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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 #521

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521. To this I will append the following narrative account:

My sight was opened to see a dark forest and in it a mob of satyrs. The satyrs' chests were hairy, and some had feet like those of calves, some feet like those of panthers, and some feet like those of wolves, with claws instead of toes.

These satyrs were running about, shouting, "Where are the women?" And I then saw some whores who were waiting for them. They, too, were monstrous in various ways.

The satyrs ran up to them and took hold of them, dragging them away into a cavern which was situated in the middle of the forest deep beneath the earth. On the ground around the cavern, moreover, lay a great serpent coiled in a spiral, which spewed its venom into the cavern. In the branches of the forest above the serpent, deadly birds of the night were cawing and shrieking. But the satyrs and whores did not see these things, because they were forms corresponding to their lascivious lusts and thus appearances visible usually only from a distance.

[2] They afterwards emerged from the cavern and went into a certain low shack, which was a brothel; and having parted from the whores the satyrs then talked together, to whose conversation I lent an ear (for speech in the spiritual world can be heard at a distance as though in one's presence, since an extent of space there is only an appearance). They were talking about marriage, nature and religion.

Marriage was the subject of those whose feet looked like those of calves, and they said, "What is marriage but legalized adultery? And what is sweeter than licentious charades and the deceiving of husbands?"

The rest responded to this with guffaws and clapped their hands in applause.

Nature was the subject of those whose feet looked like those of panthers, and they said, "What else is there but nature? Is there any difference between man and beast other than the fact that a man can articulate his thoughts in speech, while a beast can only make sounds? Do they not both have life from heat and understanding from light by the operation of nature?"

At this the rest exclaimed, "Oh, with what judgment you speak!"

Religion was the subject of those whose feet looked like those of wolves, and they spoke, saying, "What is God or the Divine but the inmost working of nature? What is religion but an invention to capture and bind the masses?"

In response to this the rest cried "Bravo!"

[3] Some moments later they burst forth, and as they did so they saw me in the distance looking at them with intent eyes. Angered at this, they rushed out of the forest and with a menacing expression hastened their way to me.

"Why are you standing here and attending to our whisperings?" they said. To which I replied, "Why not? What is there to stop me? They were audible utterances." And I recounted to them what I had heard them saying.

At that their dispositions became calmer, and this because they were afraid of having what they said divulged. They also began to speak with restraint then and to behave with propriety, by which I recognized that they did not come from the lower classes but from worthier stock.

At that point I then related to them that I had seen them in the forest as satyrs, twenty of them as calf-like satyrs, six as panther-like satyrs, and four as wolf-like satyrs (there being thirty of them altogether).

[4] They were astonished at this, as they themselves had seen each other there only as men, just as they were now seeing themselves here with me. But I told them that that was the way they appeared at a distance because of their licentious lust, and that that satyr form was the form of their dissolute adultery and not the form of their person. I gave as a reason the following, that every evil lust presents a likeness of itself in some particular form, which is not seen by the people themselves, but by others standing at a distance. I then said to them, "To convince yourselves, send some of your number into that forest while the rest of you remain here and watch."

So they did as I said and sent off two, and the rest saw them next to that shanty brothel altogether as satyrs; and when the two returned, they greeted them as satyrs and said, "Oh, what impostors!"

As they were laughing over this, I joked with them in various ways, and I reported to them that I had seen adulterers looking also like pigs. I also recalled then the story of Ulysses and Circe, how she had sprinkled Ulysses's companions and men with Hecatean herbs and touched them with a magic wand and so turned them into pigs - "into adulterers, perhaps," I said, "because by no art could she have turned anyone into a pig!"

After they finished laughing at these and similar remarks, I asked them whether they knew from what countries in the world they came. They said they came from various different countries and mentioned by name Italy, Poland, Germany, England, and Sweden. I then asked whether they saw anyone among them from Holland, and they said they did not.

[5] After that I turned the conversation to more serious matters, and I asked whether they ever considered that adultery is a sin.

"What is sin?" they replied. "We do not know what it is."

I asked whether they ever remembered that adultery is against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue.

They replied, "What is the Decalogue? Is it not the catechism? What does that children's booklet have to do with men like us?"

I asked whether they ever had any thought of hell.

They replied, "Who has come up from there and told us?"

I asked whether they had had any thought in the world regarding life after death.

They said, "The same thought as we did of animals, and sometimes the same as we did of ghosts, which, if they are exhaled from corpses, float away."

Again I asked whether they had heard anything concerning any of these matters from priests.

They replied that they attended only to the sound of their voices, and not to the subject and what that was.

[6] Stunned by these responses, I said to them, "Turn your face and eyes to the middle of the forest where the cavern is that you were in."

So they turned around, and they saw the great serpent coiled around it in a spiral and spewing in its venom, and also the baleful birds in the branches above it.

And I asked, "What do you see?"

But terror-stricken, they made no answer.

So I said, "Is it not a horrid sight that you see? You should know that it is a representation of adultery in the atrocity of its lust."

Suddenly then an angel appeared standing near. He was a priest, and he opened a hell in the western zone into which people of this character are finally gathered. And he said, "Look over there."

They then saw what appeared to be a lake of fire; and in it they recognized some of their friends in the world, who beckoned them to join them.

Having seen and heard these things, the men turned and hastened from my sight on a course away from the forest. But I observed their steps, seeing that they pretended to go on a course away from the forest, but that by roundabout ways they made their way back it.

  
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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

 

True Christian Religion #461

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461. The third experience 1 .

Once when I was in the spirit I travelled deep into the southern region in the spiritual world, and came into a park there; and I saw that this one was better than the others I had so far visited. The reason was that a garden means intelligence; and it is to the south that all are sent who are especially intelligent. It was this that was meant by the Garden of Eden, where Adam lived with his wife; so their being driven out implies that they were deprived of intelligence, and thus also of uprightness of life. As I was walking in this southern park I noticed some people sitting under a laurel-bush eating figs. I went up to them and asked them to give me some figs. They did so, and at once the figs in my hand turned into grapes. I was surprised by this, but an angelic spirit standing next to me said: 'The figs in your hand turned into grapes, because the meaning of figs by their correspondence is the kinds of good of charity and hence of faith in the natural or external man, and grape means the kinds of good of charity and hence of faith in the spiritual or internal man. As you love what is spiritual, so this happened to you. For in our world everything happens and comes into existence, and also undergoes change, in accordance with correspondences.'

[2] I was at once struck with a keen desire to know how a person can do good coming from God, and yet do it exactly as if of himself. So I asked those who were eating figs how they understood the point. They said that they could only understand this as meaning that God performs this inwardly in a person while he is unaware of it. For if he were conscious of it, and did it in that state, he would do only apparent good, which is inwardly evil. 'Everything,' they said, 'which comes from man comes from his self (proprium), and this is evil from birth. How then can good coming from God and evil coming from man be linked, and so jointly proceed to action? A person's self in matters of salvation is constantly seeking merit; and in so far as he does so, he takes away from the Lord His merit, which is the height of injustice and impiety. In short, if the good which God performs in a person were to flow into his willing and thence into his doing, that good would be utterly defiled and profaned, something God never permits. A person can of course think that the good he does comes from God, and call it God's good done by his means; still we do not understand that it is good.'

[3] Then I disclosed what I was thinking and said: 'You do not understand because your thinking is based upon appearances, and this sort of thinking if supported by argument is fallacy. The appearance and hence the fallacy you are involved in is because you believe that everything a person wills and thinks, and so does and says, is in him and consequently comes from him. Yet in fact nothing of this is in him, except the condition of receiving what flows in. Man is not life in himself, but he is an instrument for receiving life. The Lord is life in Himself, as He also says in John:

As the Father has life in Himself, so He granted to the Son to have life in Himself, John 5:26; and elsewhere, for instance John 11:25; 14:6, 19.

[4] 'There are two things which produce life, love and wisdom, or, what is the same, the good of love and the truth of wisdom. These flow in from God, and are received by a person as if they were his own; and because they are felt like this, they also come from a person as if they were his. The Lord grants that they are felt like this by a person, so that what flows in affects him, and so by being accepted remains with him. But because all evil also flows in, not from God, but from hell, and accepting this gives pleasure, man being by birth such an instrument, for this reason only so much good can be accepted from God as there is evil taken away by the person as if by himself, which is achieved by repentance together with faith in the Lord.

[5] 'It can be plainly seen from a consideration of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch that love and wisdom, charity and faith, or to use a more general expression, the good of love and charity, and the truth of wisdom and faith, flow into a person; and that what flows in appears in a person as if it were entirely his own, and it proceeds from him as if it were his own. All the sensations produced in the organs of those senses come from an external source and are felt in the organs concerned. It is the same with the organs of the internal senses, the only difference being that these are affected by spiritual things, which are undetectable, flowing in, whereas the external senses are affected by natural things, which are detectable. In short, man is an instrument for the reception of life from God; it follows that he receives good to the extent that he desists from evil. Everyone is granted by the Lord the potentiality of desisting from evil, because he is granted the power to will and to have understanding; and whatever a person does from his will in accordance with his understanding, or what is the same thing, from his freedom to will in accordance with the power of reason in his understanding, is permanent. By this means the Lord brings a person into a state of being linked with Himself, and in this state He reforms, regenerates and saves him.

[6] 'The life which flows in is life coming forth from the Lord; this life is also called the Spirit of God, and in the Word the Holy Spirit, and of this it is said that it enlightens and quickens, in fact that it works on him. But this life varies and is modified depending on the organisation brought about by love. You can also know that all the good of love and charity, and all the truth of wisdom and faith flow in and are not actually in the person, if you reflect that when anyone thinks that man has such a capability from creation, he must inevitably think that God poured Himself into man, so that people are partially gods. Yet those who think this as a result of firm belief become devils, and in our world stink like corpses.

[7] 'Moreover, what is human action but a mind acting? What the mind wills and thinks, it does and speaks by means of its instrument, the body. When therefore the mind is guided by the Lord, so is its action and speech. Action and speech are guided by the Lord, when He is believed in. If this were not so, tell me if you can, why did the Lord in thousands of places in His Word order man to love his neighbour, perform the good deeds of charity, to produce fruit like a tree and keep His commandments, and to do both one and the other in order to be saved? Again, why did He say that a person would be judged according to his deeds or what he had done, those whose deeds were good going to heaven and life, those whose deeds were wicked going to hell and death? How could the Lord have said such things, if everything coming from a person was done to acquire merit and therefore wicked? You ought therefore to know that if the mind is charity, so too is action; but if the mind is faith alone, and this too is faith separated from spiritual charity, action also is that faith.'

[8] On hearing this those who were sitting under the laurel said: 'We grasp that you have spoken fairly, but still we do not grasp the point.' 'You grasp,' I answered them, 'that I have spoken fairly by means of the general perception which all people enjoy as the result of the light which flows in from heaven when they hear something true. Your failure to grasp the point is due to your own personal perception, which everyone has as a result of light flowing in from the world. In the case of the wise those two kinds of perception, internal and external, or spiritual and natural, act as one. You too can make them act as one, if you look to the Lord and put away evils.' Since they understood this, I took some shoots off a vine and held them out to them saying, 'Do you think this is from me or from the Lord?' They said it was from the Lord through me; and at once the shoots in their hands put forth grapes.

When I left, I saw a table of cedar-wood, on which was a book, under a flourishing olive-tree with a vine wound about its trunk. When I looked, I saw to my surprise that the book was the one written through me called ARCANA CAELESTIA 2 . I said that that book contained a full demonstration that man is an instrument for the reception of life, and was not himself life; and that life could not be created and so by being created be in man, any more than light could be created in the eye.

Footnotes:

1. This passage is based upon

2. Or 'The secrets of heaven'.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

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