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Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings

This list of Memorable Occurrences in Swedenborg's Writings was originally compiled by W. C. Henderson in 1960 but has since been updated.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #269

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269. We subsequently ascended from this underworld in a southerly direction to where we had been before; and there the angels recounted a number of other things worth mentioning, concerning lust that is not delusionary or given to fantasy - the kind everyone is possessed of from birth. Whenever people are caught up in this lust, they said, they are as fools, and yet appear to themselves as extremely wise. But they are by turns brought back from this foolish state into a rational one, which in them resides in their outward faculties; and in that state they see, recognize and acknowledge their insanity.

"But still," the angels continued, "they long to go from their rational state into their irrational one, and they also let themselves go into it, as from a compelled and unpleasant condition into a free and pleasant one. Thus it is lust that pleasures them inwardly, and not intelligence.

[2] "Every human being is from creation a combination of three universal loves: love of the neighbor, which is also a love of performing useful services; love of the world, which is also a love of possessing riches; and love of self, which is also a love of exercising command over others.

"Love of the neighbor, or a love of performing useful services, is a love of the spirit. Love of the world, on the other hand, or a love of possessing riches, is a love of material things. And love of self, or a love of exercising command over others, is a love of one's own person.

[3] "A person is a human being as long as love of the neighbor or a love of performing useful services forms the head, with love of the world forming the body, and love of self forming the feet. But if love of the world forms the head, a person is not a human being except in a kind of hunchbacked way. And when love of self forms the head, he is no longer a human being standing on his feet, but one standing on his hands with his head down and bottom up.

"When love of the neighbor forms the head, and the other two loves form respectively the body and feet, the person appears, when viewed from heaven, to have an angelic face, with a beautiful rainbow-like halo about his head. But if love of the world forms the head, he appears when viewed from heaven to have a pallid face, like that of a dead man, with a yellow circle about his head. And if love of self forms the head, he appears from heaven to have a dark face, with a white circle about his head."

At that point I asked what the circles around the heads represented.

"They represent intelligence," they replied. "A white circle around a head with a dark face represents that the person's intelligence lies in his outward faculties or round about him, while insanity resides in his inward faculties or within him. Even a person like that is wise so long as he is in a state of the body, but when he is in a state of the spirit he is insane. No one is ever wise in spirit except from the Lord, which comes about when he is being born again or created anew by Him."

[4] Following these words, the ground to my left opened, and through the opening I saw a devil rising, having a luminous white circle about his head. I asked him therefore, "Who are you?"

"I am Lucifer," he answered, "son of the dawn. And because I made myself like the Most High, I was cast down." 1

In fact he was not really Lucifer, but he thought he was. So I asked him, "Seeing that you were cast down, how is it that are you able to rise again from hell?"

To which he replied, "In hell I am a devil, but here I am an angel of light. Do you not see the ring of light encircling my head? And if you wish, you will see, too, that with moral people I am more than moral; with rational people, more than rational; indeed, with spiritual people, more than spiritual. I can even preach, and moreover have preached."

"What have you preached?" I asked.

"I have preached," he said, "against swindlers, against adulterers, and against infernal loves of every kind. Indeed, at such times I have called myself - Lucifer - a devil, and have uttered falsehoods against myself as such; and for that I have been praised to the sky. That is why I have been called son of the dawn. Moreover - what has surprised me - whenever I was in the pulpit, I had no other thought than to speak uprightly and fittingly. However, I discovered in myself the reason, which is that I was caught up in external states, and these were then separate from my inward ones. Yet, having discovered this in myself, still I could not change, because my arrogance prevented me from having regard for God."

[5] I then inquired, "How were you able to speak as you did, seeing that you are a swindler, adulterer, and devil yourself?"

He replied, "I am one sort of person when I am in external states or a state of the body, and another when I am in internal states or a state of the spirit. In a state of the body I am an angel, but in a state of the spirit a devil. For in a state of the body I am directed by my understanding, but in a state of the spirit by my will; and my understanding carries me upward, while my will carries me down. Furthermore, when I am directed by my understanding, a band of white encompasses my head; however, as soon as my understanding surrenders itself completely to my will and becomes its servant - which is our ultimate fate - then the band turns black and disappears. When that happens, we can no longer ascend into this light."

The devil afterwards talked about his dual states, one external, one internal, and he spoke of them more rationally than anybody else has. But suddenly, when he noticed the angels with me, he became inflamed in face and voice and turned black, including even the band about his head; and he sank back down to hell through the opening through which he had risen.

There were some people standing by who witnessed these events, and they drew from them the following conclusion, that a person's character is shaped by his will, and not by his intellect, since love easily carries away the understanding into seeing things its way and becoming its servant.

[6] I then asked the angels, "How is it possible for devils to have such rationality?"

And they said, "It comes from the glory of self-love; for love of self is wrapped in glory, and glory raises the understanding even into the light of heaven. Indeed, in every person the understanding is capable of being raised in accordance with his knowledge, in contrast to the will, which can be raised only by living in accordance with the truths of the church and of reason. That is why even atheists who from love of self are motivated by the glory of their reputation and by a resulting conceit in their own intelligence, may possess a higher degree of rationality than many others - but only when they are directed by the thought of their intellect, and not by the affection of their will. For the affection of the will governs a person's inner self, while the thought of the intellect governs his outer one."

One of the angels further explained why human beings are a combination of the three loves referred to previously, namely, a love of being useful, a love of the world, and a love of self. The reason, he said, is to enable a person to think in accord with God, yet do so as though on his own. The highest elements in a person are directed upwards to God, the intermediate elements outwards to the world, and the lowest ones downwards to self. And because these last elements are directed downwards, a person thinks as though on his own, when in fact he does so from God.

Footnotes:

1. See Isaiah 14:12-15. The reference is a metaphor for the king of Babylon (Isaiah 14:3,4), but based on an erroneous connection with Luke 10:18 (cf. also Revelation 9:1, 12:7-10), since the 3rd century it has been applied to Satan, a mythical rebel angel cast down from heaven. Modern interpreters generally understand the reference as an allusion to the planet Venus, translating it usually as "day star" or "morning star."

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Conjugial Love #76

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76. The second account:

The next day the same angel came to me and said, "Would you like me to take and accompany you to the peoples who lived in the silver age or period, so that we may hear from them about the marriages of their time?" He also said that these people, too, could not be approached except under the Lord's guidance.

I was in the spirit as before, and I went with my guide. And we came first to a hill in the border region between the east and the south. Then, as we stood upon its slope, he showed me a far extended stretch of land, and we saw in the distance an elevation like that of a mountain. Between it and the hill on which we stood was a valley, and beyond that a level area, and after that a gently rising incline.

We descended from the hill to cross the valley, and here and there on each side we saw blocks of wood and stone carved into the shapes of people and various kinds of animals, birds and fish. So I asked the angel, "What are these? Are they idols?"

And he answered, "Not at all. They are figures representative of various moral virtues and spiritual truths. Among the peoples of this age there was a knowledge of correspondences. Since every person, animal, bird and fish corresponds to some quality, therefore each carving represents some aspect of a virtue or truth, and a group of them taken together represents the whole virtue or truth in a general, extended form. They are what in Egypt were called hieroglyphics."

[2] We continued through the valley, and as we entered the level area, suddenly we saw horses and chariots - horses with variously decorated harnesses and halters, and chariots variously shaped, some carved out like eagles, some like whales, and some like stags with horns, or like unicorns. At the end we also saw some wagons, and stables around at the sides. But when we drew near, both the horses and the chariots disappeared, and instead of them we saw people in couples and pairs, walking, talking and reasoning together.

The angel then said to me, "The various horses, chariots and stables - as they seem at a distance - are appearances expressive of the rational intelligence of the people of this age. For by correspondence a horse symbolizes an understanding of truth; a chariot, its accompanying doctrine; and stables, sources of instruction. You know that in this world, all things take on appearances according to correspondences."

[3] We went on by these things, however, and we ascended by a long incline, until at last we saw a city, which we entered. As we wandered through it, from the streets and public squares we observed its houses. They were all palaces, built out of marble. In front they had steps of alabaster, with columns of jasper on each side of the steps. We also saw temples made of precious stone the color of sapphire and lapis lazuli.

The angel said to me, "They have houses made of different kinds of stone because stones symbolize natural truths, and precious stones symbolize spiritual truths. The people who lived in the silver age all had their intelligence from spiritual truths and so from natural truths. Silver also has a similar symbolism."

[4] As we surveyed the city, we saw married couples here and there in pairs; and since they were husbands and wives, we waited to see if we would be invited in somewhere. Even as we had this in mind, moreover, as we were passing by, two of them called us back into their house. So we went up the steps and went in. Then, speaking with them on my behalf, the angel explained the reason for our coming to that heaven, saying that we had come to be instructed concerning marriages among ancient peoples - "you here being some of them," he said.

They then replied, "We come from peoples in Asia, and the focus of our age was the pursuit of truths, by which we acquired intelligence. This pursuit was the focus of our soul and mind. But the focus of our physical senses was on representations of truths in forms, and a study of correspondences combined the sensory interests of our bodies with the perceptions of our minds, gaining for us intelligence."

[5] Hearing this, the angel asked them to tell us something about marriages among them.

So the husband said, "There is a correspondence between the spiritual marriage, which is a marriage of truth with good, and natural marriage, which is the marriage of a man with one wife. And because we have studied correspondences, we see that the church with its truths and goods can by no means exist except in people who live with one wife in a state of truly conjugial love. For a marriage of good and truth in a person is the church in him.

"Consequently, we who are here all say that a husband is a form of truth, and his wife a form of good, and that good cannot love any other truth than its own truth, nor can truth love any other good in return than its own good. If it were to love another, the inner marriage that forms the church would die, and the marriage would become merely external - the kind of marriage that idolatry corresponds to, not the church. Therefore we call marriage with one wife a sacred union, but if it were contracted with more than one among us, we would call it a sacrilege."

[6] Saying this, he showed us into an anteroom outside the bedroom, which had a number of works of art on the walls and little images apparently cast out of silver. I then asked what they were.

They said, "They are pictures and forms representing the many qualities, attributes and delights which have to do with conjugial love. These ones here represent the unity of souls; these other ones, the conjunction of minds; the ones there, the harmony of hearts; those over there, the delights arising as a result."

While we were looking, we saw on the wall a kind of rainbow, consisting of three colors, purple, blue, and bright white. And we saw how the purple color passed through the blue and tinted the white with a purplish blue hue, and that the latter color flowed back through the blue into the purple and raised it into a kind of flaming radiance.

[7] Then the husband said to me, "Do you understand it?"

And I said, "Instruct me."

So he said, "The purple by its correspondence symbolizes the conjugial love of the wife; the bright white, the intelligence of the husband; the blue, the beginning of conjugial love in the husband's perception from the wife; and the purplish blue, which tinted the white, conjugial love then in the husband. This latter color's flowing back through the blue into the purple and raising it into a kind of flaming radiance symbolizes the conjugial love of the husband flowing back to the wife. Things like these are represented on these walls whenever we reflect on conjugial love, its mutual, progressive and simultaneous union, and then look closely at the rainbows exhibited there."

At this I said, "Things like this today are more than mysteries, for they are of a representational type, representing the secrets of the conjugial love of one man with one wife."

He replied, "So they are, but to us here they are not secrets, and therefore not mysteries."

[8] When he said this, a chariot appeared in the distance drawn by white ponies, and seeing it, the angel said, "That chariot is a signal for us to depart."

Then as we were going down the steps, our host gave us a cluster of white grapes with leaves from the vine still attached, and suddenly the leaves turned silver. And we took them away with us as a memento that we had spoken with people of the silver age.

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

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