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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 #231

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231. To this I will append three narrative accounts. Here is the first:

I once heard some clamorings from below, which sounded as though they were gurgling up through water. I heard one clamor to the left crying, "Oh, how just!" Another to the right crying, "Oh, how learned!" And a third one behind me crying, "Oh, how wise!" Then, because it struck me to wonder whether there are any just, learned or wise people in hell, I began to feel a wish to see if people of this sort might be found there; and it was told me from heaven, "You will both see and hear."

So I left home in the spirit, and I saw in the ground before me an opening. I went over to it and looked down, and behold, it had a stairway in it. I went down this stairway, and when I reached the bottom, I saw fields covered with bushes intermixed with thorns and nettles. When I asked whether I was in hell, the people said it was a lower earth just above hell.

I then proceeded in the direction of each of the clamors in turn. Going first to the place where they were crying, "Oh, how just!" I saw a gathering of people who in the world had been judges swayed by partiality and gifts. Going next to the place where they were crying, "Oh, how learned!" I saw a gathering of people who in the world had been reasoners. And going third to the place where they were crying, "Oh, how wise!" I saw a gathering of people who in the world had been confirmers.

[2] I turned back from these, however, to the first place, where the judges were who were swayed by partiality and gifts and who were proclaimed as just. There, over to one side, I saw a kind of amphitheater, built out of bricks and having a roof of black tiles; and I was told that they called it the Tribunal. It had three entrances opening into it on the north side, and three more on the west side, but none on the south or east sides - an indication that their judgments were not judgments having to do with justice but arbitrary rulings.

Inside I saw in the middle of the amphitheater a fireplace, into which the keepers of the hearth were throwing torches covered with sulfur and pitch. Shafts of light flickered out from these on to the plastered walls and formed silhouetted images of birds of the evening and night. At the same time, this fireplace, and the shafts of light flickering out into silhouettes of these images, were representations of their judgments, reflecting their ability to illumine the issues in any case with colored hues and to shape them as they pleased.

[3] After a half-hour had passed, I saw some older and younger men entering in gowns and robes; and laying aside their caps, they seated themselves at tables, ready to sit in judgment. I then heard and observed how skillfully and cleverly they avoided any appearance of favoritism, turning their judgments into semblances of justice, and this to the point that they themselves viewed injustice as nothing other than just, and justice, conversely, as unjust. Their persuasions in regard to these matters were apparent to the eye from their faces and discernible to the ear from their comments.

I was given at that point enlightenment from heaven, which enabled me to perceive in each case whether the rulings were in accordance with the law or not; and I saw to what lengths they went to camouflage injustice and give it the guise of justice, picking out from the laws some one that might support them and drawing the rest to their side through clever reasonings.

After rendering their judgments, the judges would have their verdicts conveyed out to their clients, friends and supporters; and to repay them for their favor, these would cry out for some distance along the road, "Oh, how just! Oh, how just!"

[4] I afterwards spoke with angels of heaven about these events and told them some of the things I had seen and heard. The angels said to me that judges like that appear to others as though endowed with an exceptional keenness of understanding, when in fact they do not have the least inkling of what is just and fair.

"If you take away their partiality for one side or the other," they said, "they sit on their benches as mute as statues, saying only, I agree, I go along with this person or I go along with that person. That is because all their judgments are prejudgments, and their prejudgment pursues each case from beginning to end with a biased one-sidedness. Consequently they see only the side which involves a friend. Every point that is against him they move to the periphery; and if they take it up again, they entangle it in reasonings, as a spider does its prey in the threads of its web - and so destroy it.

"That is why, if they do not follow the web of some prejudgment of theirs, they do not have any inkling of the law. They have been examined to see whether they might have some inkling of it, and it was found that they did not. The inhabitants of your world will be surprised that such is the case, but tell them it is a truth investigated by angels of heaven.

"Since these judges lack any sight of justice," they continued, "in heaven we view them as being not human but monsters, whose heads are shaped by elements of partisanship, their breasts by elements of injustice, and their feet by matters of confirmation - with only the soles of their feet being formed by matters of justice, which they step on and trample into the ground if these do not favor some friend of theirs.

"However, you will see for yourself how they look to us from heaven, for their end is near."

[5] And lo, suddenly then the ground opened, so that tables after tables went tumbling down, and they and their whole amphitheater were swallowed up. And they were cast into caverns and made prisoners there.

Then the angels said to me, "Would you like to see them now?"

And behold, in respect to their faces they appeared as though made of burnished steel. In respect to their bodies from the neck to the loins they looked like figures carved out of stone, dressed in leopard skins. And in respect to their feet they looked like serpents. I also saw the lawbooks, which they had had lying on their tables, turned into playing cards. And now, instead of judging, they were given the task of processing pigments into cosmetics with which to paint the faces of harlots and so turn them into beauties.

[6] After seeing this, I was ready to go on to the other two gatherings, to the one where the people were merely reasoners, and to the other where they were merely confirmers. But at that point the angels said to me, "Rest a while. You will be given angels from the society just above those places to accompany you. Through them you will receive light from the Lord, and you will see some astonishing sights."

  
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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

 

Coronis (An Appendix to True Christian Religion) #37

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37. "On a time, when I was meditating on conjugial love, the desire seized my mind of knowing what that love had been like with those who lived in the Golden Age, and what, afterwards, in the succeeding ones which are called the Silver, Copper and Iron ages. And, as I knew that all who lived well in those ages are in the heavens, I prayed to the Lord that it might be permitted me to speak with them and be instructed.

"And, lo! an angel stood by me, and said, 'I am sent by the Lord to be your guide and companion; and I will lead and accompany you, first, to those who lived in the first era, or Age, which is called the Golden.' (The Golden Age is the same as the age of the Most Ancient Church, which is meant by the head of fine gold, on the statue seen by Nebuchadnezzar in a dream - Dan. 2:32- of which we have spoken before.) The angel said, 'The way to them is laborious; it lies through a dense wood, which no one can traverse unless a guide be given him by the Lord.'

[2] "I was in the spirit, and prepared myself for the journey, and we turned our faces to the east; and as we proceeded, I saw a mountain, whose summit towered beyond the region of the clouds. We crossed a great desert, and reached a wood crowded with all kinds of trees, and dark by reason of the dense growth thereof, of which the angel told me beforehand. But that wood was intersected by numerous narrow paths. The angel said that these were so many windings of error, and that unless the eyes were opened by the Lord, and the olive-trees girt about with vine tendrils seen, and the steps led from olive-tree to olive-tree, the traveller would stray into Tartarus. This wood is of such a nature, to the end that the approach may be guarded; for no other race but the primeval one dwells on that mountain.

[3] "After we entered the wood, our eyes were opened, and we saw here and there the olive-trees entwined with vines, from which hung bunches of grapes of a dark-blue colour, and the olive-trees were arranged in perpetual windings; wherefore, we walked round and round as they came into view; and at length we saw a grove of lofty cedars, and some eagles on their branches. When he saw these, the angel said, 'Now we are on the mountain, not far from its summit.'

And we went on; and lo! behind the grove was a circular plain, where were feeding male and female lambs, which were forms representative of the state of innocence and peace of the inhabitants of the mountain.

"We crossed this plain, and lo! there were seen thousands and thousands of tents to the front, and at the sides in every direction, as far as the sight could reach. And the angel said, 'Now we are in the camp where dwell the armies of the Lord Jehovih, for so they call themselves and their habitations. These most ancient people, while they were in the world, dwelt in tents; for which reason they also dwell in them now.' But I said, 'Let us bend our way to the south, where the wiser of them dwell, that we may meet some one with whom we may enter into conversation.'

[4] "On the way, I saw at a distance three boys and three girls sitting at the door of their tent; but as we drew near, both the boys and the girls were seen as men and women of medium height. And the angel said, 'All the inhabitants of this mountain appear at a distance as young children, because they are in the state of innocence, and early childhood is the appearance of innocence.'

"On seeing us, the three men (viri) ran towards us, and said, 'Whence are you, and how have you come hither? your faces are not of the faces belonging to this mountain.'

"But the angel replied, and told the means by which we obtained access through the wood, and the reason of our coming.

"On hearing this, one of the three men invited and conducted us into his tent. The man was clad in a coat of a purple colour, and a tunic of white wool; and his wife was dressed in a crimson robe, and had, underneath, a vest of fine embroidered linen.

[5] "But inasmuch as the desire of knowing about the marriages of the most ancient people was in my mind, I looked at the husband and the wife by turns, and observed as it were a unity of their souls in their faces; and I said, 'You two are one.

"And the man answered, 'We are one; her life is in me and mine in her. We are two bodies, but one soul. There is between us a union like that of the two tents in the breast, which are called the heart and the lungs; she is the substance of my heart, and I am her lungs; but as by heart we here mean love, and by lungs wisdom-we understand the latter by the former on account of correspondence-she is the love of my wisdom, and I am the wisdom of her love. Hence, as you said, there is the appearance of the unity of our souls in our faces. Hence, it is as impossible to us, here, to look in lust upon the wife of a companion, as it is to look at the light of our heaven from the shade of Tartarus.'

"And the angel said to me, 'You hear now the speech of these angels, that it is the speech of wisdom, because they speak from causes.'

[6] "After this conversation, I saw a great light on a hill among the tents, and I asked, 'Whence is that light?'

"He said, 'From the sanctuary of our tabernacle of worship.'

"I enquired whether it was allowed to approach; and he said that it was. Then I drew near, and saw the tabernacle exactly according to the description without and within, of the Tabernacle which was set up for the Sons of Israel in the wilderness, the form of which was shown to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exod. 25:40; 26:30). I asked, further, 'What is there within, in its sanctuary, whence so great a light proceeds?'

"And he answered, 'There is a tablet, on which is written, "THE COVENANT BETWEEN THE LORD JEHOVIH AND HEAVEN."' He said no more.

"Then, also, I questioned them about the LORD JEHOVIH, whom they worship; and I said, 'Is He not God the Father, the Creator of the universe?'

"And they replied, 'He is; but, by the Lord Jehovih we understand Jehovah in His Human; for we are not able to look upon Jehovah in His inmost Divinity, except through His Human': and then they explained what they understood, and also what at this day they understand, by the

Seed of the woman trampling the serpent's head (Gen. 3:15);

namely, that the Lord Jehovih would come into the world, and redeem and save all who believed on Him, and who would believe thereafter.

"When we had finished this conversation, the man ran to his tent, and returned with a pomegranate in which was a vast number of golden seeds, which he presented to me, and I brought away: this was a token that we had been with those who lived in the Golden Age." [See the little work on CONJUGIAL LOVE , n. 75.] - For an account of the heavens of the remaining Churches which succeeded the Most Ancient, in their order, see in the same little work on CONJUGIAL LOVE (n. 76-82).

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

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