Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) son of theology professor and later bishop of Skara, Jesper Swedberg.

With Swedenborg we encounter a mystic of international renown—a founder of a religion that still is alive and well. There are Swedenborgian churches in the United States and Europe and there is even a Swedenborg center in Pennsylvania.

Despite his international cachet, Swedenborg’s mystical writings were laregely ignored in Sweden during his lifetime. He wrote in Latin and due to theological censoring he had to publish his works out of England and Holland. He became known in his homeland first in the 1850’s.

His reputation during his early years was forged through his work in the natural sciences.

He studied at Uppsala University concentrating on the natural sciences and mathematics.

Between 1710 –1715, he took the usual study trip to the continent (England, Holland, France), and his letters from this time period revel his tireless curiosity—he even claimed to have invented a flying machine.

When he returned to Sweden, he started his country’s first scientific periodical : Daedalus hyboreus or the Northern daedalus. He was then named to the Mining Collegium by the King.

He wrote monographs on such diverse subjects as the sinking water level in the Baltic and the movements of the planets. He even worked on a group that brought the ist steam engine to Sweden in 1724.

In 1734 he published a work on Philosphy and Minerology—rationalist

1734: Principum rerum Naturalium (Principles of nature’s material)—Newtonian perspective

also in 1734: De infinito (on the Infinite) where he posited that God’s essence could not be studied through its mirror in nature and his infinite being could not be ascertained through mathematical principles. This leaves us with a rather important question: How then could God be understood: Swedenberg’s answer: through the Word.

Swedenborg then tried to prove the immortality of the soul through an empirical study based on sense perception—at this point he had a material conception of the soul—he actually looked for its location (1730’s) and forwarded an intense study of anatomy and physiology. This would inform his later mysitical work as he would posit god and the universe as being an enormous body. When swedenborg could not solve this problem of the location of the soul—he turned to philosophy.

1740: Oeconomia regni animalis ( the building and economy of the human body)

In this work he posited that everyday language can only reach the intellect, spiritual communication, on the other hand is inaccessible to the scientist—we receive glimpses of this spiritual communication through dreams as in this state the connection between spirit and intellect opens up—we can also see the spiritual world in the visions of the prophets and through poetic imagery. Swedenborg dreamed of a universal language.

Out of this dream was born the two most influential Swwedenborgian concepts; Correspondences and Representations: Correspondences: all life has a godlike origin, and the creation itself is a stream out of God’s essence. Swedenborg rejected the notion of the trinity and saw the goal of living as the attempt to find union with God, who is pure love. Humans are not simply the image of god,a symbolic representation of his essence amongst the rest of creation, he even claims that all living creatures strive towards the human—even God is human, who has a spiritual body with a nose, ears, eyes, and limbs. There is even a spiritual world inhabited by countless angels and spirits that builds a single gigantic human—a giant human where all has its determined order—Swedenborg is inspired here by the Caballistic speculation on the originary godhead, Adam Kadmon. The human corresponds to the divine. Earthly life is merely a preperation for the heavenly. Every human being has an invisible spiritual correspondence, or rather 2, a spiritual and a heavenly (gudomlig)—and this is revealed through language.

Representation is different—in a fragment form the 1740’s called Clavis hieroglyphica (the key to hyroglyphs), swedenborg claims that the soul’s language uses ideographs, and that nature is merely symbolic of a spiritual reality. For Swedenborg the whole universe is a living organism—the goal for the human being is to develop a correspondence between the outer self who is merely animal, and the inner angelic self.

In 1745 he experienced his great religious crisi—Dream book. Here he experienced intercourse with angels and demons—photism—a light phenomenon that he interpreted as a holy sign. The crisis started in 1743 in Holland—constant visions , dreams, ecstatic states. 1744—saw Christ in a vision—1745—leaves his career behind and devotes the rest of his life4 to systematizing his visions.