with his initial effort, believing that he had not been suffi-
ciently thorough, he began again. He published three vol-
umes of Regnum animale (The animal soul’s kingdom,
1744–1745) before abandoning the project.
RELIGIOUS CRISIS AND SPIRITUAL CALL. It was during this
publishing trip abroad that Swedenborg experienced a pro-
found spiritual crisis during the 1743 to 1744 period. The
crisis began in dreams that he recorded in a journal for his
own personal use. Discovered in 1859, it is known today as
The Journal of Dreams. In it, he not only recorded his dreams,
he interpreted them. He discovered his sin of pride and arro-
gance, he prayed, he sought forgiveness, and he found him-
self held in the bosom of Christ. He recorded intense temp-
tations that affected both his body and his spirit. Drawn
deeply inward, he understood that he must follow Christ in
all things. He put aside his scientific work, obeying a divine
commission to write down and publish the true meaning of
the scriptures, in order to make them universally available.
Swedenborg’s spiritual call can be viewed as either a disjunc-
tion in or a culmination of his own intellectual journey.
Returning to Sweden he focused on studying the Bible
in Hebrew, searching for the key to its internal or spiritual
meaning. Swedenborg had earlier developed a doctrine of
correspondences, according to which all phenomena of the
physical world have their spiritual correspondences. He wres-
tled with the meaning of the story of creation and the nature
of God. He discovered that in the Bible, words used in one
place correspond to words used in another place, and finally
he grasped the idea that the garden in Genesis does not refer
to the natural creation of the earth and the universe, but to
the spiritual process of human regeneration. Genesis details
this spiritual process through which every individual can re-
turn to and be conjoined with the one God, the Lord Jesus
Christ, to eternity. Swedenborg documents this in the eight
volumes of the Arcana coelestia (Secrets of heaven, 1749–
1756). In this work Swedenborg states that what he writes
about heaven and eternal life is true, because his eyes and
spirit have been opened and “I have seen, I have heard and
I have felt.”
RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS, CONTROVERSY, AND IMPACT. The
focus of Swedenborg’s religious teachings is not on the cruci-
fixion and the sacrifice of Jesus, the only begotten son of
God, to atone for the sins of humanity, but on the risen Lord
Jesus Christ who overcame the world. According to Sweden-
borg, the Christian interpretation of the Trinity and redemp-
tion led over time to the complete separation of faith and
charity, or belief and works, in the Christian churches. This
necessitated the Last Judgment and the Second Coming. Ac-
cording to Swedenborg, the Last Judgment was a spiritual
event that occurred in 1757. It made possible the Second
Coming for everyone who is drawn to understand the spiri-
tual meaning of the new heaven and the new earth, described
in the Book of Revelation and spiritually opened by means of
correspondences. Like the Last Judgment, the Second Com-
ing was also a spiritual event for Swedenborg. It was an-
nounced in the spiritual world on June 19, 1770, by the
twelve disciples who had followed Christ in the world. The
record of the announcement was published in True Chris-
tianity (1771), thus making it an historical event, and it be-
comes an internal and personal event whenever its truth is
accepted by an individual.Swedenborg’s religious writings, set down in eighteen
different works, indicate that humanity now lives in a new
age in which every one can freely choose his or her spiritual
destiny. The spiritual world, which encompasses heaven, the
world of spirits, and hell, is inhabited solely by men and
women who have lived on this earth or other planets in the
universe. In the sight of the Lord, the heavens appear as one
“grand man.” Individuals find their place there by discover-
ing their dominant affection or love. No one is cast down
into hell or raised into heaven apart from the life they have
led and chosen here on earth. However, it is not necessary
to know about Swedenborg, his teachings, or the new church
to achieve eternal salvation. It is only necessary to live a good
and useful life within the framework of the many spiritual
truths available around the globe.
For twenty-seven years Swedenborg attended to his call
to write and publish his new revelation “fresh from heaven.”
He never attempted to develop a following or organize a
church. He initially published his works anonymously, but
several clairvoyant experiences that occurred in public re-
vealed his extraordinary powers. Soon Swedenborg and his
books became a focus of discussion and conversation in Eu-
rope. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) became so interested
that he ordered a complete set of the Arcana coelestia (Heav-
enly secrets, 1749–1756). Although in private correspon-
dence, Kant spoke in a positive tone about Swedenborg and
his experiences, in 1766 he published Dreams of a Spirit-Seer,
in which he ridiculed Swedenborg and his metaphysics.
Kant’s critique set the stage for the central controversy sur-
rounding Swedenborg’s religious writings, which concerns
whether they are what Swedenborg claims they are. Were the
works divinely revealed to him, or are they the product of
an overactive imagination? Swedenborg’s writings have in-
spired the founding of churches by those who believe that
the divine had a hand in them, but they are derided as the
product of a mentally unstable man by those who believe
that they sprang from Swedenborg’s own imagination. A
third possible approach to them, particularly attractive to
students of religion, is that Swedenborg drew on esoteric
practices and traditions to shape his religious corpus.
Despite the controversy surrounding the precise nature
of their inspiration, Swedenborg’s religious writings have had
a profound impact on Western literature and the arts, in
large part because of the doctrine of correspondences. To cite
one example, in 1972 Joshua C. Taylor, the director of the
National Gallery in Washington, D.C., testified to the im-
portance of Swedenborgianism in American art in the ca-
talogue that accompanied an exhibit entitled The Hand and
the Spirit, which took place at the University Art MuseumSWEDENBORG, EMANUEL 8899