336 HEAVEN and HELL §552
moon, while heaven’s angels all turn toward the Lord as the sun and the
moon of heaven (see above, §§ 123 , 143 , 144 , 151 ).
This leads us to the conclusion that all the people in the hells are
absorbed in evils and consequent falsities, and also that they turn toward
their loves.553 Seen in any of heaven’s light, all the spirits in the hells appear in the
form of their own evil. Each one is in fact an image of her or his evil, since
for each individual the inner and outer natures are acting as a unit, and
the deeper elements present themselves to view in the outer ones—in the
face, the body, the speech, and the behavior. So you can tell what they are
like by looking at them. In general, they are forms of contempt for others,
threats against people who do not revere them; they are forms of various
shadings of hatred, of various forms of vengefulness. Savagery and cruelty
show through from within. When others praise them, though, or revere
and worship them, their faces compose themselves and look almost happy
and gratifi ed. [ 2 ] There is no way to describe briefl y all the ways these forms
look, since no one is just like any other. There is only a general likeness
among people who are absorbed in similar evils and are therefore in the
same hellish community, a similarity that acts like a common background
that gives the individual faces a kind of overall resemblance. In general,
their faces are frightful, as lifeless as corpses. Some of their faces are black,
some like little torches, some pimply, with huge ulcerated sores. In many
cases there is no visible face, only something hairy or bony in its place,
while with others only the teeth show. Their bodies are equally misshapen,
and their speech seems to embody wrath or hatred or vengeance, since all
their articulation comes from their false perception and all the tone comes
from their evil intent. In a word, they are all images of their hell.
[ 3 ] I have not been allowed to see what form hell itself is in overall.
I have only been told that in the same way that all heaven as a single
entity resembles a single human being (§§ 59 – 67 ), so all hell as a single entity
resembles a single devil and can be manifested as a likeness of a single
devil (see above, § 544 ). However, I have often seen what form particular
hells or hellish communities have, since at their entrances (which are
called the gates of hell), there often appears a monstrous fi gure that in a
general way represents the form of the people who live there. The sav-
agery of these inhabitants is then represented by frightful horrors that I
forbear to mention.
[ 4 ] It does need to be known, though, that hellish spirits look like
this in heaven’s light, but that they look human to each other. This is