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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 #151

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151. 9. Chastity cannot be ascribed to people who are born eunuchs or who have been made eunuchs. 1 By people who are born eunuchs we mean chiefly people in whom the outmost impulse of love is missing from birth. And because the highest and intermediate impulses then lack a foundation on which to rest, neither do these impulses develop. Or if they do, the people are not concerned with distinguishing between chaste and unchaste states, since either one is a matter of indifference to them. The diversities among people like this, however, are many.

The case with people who have been made eunuchs is almost the same, as with some who are born eunuchs; only that having become eunuchs, and being such, whether men or women, therefore they cannot help but regard conjugial love as a fantasy and its delights as fairy tales. If anything of the inclination remains in them, it becomes silent, which is neither chaste nor unchaste; and being neither, it is incapable of being classed in one category or the other.

Footnotes:

1. Cf. Matthew 19:12.

  
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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

 

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.

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