The uneasy and forbidding ghosts of dead faiths that haunted Europe awoke aspirations in ardent and passionate souls which sought their realization in the fantastic reign of dreams. From the chaos of superstition the need to believe gradually emerged. In the process the marvellous became mystical. On the ruins of Rosicrucianism, Emmanuel Swedenborg erected a new supernatural belief.
This man whose influence in the latter half of the eighteenth century, especially in the years immediately preceding the Revolution was more subtle than the philosophers who derided him had any conception, is Occultism’s Copernicus; the spiritual Abraham from whom all the Blavatskys and Eddys of the present are descended.
He was born at Stockholm in 1688 and throughout his long life—he died in London in 1772 at the age of eighty-four—Fortune was uniformly and exceptionally kind to him. Possessed of brains, sharpened and cultivated by an excellent education, of an attractive personal appearance and influential friends, he began at an early date to make his mark, as the saying is. At twenty-one he started on the “grand tour,” which it was customary in those days for young men of wealth and position to make. But young Swedenborg was not one of those who merely wandered luxuriously about Europe pursuing pleasure. Avid of knowledge he devoted the time others spent in dissipation to Greek, Latin, Hebrew, mathematics, science and philosophy. At the end of five years he returned to Sweden with the intention of giving himself up entirely to science. He published a scientific review and gained some reputation as an inventor. At the age of twenty-eight Charles XII appointed him assessor of mines; and three years later Queen Ulrica raised him to the rank of nobility, by which his name was changed from Swedberg, as his family was originally called, to the more euphonious and aristocratic Swedenborg.
Being of an exceedingly inquiring and philosophical mind and having plenty of leisure he naturally widened the area of his investigations. For many years he sought to find the scientific explanation of the universe. This quest and the intensity with which he pursued it insensibly led him to seek to discover the connection between the soul and the body, the relation of the finite to the infinite. From this stage, to which he had been led no doubt by the force of heredity—his father, a Lutheran bishop and professor of theology believed himself in constant intercourse with angels—it was but a step to the supernatural. The scientist, however, takes a long time in turning into the mystic. Swedenborg was fifty-seven before the transformation was accomplished.
This event occurred in London in 1745.
“I was dining,” he says, “one day very late at my hotel in London, and I ate with great appetite, when at the end of my repast I perceived a sort of fog which obstructed my view, and the floor was covered with hideous reptiles. They disappeared, the darkness was dispersed, and I plainly saw in the midst of a bright light, a man sitting in the corner of the room, who said in a terrible voice, Do not eat so much!”
EMMANUEL SWEDENBORG
From the character of this vision, “Do not drink so much” would appear to have been the more sensible advice. Be this as it may, Swedenborg was so frightened that he resolved to do as he had been bidden. His diet henceforth was of the simplest, and it is possible that the sudden change from one extreme to the other at an age when the system has lost its elasticity may not be unconnected with the continuation of his visions.
The next night “the same man, resplendent with light,” appeared to him again. This time while Swedenborg gazed upon the spectre, which was perhaps a thought visualized by the intensity of its fascination, it said, “I am God the Lord, the Creator and Redeemer of the world. I have chosen thee to explain the meaning of the Holy Scripture. I will dictate to thee what thou shalt write.”