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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

 

Doctrine of the Sacred Scripture #102

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102. That the Word among ancient peoples was written solely in terms of correspondences, but has since been lost, is something reported to me by angels in heaven. And I have been told that this Word is still preserved among them and used by the ancient peoples in that heaven who had that Word when they lived in the world.

Those ancient peoples, among whom that Word is still used in heaven, came partly from the land of Canaan and the lands surrounding it — Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Chaldea, Assyria, Egypt, Sidon, Tyre, and Nineveh — and the inhabitants of all those kingdoms practiced a representational worship and so possessed a knowledge of correspondences. The wisdom of that time flowed from that knowledge, and because of it they had an inner perception and communication with the heavens.

Those who had a more interior knowledge of the correspondences of that Word were called wise and intelligent, but later diviners and magi.

[2] However, because that Word was full of correspondences which only remotely symbolized celestial and spiritual things, and many people consequently began to falsify it, therefore in the course of time, of the Lord’s Divine providence it vanished and finally was lost. And another Word, written in terms of correspondences not so remote, was given, and this through prophets among the children of Israel.

Still, this latter Word retained many names of places in the land of Canaan and in Asia round about, which had the same symbolic meanings as in the Ancient Word.

It was for this reason that Abram was commanded to go to that land, and that his posterity descended from Jacob was led into it.

  
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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 #353

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

I was once in the midst of angels and overheard their conversation. They were talking about intelligence and wisdom, saying that a person has no other perception than that these are both in him, consequently that whatever he thinks with his intellect and intends from his will is from him - even though not a bit of it is from the person, beyond a capacity to receive those things having to do with the intellect and will from God. Moreover, because every person is inclined from birth to love himself, they said, to keep a person from perishing from love of self and a conceit in his own intelligence, it has been provided from creation that that love in a man be transferred to his wife, and that it be implanted in her from birth to love the intelligence and wisdom of her husband and thus the man. That is why a wife continually draws her husband's conceit in his own intelligence to herself, extinguishing it in him and causing it to live in her, thus turning it into conjugial love and filling it with gratifications beyond measure. This has been provided by the Lord, they said, to keep a man from becoming so infatuated with his own intelligence that he believes himself to be intelligent and wise from himself rather than from the Lord, thus wishing to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and suppose himself on that account to be like God, and also God Himself, as said and urged by the serpent, which symbolized the love of one's own intelligence. After eating of the tree, man was therefore expelled from Paradise, and a cherub guarded the way to the tree of life. 1 (Paradise, in its spiritual meaning, is intelligence. To eat of the tree of life is, spiritually, to be intelligent and wise from the Lord. And to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is, spiritually, to be intelligent and wise from self.)

Footnotes:

1. See Genesis 2:16-17, 3:1-24.

  
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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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