235. I. THAT THERE IS SPIRITUAL HEAT AND SPIRITUAL COLD;AND THAT SPIRITUAL HEAT IS LOVE AND SPIRITUAL COLD THE DEPRIVATION THEREOF. Spiritual heat is from no other source than the sun of the spiritual world; for there is a sun there, proceeding from the Lord who is in the midst of it; and being from the Lord, that sun in its essence* is pure love. Before the angels, it appears as fiery, just as the sun of our world appears before men--that it appears fiery is because love is spiritual fire. From it proceed both heat and light; but because that sun is pure love, the heat therefrom in its essence is love, and the light therefrom in its essence is wisdom. From this it is evident whence comes spiritual heat, and that this heat is love.
[2] The source of spiritual cold shall also be explained in a few words. It is from the sun of the natural world and from the heat and light thereof. The sun of the natural world was created, that its heat and light may receive into themselves spiritual heat and light, and by the mediation of atmospheres, may convey them to things ultimate on earth, in order to make actual the effects of the ends which are the Lord's in His sun; and also to clothe spiritual things with adequate garments, that is, with matters, that ultimate ends may become operative in nature. This is effected when spiritual heat is joined from within to natural heat. But the opposite comes to pass when natural heat is separated from spiritual heat, which is the case with those who love natural things and reject spiritual. With them, spiritual heat becomes cold. That these two [heats or] loves, which from creation are concordant, then become opposed, is because the master heat then becomes the servant, and the reverse. That this may not happen, spiritual heat, which by its lineage is the master, withdraws. In these subjects, spiritual heat then grows cold because it becomes the opposite. What spiritual cold is, namely, that it is the deprivation of spiritual heat, is thus evident.
[3] In what has been said above, by [spiritual] heat is meant love, because in living subjects that heat is felt as love. I have heard in the spiritual world that spirits who are merely natural grow intensely cold when they place themselves at the side of an angel who is in a state of love, and that it is the same with the spirits of hell when heat flows into them out of heaven; and yet, that among themselves, when the heat of heaven is shut off from them, they burn with great heat.
* The Latin is existentia, but the general teaching of the Writings indicates that this a slip for essentia as in the translation. See no. 380:11; TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION NO 33; FIVE MEMORABLE RELATIONS NO. 16.
