Still Running Off at the Keyboard

TEMPLETON'S SWEDENBORG

I have already provided evidence that the Templeton Foundation has been a major contributor to Unity Churches and that Sir John Templeton is sympathetic to the Swedenborgian religion. Now it's time to look at Emmanuel Swedenborg.

In an article in the "Independent" Gary Lachman describes Swedenborg:

In Sweden, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) is recognised as one of the great figures of the Enlightenment, a polymath genius who turned his mind to an astonishing number of pursuits. An inventor, anatomist, mineralogist, philosopher and ethicist, Swedenborg applied himself to more intellectual tasks than most university faculties ever get around to. He discovered a lunar method of establishing longitude at sea (just missing the prize that went to John Harrison), devised new ways of constructing docks, and designed a submarine, an aeroplane and a machine gun. ...

Why then is this Scandinavian Da Vinci not better known? Because in 1744, when Swedenborg was in his mid-fifties, he went through a profound psychological and spiritual crisis, culminating in a visitation by Christ and his own entrée into the spirit world. Swedenborg abandoned his scientific work and for the remaining years of his long life devoted himself to what he considered his destined task: the deciphering of the hidden, "internal" sense of Scripture, the full explication of which would usher in the New Church and Christ's second coming - not a physical return, but the unveiling of the Bible's true message, hitherto obscured by Catholics and Protestants alike. ...

In dreams, trance and meditative states lasting several hours, Swedenborg entered the spirit world and there spoke with angels, evil spirits, the inhabitants of other planets and the dead, and his descriptions of the life beyond, for all their dry factuality - not to mention sheer strangeness - often ring with a powerful poetic force.

Catherine L. Albanese's article which first appeared in "Perspectives on the New Age" in 1992 and now appears in "Compass", a Jesuit Journal, tells us that Swedenborg can be associated with Mesmer's ideas of magnetism used in hypnotism:

Mesmer's universal fluid, as specified in the animal body, produced one important source of a habit of mind that eroded the distance between matter and spirit. His vision suggested the empowerment of humans for perfection.

At the same time, from a second quarter came another powerful source of the matter-spirit conflation. Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), son of a Lutheran bishop and member of the Swedish nobility, from 1745 claimed to make mystical journeys to heaven and hell. His prolific accounts of conversations with angelic beings blended Christian scripture with occult-metaphysical teaching. Swedenborg revived the ancient doctrine of correspondence, of worlds echoing worlds so that "as above, so below." In the universe he acknowledged, nature corresponded to spirit, and a divine influx permeated the natural world.

Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondence was, significantly, a doctrine of harmony, for earthly and heavenly spheres resonated with each other as did a host of more specific signs and symbols. Hence, both mesmerism and Swedenborgianism agreed in the harmonial model of a universe where the boundaries between matter and nonmatter became fluid. As the manipulations of magnetic operators suggested, one could "manage" the balance in a way favorable to one's personal plans and projects. Knowledge was power, and control of the mind's power was promised by the mesmerist's skill and even by the implicit theology of the Swedenborgian "Divine Human." For if God was Man in the heavenly realm, it followed that a path might be open for humans to become Gods as they walked the earth. ...

The manipulative potential of minds that could control self and others would be joined to a matter that followed laws of harmony. Thus, acts of harmony would become, simultaneously, acts of power and control. And the world in which these things would happen by the late twentieth century would belong to the New Age.

Swedenborg was very much into becoming god. Albert Pike spoke of Swedenborg in MORALS AND DOGMA:

Masonry is a search after Light. That search leads us directly back, as you see, to the Kabalah. In that ancient and little understood medley of absurdity and philosophy, the Initiate will find the source of many doctrines; and may in time come to understand the Hermetic philosophers, the Alchemists, all the Anti-papal Thinkers of the Middle Ages, and Emanuel Swedenborg. (P. 741) Swedenborg's system was nothing else than the Kabalah, minus the principle of the Hierarchy. It is the Temple, without the keystone and the foundation. (p. 823)

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, a Professor of Western Esotericism and Director of the Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism, University of Exeter, studies Emanuel Swedenborg along with many others who belong to a Who's Who of occultism.

James Webb mentions Swedenborg in his book THE OCCULT UNDERGROUND:

The great mystical poet, Julius Slowacki (1809-49), combined in his thought Traditional doctrines, from Western thinkers like Boehme, Swedenborg, Saint-Martin and Novalis, with Hindu and Buddhist teachings... (p. 246)

(An aside: Slowacki was among the Polish poets who influenced John Paul II according to George Weigel in WITNESS TO HOPE, p. 34-35)

Returning to Webb:

In Poland the first group of occult Freemasons was founded in Warsaw c. 1750 by an exiled Austrian colonel. Polish Masonry from that date onwards preserved an increasingly occult tone, receiving the highest mystical grades from the Dresden Lodge of the Three White Eagles. Besides Martinist doctrines, those of Swedenborg were introduced into both Russia and Poland, where they were combined in the Lodges with alchemical symbolism. (ibid. p. 248-249)

Swedenborg is mentioned a number of times in James Webb's second book THE OCCULT ESTABLISHMENT. One example:

The oft-repeated calling for a "New Age," heard both before and after the war, can refer either to a practically conceived plan for social betterment, or to a religious revelation like that preached by the Swedenborgian New Church. After the war the mystics of the occult revival did not vanish--far from it. In some cases they remained religious prophets, but in others they changed their spots, responding to the pressure of a social gospel by emphasizing the parts of their teachings which seemed relevant to their country and their time. (p. 28)

H. P. Blavatsky mentions Swedenborg. From THE SECRET DOCTRINE:

How men of the last few centuries have come to the same ideas and conclusions that were taught as axiomatic truths in the secrecy of the Adyta dozens of millenniums ago, is a question that is treated separately. Some were led to it by the natural progress in physical science and by independent observations; others--such as Copernicus, Swedenborg, and a few more--their great learning notwithstanding, owed their knowledge far more to intuitive than to acquired ideas, developed in the usual way by a course of study. (Book I, p. 117-118)

At the website of the Swedenborg Scientific Association we are told:

Moshe Idel in a 1986 article in a Hebrew journal entitled Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Philosophy and Ethical Literature discussed Swedenborg within the framework of "The World of Angels in Human Shape." He suggests that ". . . it is very nearly certain in the matter of the structure of the world of the Angels . . . the Swedish Theosophe was influenced by Kabbalistic concepts" (Dan & Hacker, 1986, 65). One of the avenues he mentions for Swedenborg’s knowledge of the Kabbalah are lectures give at the University of Uppsala by a Jewish convert to Christianity during the years he was matriculated there (Idel, 1986, 66).

Swedenborg was generally familiar with the concept of the Kabbalah. It is in his investigation of the human form and its hidden nexus, the soul, that we find his only references to it. They are three in number. These references are not in the body of any published work, but are found in a notebook of quotations he had transcribed in his research process. This notebook was published by the Swedenborg Scientific Association in 1931. It is called A Philosopher’s Note Book. The material in it is from Swedenborg’s manuscript Codex 36 and it was translated and edited by Alfred Acton.

Would that be this Rev. Alfred Acton II who was president of the Swedenborgian college, Bryn Athyn, from 1976 to 1983? I have spent a considerable time trying to discover if he is related in any way to Lord Acton, but have not been able to find an answer.

Bryn Athyn College is a liberal-arts college religiously affiliated with the Bryn Athyn General Church of New Jerusalem, a Swedenborgian New Church. It "is known particularly for its large endowment, high faculty/student ratio, international student diversity, and its unique religious faith" according to Wikipedia.

It would be interesting to learn whether the Jewish convert to Christianity who supplied Swedenborg with information on the Kabbalah remained a crypto-Jew of the Frankist variety. In any case, Rt. Rev. Alfred Acton II is listed among the members of the Board of Directors of The Swedenborg Scientific Association. I believe he is also a bishop in the Swedenborgian New Church.

As well as a college, the Swedenborgians also have an academy in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. The museum where Sir John Templeton spoke is located in Bryn Athyn as well. It was originally the home of Raymond and Mildred Pitcairn, prominent members of the Bryn Athyn congregation.

The community of Bryn Athyn appears to be composed of the New Church faithful. It is located quite close to Philadelphia.