through its affections produces wisdom. Not conjoined to love, wisdom is
like a meteor vanishing in the air and like a falling star. Wisdom united
to love is like the abiding light of the sun and like a fixed star. A man
has the love of wisdom when he is averse to the diabolical crew, that is,
to the lusts of evil and falsity.

36. Wisdom that comes to perception is perception of truth from being
affected by it, especially perception of spiritual truth. For there is
civil, moral, and spiritual truth. Those who have some perception of
spiritual truth from affection by it also have perceptions of moral and
civil truth, for the affection of spiritual truth is the soul of those
perceptions. I have spoken with angels at times about wisdom who said
that wisdom is conjunction with the Lord because He is wisdom itself, and
that the man who rejects hell comes into this conjunction and comes into
it so far as he rejects hell. They said that they picture wisdom to
themselves as a magnificent and highly ornate palace into which one
mounts by twelve steps. No one arrives at even the first step, they said,
except from the Lord by conjunction with Him; and according to the
measure of conjunction one ascends; also as one ascends, one perceives
that no man is wise from himself but from the Lord. Furthermore, they
said that the things in which one is wise are to those in which one is
not wise like a few drops of water to a large lake. By the twelve steps
into the palace of wisdom are meant goods united to truths and truths
united to goods.

37. (iv) _The more closely one is conjoined to the Lord the happier one
becomes._ The like can be said of degrees of happiness as was said (nn.
32 and 34) of degrees of life and of wisdom according to conjunction with
the Lord. Happiness, that is, blessedness and joy, also are heightened as
the higher degrees of the mind, called spiritual and celestial, are