Emmanuel Swedenborg

Emanuel Swedenborg (Stockholm, 1688 - London, 1772) was a Swedish scientist, engineer, anatomist and philosopher who in the end devoted himself to theology and mysticism. His work joins modern science with religious speculation, which places him among the most unusual thinkers of his century. Today he is remembered above all for his book about the afterlife, Heaven and Hell, and for the religious movement that grew out of his writings.

He was the son of Jesper Swedberg, a Lutheran bishop who leaned toward Pietism and believed that angels and spirits were present in everyday life. After studying at Uppsala, Swedenborg travelled through the Netherlands, France and Germany and then spent about four years in London, where he became absorbed in physics and mechanics. Back in Sweden he worked for the Board of Mines, edited a scientific periodical called Daedalus Hyperboreus, in which he described inventions such as a flying machine, and designed a submarine. His Opera philosophica et mineralia (1734-1735) brought him an international reputation. In it he put forward a theory of how the solar system may have formed from a nebula, and he studied the brain, the pituitary gland and the circulation of the blood.

Around 1741, when he was about 53, he entered a period of dreams and visions that he came to understand as a divine revelation. He left science behind and spent his last three decades or so on theology. His major religious works include Arcana Cœlestia, Concerning the New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine and True Christian Religion. In them he argued that heaven and hell are states of the soul rather than places, that each person chooses their destination after death, and that the inner meaning of the Bible reveals spiritual truths. He stressed love of one's neighbour and the use of reason as a path toward the spiritual.

His influence grew mostly after his death. His writings attracted readers such as Goethe, William Blake, Balzac, Emerson and Carl Gustav Jung, who drew on them for his analytical psychology. In 1787 the New Church, or Swedenborgianism, was founded to revere his texts as revelation. Communities of this movement now exist in many countries, and his ideas also shaped movements such as Theosophy and Anthroposophy.