Swedenborg Arcana Caelestia Vol. III (1750)

...continually appear, for the reason, as stated, that through chariots and horses those things that belong to wisdom and intelligence are represented. Regarding the fact that those who have been resurrected after death, who enter the other life, see represented to them a youth sitting upon a horse, and then descending from the horse, and that this signifies that they must be instructed in the cognitions of good and truth before they can enter heaven, see Part One (n. 187, 188).

That chariots and horses signified these things was well known in the Ancient Church, as can also be seen from the Book of Job, which is a Book of the Ancient Church, where it says: “God has made him forget Wisdom, and has not imparted Understanding to him; yet at the time he lifts himself on high, he scorns the Horse and his Rider,” 39:17-18. From the Ancient Church, the signification of the horse as being the intellectual faculty was derived to the wise men round about, even into Greece. Hence, when they described the Sun, by which Love was signified (n. 2441, 2495), they placed there the god of their wisdom and intelligence and attributed to him a chariot and four fiery horses. And when they described the god of the sea, because by the Sea, factual knowledge in general was signified (n. 28, 2120), they also gave him horses. And when they described the origin of knowledge from the intellectual faculty, they invented a winged horse that with its hoof broke open a fountain, where the virgins mythological: the Muses are who are the sciences; and by the Trojan Horse nothing else was signified than an artifice from their intellect for destroying walls.

Today, indeed, when the intellectual faculty is described, following the custom received from those Ancients, it is usually described by a winged horse or Pegasus, and erudition by a fountain. But scarcely anyone knows that the horse in a mystical sense signifies the understanding, and the fountain truth; still less that these significatives were derived to the gentiles from the Ancient Church.

2763. From these facts, it is now evident whence the Representatives and Significations in the Word come: namely, from the representatives that exist in the other life. Thence they came to the men of the Most Ancient Church, who were celestial and were with spirits and angels together while they lived. Those representatives emanated from them to their descendants, and finally to those who knew nothing but that such things signified something; but because they were from the most ancient times, and were in their Divine worship, they were venerated and held as holy. Besides representatives, there are also correspondences, which sound and signify something completely different in the Natural World than in the Spiritual World—just as the Heart signifies the affection of good, the Eyes the understanding, the Ears obedience, and the Hands power, besides innumerable...