world become enchantresses or sorceresses, some of whom are denominated sirens, who become expert in arts unknown on earth."
Some of these arts are described. "They can assume the likeness of others" at will. By cunning artifice "they can inspire every one with an affection for them." "They have the power of representing to the view of spirits a bright flame encompassing the head, and this—which is an angelic token—to several at the same moment. They can feign innocence by various methods, even by representing infants whom they kiss; they also excite others whom they hate to murder them. . . . Their nature is so persuasive that no one suspects them; and hence their ideas are not communicated like those of other spirits; for they have eyes resembling those ascribed to serpents, seeing every way at once, and having their thoughts present everywhere.
"These sorceresses or sirens are punished grievously, some in Gehenna, others in a kind of court among serpents; others by being, as it were, torn asunder and subjected to various collisions attended with intensest pain and torture."—Ibid. 831.
And this, too, for their own good. For there is nothing of vindictiveness in the punishments of hell. They are all repressive, corrective and reformatory in their design and tendency.
But will the hells remain forever as they were when Swedenborg saw them? Is there to be no change—no
