5509. It is a most usual thing that evil spirits are allowed to do evil, which yet the Lord turns to good. These are the temptations of the good and the vastations of the evil; and they are for the sake of separations and cleansings; for cleansings, like those of the blood in the body, and of the evils in a man about to be regenerated, are continually going on. Those evil ones thus join themselves with the evil everywhere round about, in the rocks and in the mountains, and to such, particularly to those who seek dominion, attach themselves; for such are those who gather others together. After they have been consociated and collected, then, there are, as it were, with them, and in that place, all with whom they have been joined; for they thus make, as it were, one body with them. They then all appear in him [undergoing the vastation] as in a subject; and, then, they are everywhere cast out of the societies to other places which correspond, and to hells. When all with whom he was thus bound have been separated and cast out, then his vastation is accomplished; for he no longer has those who support him. Thus he falls into his hell, and is wholly in evil and its resulting falsity. I saw a certain one thus vastated, from whom the consociations of the evil were plucked away, and as it were stripped off from the head all over the body, from the arms to the heel. I saw another who was thus interiorly despoiled, who approached interior [ones]. He said that he would carry them upon his knees, - which are between the natural and the spiritual. That one, who has thought interiorly, was able to gather together still subtler ones, even to genii, who were all cast out; and the mountains purged of them. This last continued throughout three days.