affections and thoughts pervert the inflowing life, and tend to disturb order and to produce evil and noxious things in nature. In the hells, and from the hells to some extent in the world of spirits, appear poisonous and hurtful animals, as serpents, scorpions, owls, mice, locusts, frogs, spiders, flies, lice and various parasites; also malignant, virulent and poisonous herbs; and also poisonous earths.
These are mere correspondences of the cupidities which rush out of their evil loves and make themselves visible in such forms to others. The like things in nature flow in from the hells where there are things that correspond. Such things do not derive their origin from the Lord and have not been created from the beginning, and moreover have not been created from nature through its sun. Nature creates nothing; it only receives and clothes what is spiritual; and the Lord creates nothing evil, but man by the perversion and evil use of the Lord's creations. This takes place therefore in the natural mind of man, when the spiritual mind is closed, and his natural affections act against the Divine and pervert all good and truth into their opposites. The evils and falsities thus originated in and by man produce their cor-
