1576. I realized that when the angels of the inward heaven are absorbed in their mental images, as in parable-like thoughts, such elements slip into their mental imagery as may support them. Then when these elements sink down among spirits, 1they at once portray them to themselves in a grand form, according to their imaginations, suiting both the mental image of the angelic society, and their own, which is able to bring about the change by which the mental image grows into a symbolic display.
Footnotes:
1. I. e., into the heaven of spirits.
1576. I perceived that the angels of the interior heaven, while they are in their ideas, and, as it were, in parables, have inserted into these ideas corresponding objects or scenery, by which their ideas are aided. These things, when they are conveyed down among spirits, are immediately formed by them, according to their fantasies, into new representations on a larger scale, retaining, however, the idea of the angelic society, though modified by their own. Thus the [original] idea grows into a representation.
1576. Percepi quod angeli interioris coeli, dum in ideis suis sunt, et sicut in parabolis, quod inserantur eorum ideis similia, quibus ideas suas adjuvent; tunc dum ea inter spiritus delabuntur, sibi illico secundum suas phantasias repraesentent ea in magna forma, tam secundum ideam societatis angelicae, quam secundum suam, quae mutationem inducere potest; ita crescit idea in repraesentationem.