346 HEAVEN and HELL §569
it fl ows. The same thing happens with the warmth and light from the
world’s sun. Warmth fl owing from this source into woods and fl ower
beds produces vegetation and pleasant, soft aromas. The same warmth
fl owing into manure or carrion produces decay and foul stenches. Simi-
larly light from the same sun on one object produces lovely, charming
colors, while on another it produces ugly and unpleasant ones. It is the
same with the warmth and light from heaven’s sun, which is love. When
that warmth or love fl ows into good recipients, like good people and
spirits or angels, it makes their goodness fertile; whereas when it fl ows
into evil people it has the opposite effect. Their evils either stifl e it or
distort it. Similarly, when heaven’s light fl ows into the true perceptions
of good will, it yields intelligence and wisdom; but when it fl ows into
malicious distortions, it changes there into insanity and various kinds of
illusion. Everything depends on reception.570 Because hellfi re is love for oneself and the world, it is also all the crav-
ing of those loves, since craving is love reaching out. Whatever we love
we constantly crave, and it is our delight, since we feel delight when we
get what we love or crave. There is no other source of our heart’s delight.
So hellfi re is the craving and pleasure that well up from these two loves
as its sources. These evils are contempt for others, enmity and hostil-
ity toward people who do not support us, envy, hatred, and vengeful-
ness; and savagery and cruelty as a result. In respect to the Divine, they
are denial and a consequent contempt, derision, and blasphemy of the
sacred values of the church. After death, when we become spirits, these
turn into rage and hatred against such values (see above, § 562 ).
Further, since these evils are constantly breathing out the death and
destruction of everyone we see as the enemy, of everyone who is the tar-
get of this blazing hatred and vengefulness, the delight of our lives is
the intent to destroy and kill, or to the extent that we cannot do this, to
infl ict harm, to wound, and to savage.
[ 2 ] These are the meanings of fi re in the Word when it deals with evil
people and the hells. I should like to cite a few passages in support.
Everyone who is hypocritical and malicious, every mouth that utters
folly, because it is afl ame with malice as with fi re, shall eat briars and
brambles and kindle the thickets of the forest, and will rise up with the
rising of smoke; and the inhabitants have become the food of fi re, a
man and his brother do not spare each other. (Isaiah 9 : 17 – 18 [ 9 : 17 – 19 ])I will make great portents in heaven and on earth—blood and fi re and
columns of smoke; the sun will turn into darkness. (Joel 2 : 30 , 31 )