Friday, December 03, 2004
SWEDENBORGIAN STUDIES AT GTU
There is an interesting discussion over at Amy's blog about the various schools at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Among them is this Swedenborgian school where you can see that Rosemary Radford Reuther is on the faculty.
Emmanual Swedenborg was an occultist. James Webb in _The Occult Underground_, p. 22, describes his conversations with angels:
...he held conversations with angels and spirits. He described the process as follows:"...when angels speak for a man they turn themselves to him and conjoin themselves with him; and this conjunction of angel with man causes both to be in like thought." The angels appeared to speak in his own language; but conversation with them was a rarity, because the state of man had become so changed that "this commerce is no longer with angels, but with spirits who are not in heaven. Even this sort of contact had become uncommon, however, because it was dangerous.
Put another way, Swedenborg was a spiritualist or as we call them today, a channeler.
According to Charles Upton, _The System of Antichrist_ p. 128:
Allan Kardec and Stainton Moses, for example--like Swedenborg before them--channeled entire philosophies of the Spirit World in the early 20th century, and Madame Blavatsky was certainly deeply influenced by the 'philosophical' as well as the magical side of spiritualism.
