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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 #462

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462. Since no one today knows what is meant by enchantments, we will briefly say what they are.

Enchantments are listed just above in place of the eighth commandment of the Decalogue, "You shall not bear false witness," for mentioned there are three other prohibited evils, namely, murders, sexual immorality, and thefts.

To bear false witness means, in the natural sense, to act as a false witness, to lie and defame; and in the spiritual sense it means to convince and persuade that falsity is true and that evil is good. It is apparent from this that to practice enchantment means, symbolically, to persuade someone of falsity and thus to destroy the truth.

[2] The practice of enchantments existed among ancient peoples, and they were accomplished in three ways:

First, they would keep someone else's hearing and thus his mind continually focused on their words and declarations, without letup on any part of them, while at the same time inspiring and instilling their thought then through their breathing, coupled with the affection in the tone of their discourse, with the result that the hearer could not form any thought of his own. Thus would speakers of falsehood forcibly infuse their falsities.

Second, they would infuse a persuasion, which they would do by keeping the mind from anything contrary, and by keeping it intent only on the idea in what they were saying. Thus the spiritual atmosphere of one person's mind dispelled the spiritual atmosphere of another person's mind and suffocated it. This was the spiritual witchcraft that magicians once employed, and they called it overcoming and binding the intellect. This kind of enchantment was an enchantment of the spirit or thought only, whereas the first kind was a enchantment of the mouth or speech as well.

[3] Third, a hearer would keep his mind so firmly in his own opinion that he would almost close his ears to hearing anything of what someone else was saying. He would accomplish this by holding his breath, and sometimes by a tacit muttering, and thus by a continual denial of his adversary's opinion. This kind of enchantment was practiced by people listening to others, while the first two kinds were practiced by people speaking to others.

These three kinds of enchantment were practiced among ancient peoples, and are still practiced among spirits in hell. In the case of people in the world, however, only the third kind remains, and this among people who have affirmed in themselves falsities of religion out of a conceit in their own intelligence. For when these people hear contrary views, they do not admit them any further into their thought than to superficial contact, and then they emit from the inner recess of their mind a kind of fire which consumes those views, of which the other person knows nothing beyond the indications of the facial expression and tone of voice in reply, if the enchanter does not contain that fire, that is, the anger of his conceit, by hiding it.

This kind of enchantment today causes truths not to be accepted, and in many cases, not to be understood.

[4] Many magical arts were practiced in ancient times, and that these included enchantments is apparent in the book of Deuteronomy:

When you come into the land..., you shall not learn to imitate the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found in you anyone who causes his son or his daughter to pass through fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a diviner or fortune teller, or a user of potions, or one who uses enchantments, or one who inquires of an oracle, or a reader of signs, or one who seeks the dead. For (all of these things) are an abomination to Jehovah. (Deuteronomy 18:9-12)

A persuasion to falsity and thus the destruction of truth is symbolically meant by enchantments in the following passages:

Your wisdom and your knowledge have led you astray... Therefore evil shall come upon you... Stay now in your enchantments, and in the multitude of your sorceries... (Isaiah 47:10-12)

...by (Babylon's) enchantment all the nations were deceived. (Revelation 18:23)

Outside are dogs and enchanters and the sexually immoral and murderers... (Revelation 22:15)

(Joram said to Jehu,) "Is it peace...?" He answered, ."..as long as the harlotries of your mother Jezebel and her enchantments are many?" (2 Kings 9:22)

Harlotries symbolize falsifications (no. 134), and her enchantments symbolize destructions of truth by persuasions to falsity.

[5] Conversely, an enchantment may symbolize a rejection of falsity by truths, which was also accomplished by tacitly thinking and muttering against falsity out of a zeal for the truth, as is apparent from the following:

...Jehovah... will take away from Jerusalem... the mighty man, the man of war..., the counselor, the practiced mutterer, and the expert in enchantment. (Isaiah 3:1-3)

Their poison is like the poison of a... deaf cobra; it stops its ear, so as not to hear the voice of mutterers, of the skillful user of enchantments. (Psalms 58:4-5)

...behold, I am sending basilisk 1 serpents among you, against which there is no enchantment... (Jeremiah 8:17)

...in distress they sought you, they cried out in their muttering... (Isaiah 26:16)

Footnotes:

1. A legendary serpent or dragon, whose breath and glance were said to be lethal. Formerly identified in English translations of the Latin Vulgate with the cockatrice, and retained as such in the King James Bible.

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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 #232

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232. The second account:

Some time later, I again heard from the land below the same cries as before, "Oh, how learned!" and "Oh, how wise!" So I looked around to see what angels were then present, and lo, they were angels who lived in the heaven just above the people who were crying out, "Oh, how learned!" I therefore spoke to them about the clamor, and the angels said that the people acclaimed as learned there were the sort who only reason about whether a thing is so or not and rarely think that it is.

"Consequently they are like gusts of wind," they said, "which blow and pass away, or like coverings of bark around trees which have no core, or like shells around almonds without a kernel, or like rinds around fruits without any flesh. For their minds lack any inner judgment and are connected only with their physical senses. If the senses themselves are inadequate to form a judgment, therefore, they can reach no conclusion. In a word, they are merely sense-oriented, and by us are called reasoners.

"We call them reasoners because they never reach any conclusion. Instead they take up whatever they hear and argue about whether it is so, constantly contradicting themselves. They like nothing more than to attack actual truths and thus tear them apart by turning them into matters of dispute. They are the sort of people who think they are more learned than all others in the world."

[2] When I heard this, I asked the angels to take me down to them. So they took me to a cave which had steps leading down to a lower earth. We then descended and followed in the direction of the clamor "Oh, how learned!" And suddenly we saw several hundred people standing in the same place, trampling the soil with their feet. Being astonished by this at first, I asked why they were standing together like that and stamping away at the soil. "At that rate they may use their feet to make a hole in the ground," I said.

The angels chuckled at this and said, "They appear as standing there like that because on any subject they regard nothing as being so, but only consider whether it is and make it a matter of debate. So, since their thought goes no further, they appear only to tread and wear away the same patch of ground without making any progress."

At that point I then went over to the gathering; and behold, they seemed to me to be people of not unhandsome appearance and dressed in elegant clothing. But the angels said, "That is how they seem in their own light; but if light from heaven flows in, their appearance changes, and also their clothing." This, too, actually happened; and then they appeared with dark faces, clothed in black sacks. However, when the light from heaven was taken away, they looked as they had before.

Shortly afterwards I spoke with some of them and said, "I heard the clamor of the crowd around you, crying 'Oh, how learned!' Allow me to explore with you, therefore, some discussion on subjects which are matters of the highest learning."

[3] To which they replied, "Name any subject you please and we will give you an answer."

So I asked, "What must the nature of a person's religion for him to be saved by it?"

In answer they said, "We need to divide this question into several parts, and we cannot give a reply before we come to a conclusion in regard to these. The first consideration must be whether there is anything to religion. Second, whether there is any salvation or not. Third, whether one religion is of any more avail than another. Fourth, whether there is a heaven and a hell. Fifth, whether there is any eternal life after death. And many other considerations besides."

So I asked about the first, whether there is anything to religion. And they began to discuss it, advancing a number of arguments over whether there is any religion, and whether there is anything to what is called religion.

I then asked them to refer the question to the whole gathering, which they did. And the collective response was that the question as put required so much investigation that they could not resolve it by the end of the evening.

"Could you resolve it in a year?" I asked.

And one of them said it could not be resolved in a hundred years.

"But meanwhile," I said, "you are without religion."

To which he replied, "Do we not have to show first whether there is any religion, and whether there is anything to what is called religion? If there is, religion must exist for the wise as well. If not, it must exist only for the common people. We all know that religion is said to be a tie that binds, but the question is, for whom? If only for the common people, then in essence there is nothing in it. If for the wise as well, then there is something in it."

[4] On hearing this I said to them, "You are not learned at all, because you can only speculate about whether a thing is so without settling it either way. Who can become learned without knowing anything for certain, and without making any progress towards it in the way that any person progresses, step by step, and so gradually into wisdom? Otherwise you do not lay so much as a fingernail on truths but remove them further and further out of sight.

"If you reason only about whether a thing is so, is that not like reasoning about the fit of a hat which is never tried on, or about the fit of a shoe which no one wears? What other consequence results but your not knowing whether anything is anything - including, indeed, whether there is any salvation, whether there is any eternal life after death, whether one religion is of any more avail than another, whether there is a heaven and a hell. You cannot have any thought about such things so long as you remain stuck at the first step and keep pounding away at the same piece of ground there without putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward.

"You had better take care that while your minds are standing outside the temple of judgment like that, they do not harden within and turn into pillars of salt, and you become the companions of Lot's wife."

[5] So saying I turned and went, and in anger they hurled stones after me. And at that point they appeared to me like figures carved out of stone, having nothing of human reason in them.

I then asked the angels about their fate; and the angels said, "Their fate is to be let down into an abyss, and there into a wilderness, where they are forced to carry packs. Moreover, because they are then unable to utter anything from their reason, they prattle and talk nonsense; and from a distance there they look like donkeys bearing burdens."

  
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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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