Arcana Coelestia (Potts) n. 5391

Previous Number Next Number Next Translation See Latin 

5391. There are also kidneys called the subsidiary kidneys, or renal capsules. Their function is to secrete not so much the serum as the blood itself, and to transmit the purer blood toward the heart by a short circuit, and thus prevent the spermatic vessels, which are near, from carrying off all the purer blood. But these organs perform their main work in embryos, and also in newborn infants. It is chaste virgins who constitute this province in the Grand Man: prone to anxieties, and fearful of being disturbed, they lie quiet at the lower left side of the body. If there is any thought about heaven, or about a change of their state, they become anxious and sigh, as I have several times been given plainly to feel. When my thoughts were led to infants, they felt great comfort and inward joy, which they frankly confessed; and when there was any thought that had nothing heavenly in it, they were distressed. Their anxiety comes chiefly from their being of such a nature that they keep their thoughts fixed on one subject, and do not dispel anxious feelings by variety. The reason why they belong to this province is that in this way they keep another's lower mind fixed on certain thoughts, the result being that such things arise and show themselves as cohere in a series, and as are to be drawn away, or from which the man is to be purified. In this way also interior things lie in plainer view to the angels; for when such things as obscure and turn away the thoughts are removed, there results a clearer insight and influx.


This page is part of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church