One of the more colorful theological figures of the eighteenth century is Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). In an era of rationalism and the exhaustion of wars of religion in he West, Swedenborg revived and extended mystic thought. Not mysticism as medieval figures like the thoughtful Meister Eckhart or the spiritual Richard Rolle or Julian of Norwich may have pursued it. The tradition of cautious theological speculation and heartfelt religious emotion were dissipated. Swedenborg revives the imagery of Jacob Boehme, assured of its literal descriptions of God and angels, heaven and hell. Nor here the modesty of St. Paul telling the Corinthians of being rapt to heaven: “I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—-whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person—-whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows—-was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.” Pau dared not relate details, whether he wanted to or not, feeling humbled. On the other hand, Swedenborg tells of revelations and intricate detail. He propels the literalism and imagination of later theosophy and its variants, as much as in literal Christianity in evangelical and prophetic modes.
As an illustration of the mysticism of imagination: In Three Principles, the early modern mystic Jacob Boehme is eager to reveal the seven properties of nature, the first being Saturn: “The First property is a desirousness, like that of a magnet, namely, the compression of the will; the will desires to be something,and yet it has nothing of which it may make something to itself; and therefore it brings itself into a receivingness of itself, and compresses itself to something; and that something is nothing but a magnetical hunger, a harshness, like a hardness, whence even hardness, cold, and substance arise.” Similarly described are the other six properties: 2. Mercury, 3. Mars, 4. the Sun, 5. Venus, 6. Jupiter, and 7. The Moon. Each planet is linked to property (hardness, light, fire, noise, cold, etc.) and thence to a human disposition. “Now these are the seven properties in one only ground; and all seven are equally eternal without beginning; none of them can be accounted the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, or last; for they are equally eternal without beginning, and have also one eternal beginning from the Unity of God.”
In Boehme’s footsteps, then, follows Swedenborg with the ambitiously-titled The Earthlike Bodies Called Planets
in Our Solar System and
in Deep Space, their Inhabitants,
and
the Spirits and Angels. In this book, the intimate knowledge Swedenborg reveals is the result of neither insight nor imagination but privilege: “Buy the Lord’s divine mercy the deeper levels within me, which belong 1 to my spirit, have been opened, enabling me to talk with spirits and angels—not only those near our world, but also those close to other planets. Because I have had a longing to know whether there are other worlds, what they are like, and what their inhabitants are like, the Lord has granted me opportunities to talk and interact with spirits and angels from other planets.”
Like Boehme and Swedenborg, Helena Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy, pursues the same interest in planets in her Secret Doctrine, where she presents seven planets as constituting a “planetary chain,” though some planets are downgraded and others prioritized in her system. She significantly sophisticates the epistemological sources by appealing to ancient documents.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in this essay “Swedenborg; or The Mystic,” in Representative Men: Seven Lectures, described Swedenborg as a colossal, an adherent of science and technology, but whose personal beliefs classed him “a visionary and elixir of moonbeams.” Swedenborg meticulously describes heaven and hell, the social atmosphere of quiet conviviality, and the forlornness of hell. As an example, he records: “As for angels being human forms, or people, this I have seen thousands of times. I have talked with them face to face, sometimes with just one, sometimes with several in a group, and as far as their form is concerned, I have seen in them nothing different from that of a human being. At times I have felt surprised that they were like this; and to prevent it being said that this was some illusion or hallucination, I have been allowed to see them while I was fully awake, or while I was in full possession of my physical senses and in a state of clear perception.”
Here are other random citations to illustrate both the detail and the confidence of Swedenborg:
I have often been allowed to see this [different levels of heaven and different manifestations of beings]when I was in the spirit and therefore out of body and in the company of angels. … Several times I have been allowed to see that each community of heaven reflects a single individual and is in the likeness of a human being as well.
The earliest ones, who were heavenly people, did their thinking from correspondence like angels, so they could even talk with angels. Further, the Lord was quite often visible to them, and taught them. Nowadays, though, this knowledge has been so completely lost that people do not know what correspondence is.
People living in their organs: “People who are in the head, of the universal human that is heaven are supremely involved in everything good. In fact, they are in love, peace, innocence, wisdom, intelligence, and therefore in delight and happiness. These flow into the head and into the components of the head in us, and correspond to them. People who are in the chest of the universal human that is heaven are involved in the qualities of thoughtfulness and faith, and also flow into our chests and correspond to them. However, people who are in the groin of the universal human or heaven and in the organs dedicated to reproduction are in marriage love. People who are in the feet are in the outermost heaven, which is called “natural-spiritual good.” People who are in the arms and hands are in the power of what is true because of what is good. People who are in the eyes are in understanding; people who are in the ears are in attentiveness and obedience; people who are in the nostrils are in perception; people in the mouth and tongue in conversing from discernment and perception. People who are in the kidneys are in truth that probes and discriminates and purifies; people in the liver, pancreas, and spleen are in various aspects of purification of what is good and true; and so on. They flow into the like parts of the human being and correspond to them.”
[A form of spiritual materialism inevitably troubling literalism, re angels’ appliances, clothing, housing, re housing]: “Whenever I have talked with angels face to face, I have been with them in their houses. Their houses were just like the houses on earth that we call homes, but more beautiful. They have chambers, suites, and bedrooms in abundance, and courtyards with gardens, flower beds, and lawns around them. Where there is some concentration of people, the houses are adjoining, one near another, arranged in the form of a city with streets and lanes and public squares, just like the ones we see in cit- ies on our earth. I have been allowed to stroll along them and look around wherever I wished, at times entering people’s homes.”
Here quoted in full are two entries from the 1957 Book of Imaginary Beings, by Jorge Luis Borges, the first essay titled “Swedenborg’s Angels,” the second “Swedenborg’s Devils.” Borges is amused by Swedenborg’s imagination, as he is by esoteric thought like that of gnostics and theosophists, and writes with wry wit.
Swedenborg’s Angels
For the last twenty-five years of his studious life, the eminent philosopher and man of science Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) resided in London. But as the English are not very talkative, he fell into the habit of conversing with devils and Angels. God granted him the privilege of visiting the Other World and of entering into the lives of its inhabitants. Christ had said that souls, in order to be admitted into Heaven, must be righteous. Swedenborg added that they must also be intelligent; later on Blake stipulated that they should be artists and poets. Swedenborg’s Angels are those souls who have chosen Heaven. They need no words; it is enough that an Angel only think of another in order to have him at his side. Two people who have loved each other on earth become a single Angel. Their world is ruled by love; every Angel is a Heaven. Their shape is that of a perfect human being; Heaven’s shape is the same. The Angels, in whatever direction they look —- north, east, south, or west — are always face to face with God. They are, above all, divines; their chief delight lies in prayer and in the unraveling of theological problems. Earthly things are but emblems of heavenly things. The sun stands for the godhead. In Heaven there is no time; the appearance of things changes according to moods. The Angels’ garments shine according to their intelligence. The souls of the rich are richer than the souls of the poor, since the rich are accustomed to wealth. In Heaven, all objects, furniture, and cities are more physical and more complex than those of our earth; colors are more varied and splendid. Angels of English stock show a tendency to politics; Jews to the sale of trinkets; Germans tote bulky volumes which they consult before venturing an answer. Since Muslims venerate Mohammad, God has provided them with an Angel who impersonates the Prophet. The poor in spirit and hermits are denied the pleasures of Heaven, for they would be unable to enjoy them.Swedenborg’s Devils
In the works of the famous eighteenth-century Swedish visionary, we read that Devils, like angels, are not a species apart but derive from the human race. They are individuals who after death choose Hell. There, in that region of marshlands, of desert wastes, of tangled forests, of towns leveled by fire, of brothels, and of gloomy dens, they feel no special happiness, but in Heaven they would be far unhappier still. Occasionally, a ray of heavenly light falls on them from on high; the Devils feel it as a burning, a scorching, and it reaches their nostrils as a stench. Each thinks himself handsome, but many have the faces of beasts or have shapeless lumps of flesh where faces should be; others are faceless. They live in a state of mutual hatred and of armed violence, and if they come together it is for the purpose of plotting against one another or of destroying each other. God has forbidden men and angels to draw a map of Hell, but we know that its general outline follows that of a Devil, just as the outline of Heaven follows that of an angel. The most vile and loathsome Hells lie to the west.
In a prologue titled “Emanuel Swedenborg, Mystical Works” Borges summarizes the hermit in Swedenborg thusly:
“Like the Buddha, Swedenborg rejected asceticism, which impoverishes and can destroy men. Within the boundaries of Heaven, he saw a hermit who had sought to win admittance there and had spent his mortal life in solitude and the desert. Having reached his goal, this fortunate man discovered that he was unable to follow the conversation of the angels or fathom the complexities of paradise. Finally, he was allowed to project around himself a hallucinatory image of the wilderness. There he remains, as he was on earth, in self-mortification and prayer, but without the hope of ever reaching heaven.”