But lust, for Swedenborg, was an aspect only of that state of love of self with its desire for profit and dominion which he saw as being hell. The book Conjugial Love contains some of his best vignettes from that realm.
There were the judges who warped justice in favor of their friends, being acclaimed with "O, how just!" by their clients, but shown by the angel who was with him to Swedenborg as they looked in the sight of one of the celestials: "Their faces appeared as of polished steel, their bodies from the neck to the loins as graven images of stone, clothed with leopard skins, and their feet as snakes; the law books too, which they had arranged in order on the table were changed into packs of cards" and, instead of judging, they were given the job of mixing up paint "to bedaub the faces of harlots." 18
Another time, while Swedenborg was pondering on the love of dominion grounded in self-love, he saw "a devil ascending from hell, with a square cap on his head, let down over his forehead even to his eyes; his face was full of pimples as of a burning fever, his eyes fierce and fiery, his breast swelling immensely; from his mouth he belched smoke like a furnace, his loins seemed all in a blaze, instead of feet he had bony ankles without flesh, and from his body exhaled a stinking and filthy heat."
On seeing this personage, Swedenborg admits that he was alarmed, crying to him, "Approach no nearer; tell me, whence are you?"
He replied in a hoarse tone of voice, "I am from below, where I am with two hundred in the most super-eminent of all societies. We are all emperors of emperors, kings of kings, dukes of dukes and princes of princes . . . we sit on thrones of thrones and despatch mandates through the whole world and beyond it."
Swedenborg suggested that he was insane, to which the devil replied, "How can you say so when we absolutely seem to ourselves, and also are acknowledged by each other, to have such distinction?" 19
By linking up his discussions of sexual joys and problems with his doctrines and his other-world experiences, Swedenborg had not hurt the circulation of his new book. Published when he was
