Emanuel Swedenborg: Sweden's John Dee - Angels, Demons and Spirits

Emanuel Swedenborg had a vivid spiritual life, seeing and speaking to angels and demons, and voyaged to heaven and hell.

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) can be said to be Sweden's John Dee, but few occultists know about him. This inventor, scientist, diplomat and politician had a vivid spiritual life in which he actually saw and spoke to angels, spirits and demons, and voyaged spiritually to heaven and to hell -- almost daily, with shocking vividness, he said. A Christian, Swedemborg believed that the Bible's message was about how a person could evolve from a materialistic to a spiritual being; for example Genesis was, for him, not an account of the creation of Earth, but an account of man's rebirth in six steps. For all his Christian devotion, though, he wrote in sexually explicit terms at times, enough to shock. But love, he stressed, was the root of all. From this is his early form of a 'polarity' ideal - the union of man and woman, was, to his mind a perfect mirroring of the divine. Swedenborg was profoundly influential upon later esotericists and literary figures, including William Blake and Madame Blavatsky, so his ideas survived even if his fame did not. Richard Lines will talk about Swedenborg's achievements and about his surprisingly widespread influence. This talk is ideal for people interested in angelic communications, historians of spiritual ideas, and everyone who appreciates a mystical traveller across the spiritual planes.

Richard Lines is Secretary of the Swedenborg Society in Bloomsbury. He has a particular interest in Swedenborg's influence on literature. For more on Swedenborg, have a look at The Swedenborg Society and Gary Lachman's article.

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