those to whose willfully acquired natures they corresponded. But, if they had not so totally deprived themselves of all good that there was no redemption for them out of their private hells, then they were in "the lower earth," as Swedenborg called it, or nether world of spirits, where they might through their suffering be "vastated" of their evil, and perhaps develop latent goodness into better natures which in turn would create pleasanter environments for them, perhaps even advancing to "paradises."
In the paradises too everything "corresponded" to the natures of the denizens—the varied bright colors of the garments of the lower angels, the luminous white of the higher realms, and the utter nakedness, corresponding to innocence, of the innermost, celestial angels.
Swedenborg could still have kept respectably within the allegorical fold if he had limited his doctrine of correspondences to such things, but he went much farther, applying it to everything in the world.
He was not being original in this, as indeed he often said himself, pointing out that the "ancients" believed the same. So many of them did. Persian, Platonic, and Neoplatonic mystics and their many descendants thought that all here below was in some sense caused by events in the spiritual realms of heaven and hell.
But Swedenborg was not satisfied to dismiss nettles and gnats, for instance, as originating in diabolical hatreds; he did try in some respects to link up "correspondence" with his studies of physiology. From embryology he felt he had reason to believe that something apparently immaterial could have effects on the material level, and in his work on the nervous system (The Fibre) he said it was well known that a mind foiled of its desires could trouble the body, causing an overflow of bile.1 Then in his later period he simply added on spirits who reinforced the noxious emotions, which in their turn caused physical diseases.
Yet beyond this now quite respectable psychosomatic theory, he came to accept wholly the old doctrine that the material world in every aspect is entirely created by the spiritual. Life, for him, was a force emanating from the Divine. Self-willed man, whether in or out of the body, was free to receive this force and turn it into good or into evil. The furniture and scenery of hell, its animals and
