consist of societies arranged according to all the varieties of
celestial and spiritual affections, from which arrangement the form of
heaven springs, and this pre-eminently surpasses all other forms in the
universe. There would be a like form on the earth if the procreations
there were effected by marriages in which a true marriage love reigned;
for then, however many families might descend in succession from one
head of a family, there would spring forth as many images of the
societies of heaven in a like variety.

Families would then be like fruit-bearing trees of various kinds,
forming as many different gardens, each containing its own kind of
fruit, and these gardens taken together would present the form of a
heavenly paradise. This is said in the way of comparison, because
"trees" signify men of the church, "gardens" intelligence, "fruits"
goods of life, and "paradise" heaven. I have been told from heaven that
with the most ancient people, from whom the first church on this globe
was established, which was called by ancient writers the golden age,
there was such a correspondence between families on the earth and
societies in the heavens, because love to the Lord, mutual love,
innocence, peace, wisdom, and chastity in marriages then prevailed; and
it was also told me from heaven that they were then inwardly horrified
at adulteries, as at the abominable things in hell. (A.E., n. 987.)

That heaven is from marriages and hell from adulteries has been shown
above. What this means shall now be told. The hereditary evils into
which man is born are not from Adam's having eaten of the tree of
knowledge, but from the adulteration of good and the falsification of
truth by parents, thus from the marriage of evil and falsity, from which
a love of adultery springs. The ruling love of parents by means of a
germ from it passes over into the offspring and is transcribed upon it