls sitting at the door of a tent. But as we came closer, they turned out to be like men and women of middling height. 'All the inhabitants of this mountain,' said the angel, 'look from a distance like children, because they are in a state of innocence, and childhood is how innocence appears.'

When these men saw us, they hurried up to us and said: 'Where do you come from, and how have you come here? Your faces are not those of the people of our mountain.'

The angel replied telling them how we had been given permission to come through the forest, and why we had come. On hearing this one of the three men invited us in and took us into his tent. The man was dressed in a cloak of blue colour and a tunic of pure white wool. His wife was dressed in a purple robe with underneath it a blouse of fine embroidered linen.

[5] Since I was thinking that I wanted to know about marriage among the most ancient people, I looked in turn from husband to wife and back again, and observed that their faces showed how they were almost of one soul. So I said: 'You two are one.' The man replied: 'We are one. Her life is in me and mine is in her, so we are two bodies, but one soul. The union between us is like that of the two cavities in the chest, called the heart and lungs. She is my heart and I am her lungs. But since by heart we understand here love and by lungs wisdom, she is the love of my wisdom, and I am the wisdom of her love. Her love therefore forms the outer covering of my wisdom and my wisdom is inwardly inside her love. As a result, as you said, the unity of our souls is to be seen in the look of our faces.

[6] Then I asked, 'If your union is such, are you able to look at any woman other than your own?' 'Yes,' he replied, 'I can, but because my wife is united with my soul, we two look together, and so not the slightest spark of lust can enter in. For when I look at other people's wives, I see them through my wife, whom alone I love. Since she is capable of perceiving all my feelings, as an intermediary she directs my thoughts, taking away anything discordant, and at the same time striking into me a feeling of coldness and horror at anything unchaste. It is therefore as impossible for us here to look lustfully on any of our companions' wives as it is to look upon the light of our heaven from the shades of Tartarus. So we do not either have any idea in our thinking, much less a word in our language, for the enticements of lustful love.' He could not use the word fornication, because the chastity of their heaven prevented it. My angel guide said: 'Now you can hear how the angels of this heaven speak, a language of wisdom, since it is derived from causes.'

[7] After this I looked around and saw that their tent was as if gilded. So I asked, 'Why is this?' He answered that it was 'the result of the flaming light, which glitters like gold, flooding and striking the curtains of our tent, while we are talking about conjugial love. For then the heat of our sun, which in its essence is love, bares itself and tinges the light, which in its essence is wisdom, with its own, gold colour. This happens because conjugial love in origin is the play of wisdom and love. For man was born to be wisdom, woman to be the love of her man's wisdom. This is the source of the delights of that play in conjugial love, and thus between ourselves and our wives. We have witnessed here over thousands of years how these delights are surpassing and excellent in quantity, degree and strength in proportion to our worship of the Lord Jehovih, who is the source from which that heavenly union, the heavenly marriage of love and wisdom, flows in.'

[8] After this speech I saw a great light above a hill in the middle of the tents. 'What is that light coming from?' I asked. 'It is,' he said, 'from the sanctuary of our tent of worship.' I asked if one might approach it. 'Yes,' he said. So I went near and saw a tent which both within and without exactly matched the description of the tabernacle constructed in the desert for the Children of Israel, the plan of which was shown to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exod. 25:40; 26:30). 'What,' I asked, 'is there in the sanctuary to give so much light?' 'There is a tablet, ' he answered, 'bearing the inscription "The Covenant between Jehovah** and the heavens."' He said no more.

[9] As we were then preparing to leave, I asked: 'Did any of you, when you were in the world, live with more than one wife?' He answered that he knew of none. 'For,' he said, 'we could not think of several. Those who had thought so told us that the heavenly blessedness of their souls at once fled from the inmost to the outermost parts of the body, even to the finger-nails, and at the same time also their virility departed. When this was noticed, they were thrown out of our country.'

After saying this, the man hastened back to his tent and came back with a pomegranate containing a mass of golden seeds. He presented it to me, and I brought it away as a token that we had visited those who lived in the golden age. Then after wishing each other peace, we departed and returned home. * Jehovih for Jehovah occurs in a few places in the Word, e.g. Gen. 15:2; Isa. 65:13. ** In CORONIS 37, where this account is repeated, the form Jehovih appears here, and it is explained as their name for 'Jehovah in His Humanity'.