Why the butler was restored to his functions and the baker hung from wood

 A careful reader of ch. 40 of Genesis will note the familiar language of eating and drinking, this time in the guise of servants who pertain to preparing and serving food and drink; and thus pertain to preparing and serving the good of love and the truths of faith supportive of our growing in the good of love. They are servants here because the exterior of humankind is to be subject to the "inner human" -- the one to whom Paul refers in Ephesians ch.3 --and not the inner human subject to the exterior.

Paul ditto:

Romans 7:22-23 - King James Version (KJV)

<22> For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: <23> But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

The story of the butler and the baker has been explained in one of the most challenging parts of Arcana Coelestia; it encodes the necessity of rejecting the will of the Old Man whom we are to put off even as the intellect of the Old Man remains serviceable to the regeneration process. For it is according to order for us to reform the will by means of the intellectual in the natural. "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free": which truth is predicated of the will.

That is accursed which is hung from wood, which wood is good or evil depending on the context and here evil and significative of "rejection and damnation" (AC5139). In Jesus' life, for instance, we see wood in the upright position as His being a carpenter; and we see wood in the reversed position in His being crucified by those who saw evil in Good and shadows in Light. We have in addition recently seen how the wood of good was thrown into the bitter waters of Marah; which were made sweet thereby, the good from the Lord having made religious instruction palatable again.

The story of the baker and the butler is very dense, so clear explanations of it are imperative. Here is one: "The world suffers from a lack of charity. Through its sufferings it must first learn that differences of opinion in others should be tolerated or even encouraged; only a lack of charity deserves condemnation, in accord with the letter of the Word. The butler will be restored to his former place as the servant of Pharaoh, and the baker hanged" (Louis Hoeck, Tree of Life).

You can see that this dichotomy of a butler spared and a baker hanged has as many applications as a spiritual swiss army knife.

Let us look at it from still another camera angle. There are people who go to Heaven whose minds were full of styrofoam and foolishness while they dwelt on earth; but whose consciences were not seared, to use Paul's language, and whose hearts remained capable of growing in love and past the threshold when this is not possible; the border of Heaven.

These are people whose hearts of gold did not condemn them even if their minds were jelly donuts.

Have you met people with hearts of gold whose minds are at the same time jelly donuts? I certainly have. And our loving Father does not forget His scatterbrained children who yet have reformable hearts. There is yet work for the butler to do in Pharaoh's service! But as for those inveterately nasty people, they can hang from wood in the privy of Hell. 

In one of the clearest explanations that the Writings give about the baker and the butler we find this: 

"(T)he will part that He had by birth from the mother was evil; and therefore this was to be rejected, and in its place a new one was to be procured from the Divine will part by means of the intellectual, or from the Divine good by means of the Divine truth, thus from His own power. This is the secret that is here described in the internal sense" (AC5157).

It is the serviceability of the intellect of the Old Man in putting off the will of the Old Man.

It is your memorizing the Word and reasoning about it in everyday cognition in support of the will's reform.

That can stay! That can stick around. But the evil desires and behaviors are another story: they cannot. They are to be hunted down like rabid dogs with the lantern of the Lord.

One will conclude by reemphazing how important it is automatically to see the mind when the Word mentions a predicate of drinking; and to automatically see the heart when the Word mentions a predicate of eating. For the eating and drinking mentions in the Word of God all have much to tell those who are not willfully deaf and blind.

Here, side by side, are the markers of the understanding and the will: 

Genesis 40:11 - King James Version (KJV)

<11> And Pharaoh's cup was in my hand: and I took the grapes, and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and I gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand.

Genesis 40:17 - King James Version (KJV)

<17> And in the uppermost basket there was of all manner of bakemeats for Pharaoh; and the birds did eat them out of the basket upon my head.

One should note that "basket" is a predicate of the will, of the heart. That is why the prophet Zechariah saw a woman called "wickedness" precisely in a basket (the Word says "ephah", which is a basket) sealed with a lead lid.

So we clearly see the cup, wine and grapes of spiritual ideation true or false and the bakemeats, basket and baker of spiritual willfulness good or evil.

May the rationality of your natural mind and the memory knowledge with which it works conduce to the reform of your will, that the baker may be hanged and the butler restored to his functions; that the wine may make the bread easier to swallow and illuminate growing in love.

Appendix: " The sensuous knowledge which is the ultimate of the understanding, is meant in the Word by a "bowl," or a "cup," for the wine which is therein, or the water, denotes the truths that belong to the understanding; but the sensuous delight which is the ultimate of the will, is meant in the Word by a "basket;" and as the ultimate is the containant of all the interior things, these interior things also are meant by these vessels; by a "bowl," or a "cup," the truths of the understanding, and in the opposite sense falsities; and by a "basket" the goods of the will, and in the opposite sense evils; for goods pertain to the will, and truths to the understanding" (AC9996)

"The reason why a "butler" signifies that sensuous which is subject or subordinate to the intellectual part of the internal man, is that everything which serves for drinking, or which is drunk-as wine, milk, water-bears relation to truth, which is of the intellectual part, thus bears relation to the intellectual part; and because it is an external sensuous, or sensuous of the body, that subserves, therefore by a "butler" is signified this sensuous, or this part of the sensuous things. (That "to give to drink" and "to drink" are in general predicated of the truths which are of the intellectual part, may be seen above, n. 3069, 3071, 3168, 3772, 4017, 4018; and that specifically they are predicated of the truth which is from good, or of the faith which is from charity, n. 1071, 1798; and that "water" is truth, n. 680, 2702, 3058, 3424, 4976.) From all this it may now be seen what is signified by a "butler"" (AC5077).

"'And the baker' means among the things in the body which are subject to the will part. This is clear from the meaning of 'the baker' as the external or bodily senses which are subordinate or subject to the will part of the internal man. The reason 'the baker' has this meaning is that everything which serves as food or is consumed as such, for example, bread, solid foods in general, and anything made by a baker, has reference to good and so to the will; for all good feeds the will, just as every truth feeds the understanding, as stated immediately above in 5077. By 'bread' is meant what is celestial, or goodness, see 1798, 2165, 2177, 3478, 3735, 3813, 4211, 4217, 4735, 4976" (AC5078).