Malina reveals the dynamics of how the society was consumed in the art of manipulation and thus spiritually vacuous. Malina writes, “The people in our period perceived God, gods, and their agents—spirits, demons, angels—as necessary to maintain equilibrium.”

Looking at Swedenborg’s description of hell in the spiritual world gives us insight to the cause of what is happening on earth at this time. In hell, spirits constantly demean and punish each other with incredibly cruel arts and intentions. This manipulation takes place to a terrible degree few of us can really stomach hearing.

When there is an imbalance, this is the kind of influence that trickles down from the spiritual world and begins to dominate people’s feelings on earth.

The compulsive need for the people to regain a sense of equilibrium is tell-tale evidence of the loss of equilibrium. But their effort in this regard is misled and futile; they are “barking up the wrong tree.” In seeking the patronage of gods in the spiritual world, they are actually seeking to appease demons and thereby playing into the hands of demons and increasing the terrible imbalance.

This effort of the people to gain equilibrium by appeasing spirits, gods, and demons is ungodly and something that should never be done. Their true need is to tether themselves to the one God, but they had long ago lost sight of this truth. More and more the people were becoming entangled in hell. The reason, at a certain point, that the people were not culpable for their actions is that once there is loss of equilibrium, there is a measure of loss of freedom. And when people are compelled to an action by others, they are not held responsible for it as their personal sin.

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