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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

 

Apocalypse Revealed #655

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655. To this I will append the following account:

I spoke with some of the spirits meant by the dragon. And one of them said to me, "Come with me and I will show you what pleases our eyes and hearts."

Then he took me through a dark forest and over a hill, from which I could view the pleasures of the dragon spirits. And I saw an amphitheater built in the form of a circle, with sloping tiers of benches extending up all around on which spectators were sitting. Those who sat on the lowest benches looked to me at a distance like satyrs and priapi, some of them with a cloth covering their private parts, and some of them naked without one. On the benches above them sat whoremongers and harlots. So they appeared to me from their behavior.

The dragon spirit then said to me, "Now you will see our sport." And I saw what looked like calves, rams, ewes, kids and lambs brought into the arena of the circus, and after they were all there, a gate opened and I saw what looked like young lions, panthers, leopards and wolves rushing upon the flock and savagely attacking them. They tore them to pieces and slaughtered them. And after that bloody carnage the satyrs spread sand over the site where the slaughter took place.

[2] The dragon spirit said to me then, "These are our sports, which please our hearts."

But I replied, "Get away from me, you demon! In a little while you will see this amphitheater turned into a lake of fire and brimstone."

He laughed and left me. And wondering to myself afterward why the Lord permits such things, I received in my heart the answer, that they are permitted as long as spirits are in the world of spirits; but that when their time in that world is over, such theatrical scenes are turned into dreadful ones in hell.

[3] Everything that I saw was a sight induced by the dragon spirits through beguilements. There were no calves, rams, ewes, kids or lambs, therefore, but those spirits made genuine goods and truths of the church to so appear, goods and truths that they hate. The young lions, panthers, leopards and wolves were manifestations of the lusts in those spirits who looked like satyrs and priapi. Those without a cloth over their private parts were people who believed that evils are not seen in the eyes of God, while those with a cloth are people who believed that evils are seen, but do not condemn, provided they have faith. The whoremongers and harlots were people who falsified the Word's truth, for licentiousness symbolizes the falsification of truth.

Everything in the spiritual world appears at a distance in accordance with its correspondence, and when these correspondences take manifest form, in objects like those of natural ones, we call them representations of spiritual entities.

[4] I later saw those spirits leaving the forest, with the dragon spirit surrounded by the satyrs and priapi, followed by their lieutenants and camp followers, who were the whoremongers and harlots. The troop grew as it went, and I was given then to hear what they were saying among themselves. They were saying that they saw a flock of sheep and goats in a meadow, and that it was a sign that they were approaching one of the Jerusalem cities where charity is primary. And they said, "Let us go and seize that city, throw out its inhabitants, and plunder their goods!"

They went to it, but it had a wall around it, with angels as guards upon the wall. So then they said, "Let us take it by trickery. Let us send in an artful person skilled in casuistry, who can make black white and white black, and color the reality of any subject."

So the spirits found a certain expert in the metaphysical art, who could turn concepts of things into considerations of terms and hide actual realities under strings of words, and so fly away like a hawk with its prey under its wings. They told him what to say to the inhabitants of the city, that they were people who shared the inhabitants' religion and should be admitted.

Going to the city gate he knocked, and when it was opened, he said that he wished to speak with the wisest person in the city. So he was allowed in and taken to a certain man, and he addressed the man then, saying, "My brethren are outside the city and ask to be let in. They share your religion. You and we both make faith and charity to be the two essential ingredients of religion. The only difference is that you say charity is primary and faith its effect, while we say faith is primary and charity its effect. What does it matter which one is called primary, when we believe in both?"

[5] The city's wise man replied, "Let us not speak about this matter by ourselves, but do so in the presence of a number of others, to serve as arbiters and judges. Otherwise no decision will result."

And at that he summoned some others, and the dragon spirit's emissary repeated to them what he had said before.

Then the city's wise man responded, "You said that it is the same whether one takes charity to be the primary concern of the church, or faith, provided one agrees that the two together form the church and its religion. And yet the difference is as the difference between something prior and something subsequent, between a cause and its effect, between a principal cause and an instrumental cause, between an essential component and a manner of expression.

"I speak so to you, because I have observed that you are an expert in the metaphysical art, an art that we call casuistry, and that some people call mumbo jumbo. But let us put these terms aside. The difference is as the difference between something above and something below. Indeed, if you would believe it, it is as the difference between heaven and hell. For that which is primary forms the head and breast, while that which is its effect forms the feet and the soles of the feet.

"But let us first agree on what charity is and what faith is - that charity is the love's affection for doing good to the neighbor for God's sake, and for the sake of salvation and eternal life, and that faith is confident thought regarding God, salvation and eternal life."

[6] However, the emissary said, "I grant that that is what faith is, and I also grant that charity is, as you say, an affection for God's sake, because it conforms with His commandment, but not that is an affection for the sake of salvation and eternal life."

Whereupon the city's wise man said, "Let it be as you say, provided it is for God's sake."

Following this agreement the city's wise man said, "Is not affection the primary thing and thought its effect?"

To which the dragon spirit's emissary answered, "No, it is not."

But he was told in reply, "You cannot deny it. A person is moved to think by his affection, is he not? Take away the affection. Can you form any thought? The case is entirely the same as if you were to take the sound out of speech. If you were to take away any sound, could you speak a word? The tone is also a matter of affection, while the words are a matter of thought, for affection produces the tone and thought the words. The case is also like that of a flame and its light. If you take away the flame, does not the light die?

"So it is with charity and faith, charity being an affection, and faith a matter of thought. Can you not comprehend, then, that the primary element is everything in the secondary one, even as sound is in speech? And from this you can see that if you do not make primary that which is primary, you do not possess the second element. Consequently, if you take faith, which is in second place, and put it in first place, you will appear no otherwise in heaven than as a person upside down, with his feet planted upward and his head pointed down. Or you will look like a clown turned upside down and walking on his hands. Since people like you will appear so in heaven, what then are your good works constituting charity but the kind that a clown might do with his feet, seeing that he cannot do them with his hands? As a consequence your charity is natural and not spiritual, as you yourself see, because it is turned upside down."

[7] The emissary understood this, for every devil can understand truth when he hears it, even though he cannot retain it, because when his affection for evil returns, it casts out thought of truth.

After that, then, the city's wise man described with many illustrations what faith is like when it is accepted as primary, saying that it is merely natural, that it is simply knowledge devoid of any spiritual life, and that it is consequently not faith. "For your charity," he said, "is nothing but a natural affection, and the only kind of thought that springs from a natural affection is natural thought, which is what constitutes your faith.

"I might almost say, too," he continued, "that in your merely natural faith there is scarcely any other spiritual life than in your knowledge of the Mongol empire, of the diamond mine there, or of its emperor's wealth and court."

When the dragon's emissary heard this, he angrily departed and reported to his companions outside the city. And when they heard that he had been told that charity is an affection for doing good to the neighbor for God's sake and for the sake of salvation and eternal life, they all cried out, "That's a lie!"

And the dragon spirit himself said, "What an outrage! All good works that constitute charity - if done for the sake of salvation, are they not merit-seeking?"

[8] The spirits then said to one another, "Let us summon here more of our colleagues, and let us lay siege to this city. Let us make ladders, scale the wall and attack them at night, and throw out those proponents of charity."

But when they attempted this, there suddenly appeared what looked like fire from heaven which consumed them. In fact, however, the fire from heaven was a manifestation of their anger, owing to their hatred of the city's inhabitants, because those inhabitants cast faith out of first place into second place. It appeared to them as though they were consumed by fire because hell opened beneath their feet and swallowed them.

Events similar to this occurred in many places at the time of the Last Judgment, and this is the meaning of the following depiction in the book of Revelation:

(The dragon) will go out to lead astray the nations which are in the four corners of the earth..., to gather them together for war... And they went up over the breadth of the land and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. But fire came down from God out of heaven and consumed them. (Revelation 20:8-9)

  
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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 #207

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207. To this I will append two narrative accounts. Here is the first:

Some time later 1 I looked in the direction of the city Athenaeum, which I said something about in an earlier account, 2 and I heard an unusual clamor. In the clamor I heard an element of laughter, in the laughter an element of displeasure, and in the displeasure an element of sorrow. However, the clamor was not therefore inharmonious, but harmonious, because the elements did not mix with each other, but one was contained within another. (In the spiritual world, one distinctly perceives the variety and combination of affections in a sound.)

From a distance I asked, "What is the matter?"

They then said, "A messenger came from the place where newcomers from the Christian world first appear, saying he had heard from three of them there that in the world they had come from, they had believed like everyone else that the blessed and happy after death would have complete rest from their labors, and that since positions of responsibility, occupations and employments are labors, they would have rest from these.

"An emissary of ours has now brought these three here, and they are standing at the gate and waiting. A commotion broke out because of this, and after deliberating, the people have decided not to bring them into the Palladium on Parnassium hill, as they have done with visitors before, but to bring them into the great hall there, to disclose the news they have from the Christian world. Several delegates have been sent to formally usher them in."

[2] Since I was in the spirit - and since distances for spirits depend on the states of their affections, and I was then affected with a wish to see and hear these people - I found myself present there and saw them brought in and heard them speak.

The people in the hall who were older or wiser sat towards the sides, with the rest in the middle, and in front of them was a raised dais. In formal procession through the middle of the hall, some of the younger people conducted the three newcomers and the messenger to it. Then, after waiting for silence, one of the older ones there greeted them and asked, "What news do you have from earth?"

They said, "We have much that is new, but tell us, please, on what subject?"

So the older man replied, "What news do you have from earth regarding our world and heaven?"

They then answered, "When we first came into this world, we learned that here and in heaven there are positions of responsibility, ministries, occupations, business dealings, scholarly studies in every field of learning, and wonderful kinds of employment. Yet we had believed that upon our departure or passage from the natural world into this spiritual one, we would come into everlasting rest from our labors. What are occupations but labors?"

[3] To this the older man replied, "Did you think that eternal rest from labors meant eternal idleness, in which you would continually sit around or lie about, breathing in auras of delight with your breast and drinking in outpourings of joy with your mouth?"

Laughing gently at this, the three newcomers said that they had supposed something of the sort.

At that they then received this response: "What do joys and delights and thus happiness have in common with idleness? Idleness causes the mind to collapse rather than expand, or the person to become deader rather than more alive.

"Picture someone sitting around in a state of complete idleness, with hands hanging down, his eyes downcast or shut, and imagine that he is at the same time surrounded with an aura of rapture. Would drowsiness not seize both his head and his body, and the lively swelling of his face drop? With every fiber loosened, would he not finally begin to sway back and forth and eventually fall to the ground? What keeps the whole system of the body expanded and taut but an intentness of mind? And what produces an intentness of mind but responsibilities and employments, when these are undertaken with delight?

"So, then, I will tell you some news from heaven, that they have there positions of responsibility, ministries, higher and lower courts of law, and also trades and employments."

[4] When the three newcomers heard that in heaven they have higher and lower courts of law, they began to say, "What is the purpose of these? Are not all in heaven inspired and led by God, and do they not all therefore know what is just and right? What need is there then for judges?"

But the older man replied, "In this world we are instructed and taught what is good and true, also what is just and right, the same as in the natural world. Moreover, we learn these things not directly from God but indirectly through others. Every angel, too, like every man, thinks truth and does good as though of himself, and this is not pure but mixed in character, depending on the angel's state. In addition, among angels also, some are simple and some wise, and the wise have to make judgments when the simple ones among them, owing to their simpleness or ignorance, are uncertain about what is just or deviate from it.

"But," he said to them, "since you are still newcomers in this world, follow me into our city, if you wish, and we will show you all."

[5] So they left the hall, with some of the older people accompanying them as well. And they went first to a great library, which had been divided into a number of smaller collections according to subject fields.

The three newcomers were dumbfounded at seeing so many books, and they said, "You have books in this world too! Where do you get the parchment and paper? Where you get the pens and ink?"

The older men said in reply, "We perceive that you believed in the previous world that because this world is spiritual, it would be barren. Moreover, that you believed this because you harbored an idea of spiritual existence that was abstracted from a material one, and anything abstracted from material existence seemed to you to be nothing, consequently as something barren. Yet we have a full array of everything here. It is just that everything here is essential in nature rather than material, and material objects take their origin from essential ones. Those of us who live here are spiritual beings because we are essential beings rather than material ones. So it is that everything found in the material world exists here in its perfect form, even books and manuscripts, and many other things."

When the three newcomers heard the term essential used, they thought it must be so, both because they saw the books that had been written, and because they had heard it said that material objects have their origin from essential forms.

To convince them further with respect to this, the men took the newcomers down to the quarters of copyists who were making copies of drafts written by some of the wise people of the city; and when the newcomers looked at the manuscripts, they marveled at how neat and polished they were.

[6] After this they escorted the newcomers to professional academies, gymnasia and colleges, also to places where their scholarly forums were held, some of which they called forums of the Daughters of Heliconeum, some forums of the Daughters of Parnassium, some forums of the Daughters of Athenaeum, and some forums of the Muses of the Spring. 3 They said they gave them these names because daughters or maidens symbolize affections for various kinds of knowledge, and everyone's intelligence depends on his affection for various kinds of knowledge. The forums so called were spiritual exercises and debates.

Next they took the newcomers around the city to its directors and managers and their officials, and these in turn introduced them to marvelous works, which their craftsmen create in a spiritual manner.

[7] After the newcomers had seen these things, the older man spoke with them again concerning eternal rest from labors, into which the blessed and happy come after death.

"Eternal rest does not mean idleness," he said, "because idleness affects the mind and consequently the whole body with listlessness, lethargy, insensibility and slumber, and these are conditions of deadness, not life, much less the eternal life experienced by angels of heaven. Eternal rest, therefore, is rest that dispels these states and vitalizes a person, and this must be something which rouses the mind. Thus it is some pursuit or employment by which the mind is awakened, animated, and afforded delight, which in turn depends on some useful service for the sake of which, in which, and towards which it is working. So it is that the whole of heaven is viewed by the Lord as a world of useful service, and each angel is an angel according to the service he renders. The pleasure in being useful carries him along, like a boat in a favoring current, bringing him into a state of eternal peace and the rest that comes with peace. This is what is meant by eternal rest from labors.

"An angel's vitality depends on an application of his mind to some pursuit for the sake of being useful, and confirmation of this is clearly seen from the fact that they each possess conjugial love with its vigor, potency and delights in the measure that they are engaged in a pursuit of genuine use."

[8] When the three newcomers had been convinced that eternal rest does not mean idleness but the pleasure in some employment that is of use, some young women came with articles of needlework and sewing, works of their own hands, which they presented to them. Then, as these newly introduced spirits were departing, the young women sang a song whose angelic melody expressed an affection for employments of use and its accompanying satisfactions.

Footnotes:

1. I.e., some time after the occurrence related in no. 182.

2. See no. 182; also nos. 151[r]-154[r]

3. In reference to these names, cf., in previous accounts of this city, the topographical features mentioned in nos. 151[r]:1, 182:1, 2.

  
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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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