Swedenborg's Secret: The Meaning and Significance of the Word of God, the Life of the Angels, and Service to God : a Biography

Front Cover
The Swedenborg Society, 2005 - 516 pages
Swedenborg's Secret is the first major study of the eighteenth-century Swedish philosopher and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) to be published in English for over fifty years, being a translation of the critically acclaimed Swedish biography Swedenborg's Hemlighet (1999). Beautifully designed and illustrated throughout with ten color plates and forty-four black-and-white pictures, Swedenborg's Secret is an authoritative and full-length biography that is immensely readable.

Using a wealth of historical material, Lars Bergquist paints a vivid portrait of an ambitious and practical man who was one of the greatest figures of the Enlightenment, a polymath who was a poet, inventor, mathematician, mineralogist, anatomist, and cosmologist. Bergquist also reveals Swedenborg to be a "man of two worlds," someone who not only played an active part in the political life of his nation but who was also a spiritual visionary, setting out a stunning vision of human destiny in works such as Heaven and Hell and New Jerusalem. Swedenborg's Secret reclaims Swedenborg from the margins of contemporary thought and places him where he belongs: as a founding figure of modern spirituality and Western philosophy.

The book also contains a chronology of Swedenborg's life and contemporary events, an appendix listing the contents of Swedenborg's personal library and other books he was known to have owned or read, a comprehensive bibliography, and a full index.

From inside the book

Contents

1The church the bishop and the son
1
2Growth and studies
15
England Holland France
33
4Poetry and politics
49
journal editor and inventor
57
Polhem and Emanuel Swedenborg
75
Polhem and his daughters ennoblement the search for a career
81
radical pietism and the beginning of a natural philosophy
91
22Arcana Caelestia the Fall and the Ages of Man
277
23Breathing concentration and vision
291
24The hermeneutic circle
303
portrait with a doubleexposure
315
26 About the life of the angels and the darkness of the evil
329
Politics the art of the possible
345
28 Money from Paris and a good king?
353
Piety Wisdom and Providence
367

9Why should we care about Polands affairs?
103
Principia
113
his death and funeral
125
12Philosophical notes
133
13The kingdom of the soul
147
crisis and true love
157
15The Worship and Love of God
179
the old man and the new
193
the great journal
207
18The Book of Revelation and the keys to heaven
223
19Digression on a garden
237
20Departure and the Great Work
245
21The clairvoyant Assessor
267
30Marriage on earth marriage in heaven
381
31The Soul and its physical envelope
397
32Attack and selfdefence
403
defence and summary
413
34Death is my reward
421
Postscript
427
Endnotes
437
Chronology
457
Contents of Swedenborgs Library
469
Bibliography
483
Index
503
Copyright

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