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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 #294

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294. The second account:

Several days later I again saw the same seven wives in a rose garden, but in a different one from the one previously. It was a magnificent garden, the like of which I had never seen before. It was laid out almost in a circle, and the roses in it formed a kind of rainbow-like arc. Purple-colored roses or flowers formed its outmost ring; golden-yellow ones the next ring in; dark-blue ones the ring inside that; and bluish-green or bright-green ones the inmost ring. And enclosed within that rainbow-like rose garden was a little pool of clear water.

Those seven wives, previously called maidens of the spring, were sitting there, and seeing me at my window they again called me over. Then, when I arrived, they said, "Have you ever seen anything more beautiful on earth?"

"Never," I said.

So they said, "A marvel like this is created by the Lord in instant, and it represents a new development on earth, for everything created by the Lord represents something. But divine if you can what that is. We are guessing that it is the delights of conjugial love."

[2] On hearing this I said, "What are the delights of conjugial love, of which you spoke with so much wisdom and also so much eloquence last time? After I left you, I related what you said to wives living in our world, and I told them, 'Having now been instructed, I know that you feel delights in your hearts arising from your conjugial love, which you are able to communicate to your husbands in accordance with their wisdom. I also know that from morning to evening you therefore continually contemplate your husbands with the eyes of your spirit and consider how to turn and guide their hearts to becoming wise, in order that you may realize those delights.' I further reported what you meant by wisdom, saying that it is a spiritual-rational and spiritual-moral wisdom, and that as regards marriage it is to love only one's wife and to rid oneself of all desire for other women.

"But to this the wives in our world responded with laughter, saying, 'What are you talking about? What you have said is preposterous. We do not know what conjugial love is. If our husbands experience anything of it, still we do not. How then do its delights originate with us? Indeed, when it comes to the delights which you call the end delights, we sometimes resist vehemently, for to us they are repugnant, in almost the same way as acts of rape. In fact, if you look, you will not see one sign of any such love in our faces. Therefore you are either talking nonsense or joking if, like those seven wives of yours, you too say that we think about our husbands from morning to evening and continually give attention to their wishes and pleasures, in order that we may gain from them delights such as those!'

"I have retained from the responses of those wives these declarations, to report them to you, since they call into dispute and even more entirely contradict the discourse I heard from you by the spring, which I listened to so eagerly and also believed."

[3] To this the wives sitting in the rose garden replied, "Dear friend, you do not know the wisdom and prudence of wives, because they hide it altogether from men and keep it hidden precisely in order to be loved by them. For every man who is not spiritually rational and moral but only naturally so possesses a coldness towards his wife, such a coldness being inherent in him in his inmost elements. This coldness a wise and prudent wife acutely and keenly notices, and she then conceals her conjugial love, withdrawing into her heart so much of it and hiding it there so deeply that not the least bit of it appears in her face, her tone of voice, or gesture. She does this, because to the extent her love appears, to that extent a man's coldness with respect to marriage pours forth from the inmost elements of his mind where it resides and descends into its outmost expressions, producing a total frigidity in the body and an urge to separate himself therefore from the bed and bedroom."

[4] I asked them then, "What causes such coldness, which you call coldness with respect to marriage."

"It comes from a lack of rationality on their part in matters of the spirit. Every man who is irrational in matters of the spirit is inmostly cold to his wife and inmostly warm toward harlots. And because conjugial love and licentious love are opposed to each other, it follows that conjugial love becomes cold whenever licentious love is warm. Then, when coldness reigns in a man, he cannot endure any feeling of love or even therefore any whisper of it from his wife. That is why a wife so wisely and prudently conceals it; and to the extent she does this by denying and resisting, to that extent a wanton atmosphere flows in which revives and restores the man's interest. As a result the wife of a man like that does not experience any delights of the heart such as we do, but only physical gratifications, which on the man's part have to be termed pleasures of insanity, because they are the pleasures of a licentious love.

[5] "Every chaste wife loves her husband, even a husband who is unchaste; but because wisdom is the only quality that receives her love, therefore a wife spends every effort to turn his insanity into wisdom, at least to the point that he does not desire any other women but her. This she accomplishes in a thousand ways, taking especial care that none of these ways be detected by her husband; for she well knows that love cannot be compelled, but is subtly infused in a state of freedom. For that reason it is granted to women to discern from sight, hearing and touch their husbands' every state of mind, while it is not granted to men conversely to discern any of their wives' states of mind.

[6] "A chaste wife can look at her husband with a stern expression, speak to him in a sharp voice, and even be angry at him and fight with him, and yet at the same time in her heart cherish a gentle and tender love for him. The object, however, of these expressions of anger and concealments of love is wisdom and a consequent reception of love on the part of her husband, as is clearly apparent from how quickly she can be placated. Wives furthermore have such ways of concealing the love implanted in their heart and marrows in order by these means to keep a man's coldness with respect to marriage from breaking out in him and extinguishing even the fire of his licentious heat, the result of which would be to turn him from green wood into a dry stick."

[7] After those seven wives made these statements and a number of others like them, their husbands came with clusters of grapes in their hands, some of which had a delicious flavor and some an offensive one. So the wives said, "Why did you bring bad or wild grapes, too?"

"Because," replied their husbands, "your souls being united with ours, we perceived in our souls that you were speaking with this man here about truly conjugial love, saying that its delights are delights of wisdom, and also about licentious love, saying that its delights are pleasures of insanity. The grapes with the delicious flavor are the first kind of delights, while the offensive-tasting or wild grapes are the second kind."

The husbands then confirmed what their wives had said, adding that the pleasures of insanity appear in outward respects similar to the delights of wisdom, but not in their inner qualities - "just like the good and bad grapes that we brought," they said. "For both chaste and unchaste men are capable of a similar wisdom in outward respects, but in its inner qualities their wisdom is entirely different."

[8] After that the little boy came again with a piece of paper in his hand, and he held it out to me, saying, "Read."

So I read as follows:

Be advised, all who read this, that the delights of conjugial love ascend up to the highest heaven, and on the way and in that heaven they join with the delights of all heavenly loves, and so enter into their felicity, which lasts to eternity. That is because the delights of that love are also delights of wisdom.

Be advised, too, that the pleasures of licentious love descend down to the lowest hell, and on the way and in that hell they join with the pleasures of all hellish loves, and so enter into their misery, which consists in a frustration of all the heart's delights. That is because the pleasures of that love are also pleasures of insanity.

The husbands subsequently departed with their wives, and accompanying the little boy as far as the path he took to ascend to heaven, they discovered that the society he had been sent from was a society of the New Heaven, the heaven with which the New Church on earth will be affiliated.

  
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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 #78

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78. The fourth account:

Two days later the angel spoke with me again, saying, "Let us complete the course of the ages. The last age remains, which is named after iron. The people of this age live in the north, on the western side, extending inward or in a latitudinal direction towards the interior. They all come from early inhabitants of Asia who had the Ancient Word and who worshiped according to it. Consequently they lived before the advent of our Lord into the world. This is apparent from the writings of ancient authors in which those times are given these names. The same ages are meant by the statue seen by Nebuchadnezzar, whose head was of gold, its breast and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, and its feet of iron and also clay (Daniel 2:32-33)."

[2] The angel told me this on the way, which was shortened and speeded along by the changes of state produced in our minds according to the character of the inhabitants through whom we passed. For intervals of space, and therefore distances, in the spiritual world are appearances in accordance with states of mind.

When we lifted our eyes, behold, we were in a forest consisting of beech trees, horse chestnuts and oaks. And when we looked around, we caught sight of bears there to the left and leopards to the right.

When I wondered at this, the angel said, "They are not really bears or leopards, but people who guard these inhabitants of the north. With their noses they sniff the atmospheres of life emanating from passers-by, and rush upon all who are spiritual, because the inhabitants are natural. People who only read the Word and take nothing of doctrine from it, at a distance look like bears. And people who confirm falsities from it look like leopards."

But having seen us, they turned away and we passed on.

[3] After the forest we saw scrubland, and then grassy plains divided into fields and surrounded by boxwood. After this the ground sloped downward to a valley, in which there were cities, one after another. We passed by several of them and entered into one great one. Its streets were irregular. So, too, were its houses. These were built out of bricks, with timbers in between, and plastered.

In the squares we found chapels made of cut limestone, with the lower part of the buildings below ground level, and the upper part above. We went down three steps into one of these, and around on the walls we saw idols in various forms, and a lot of people on their knees worshiping them. In the middle of them was a choir, out of which the tutelary god of the city projected so that his head could be seen.

As we were leaving, the angel said to me that among the ancient peoples who lived in the silver age (spoken of above), these idols were images representative of spiritual truths and moral virtues. And that when a knowledge of correspondences faded from memory and became extinct, these images became first objects of worship and afterwards were adored as deities. This was the origin of idolatries.

[4] When we were outside the chapel, we observed the people and their dress. They had steel-like faces, gray-colored, and they were dressed like clowns, with skirts around their hips and thighs hanging down from a shirt tied at the chest. And on their heads they had the cocked hats of sailors.

"But enough of this," the angel said. "We are here to be instructed about the marriages of the people of this age."

So we entered into the house of an important person, who had on his head a turreted headdress. He received us kindly and said, "Come in, and let us have a conversation together."

We went into the entrance hall and sat down there. Then I asked him about the marriages in this city and general area.

He said, "We do not live with one wife, but some people have two or three wives, and some more. That is because the variety, submissiveness, and honor entertain us, as though we were kings. These are the things we have from our wives when there is more than one. With only one wife we would not have the pleasure of variety but boredom resulting from sameness. We would not have the deference of submission but the irritation of equality. Nor would we have the bliss of ruling with its accompanying honor, but the annoyance of struggling for superiority.

"After all, what is a woman? Is she not born subject to a man's will, and born to serve and not to rule? For this reason every man here in his own house is like a royal majesty. Because this is what we like, it is also the blessing of our life."

[5] But I asked, "Where, then, is conjugial love, which forms two souls into one? And joins minds together and blesses a person? This love cannot be a divided love. If it is, it becomes a passion which evaporates and passes away."

To this he replied, "I do not understand what you are saying. What else blesses a person but the rivalry of wives for the honor of being first with her husband?"

Saying this, the man went into his harem and opened its double doors. But a libidinous odor came out of it which stank like a cesspool. This was the result of polygamous love, which is matrimonial and at the same time licentious. I got up, therefore, and closed the doors.

[6] Afterwards I said, "How can you remain in this land, when none of you have truly conjugial love, and when you also worship idols?"

He replied, "With respect to marital love, we are so violently jealous of our wives that we do not allow anyone to enter our houses past the entrance halls. And where there is jealousy there is also love.

"As for the idols, we do not worship them, but we cannot think about the God of the universe except through images presented to our eyes. For we cannot raise our thoughts above the sense impressions of the body, nor can we raise our thoughts about God above the visible things we can see."

Then again I asked, "Do your idols not have various forms? How can they present a vision of one God?"

To this he replied, "It is a mystery to us. Something having to do with the worship of God lies hidden in every form."

So I said, "You are merely sensual, carnal people. You do not have any love for God, nor any love for a married partner that derives anything from spiritual love. And it is these loves that together shape a human being, and from being sensual make him heavenly."

[7] When I said this, I saw through the doorway what seemed to be a flash of lightning. And I asked, "What is this?"

He said, "Lightning like this is a signal to us that the ancient one of the east is coming, who teaches us about God - that He is one, alone the Almighty, who is the First and the Last. He also warns us not to worship the idols, but only to look on them as images representing virtues that emanate from the one God, which together form a worship of Him. This ancient one is our angel, whom we respect and listen to. He comes to us and raises us up whenever we fall into a hazy worship of God owing to some delusion regarding the images."

[8] Having heard this, we departed from the house and from the city, and on the way, from the things we had seen in heaven, we formed conclusions regarding the course and progress of conjugial love. With respect to its course, we observed that it had moved in a circle from the east to the south, from there to the west, and from there into the north. With respect to its progress, we saw that it had declined as it went - in other words, that it had been celestial in the east, spiritual in the south, natural in the west, and sensual in the north. We also noted as well that it had declined in the same measure that the love and worship of God declined.

Consequently we formed this conclusion, that conjugial love in the first age was like gold, in the second age like silver, in the third age like bronze, and in the fourth age like iron, and that at last it ceased to exist.

But afterwards my angel guide and companion said, "Nevertheless, I am sustained by the hope that the God of heaven, who is the Lord, will revive this love, because it is possible for it to be revived."

  
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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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