“Eternity roll’d wide apart”: The Creation of the World and Man in William Blake’s The [First] Book of Urizen in Light of Emanuel Swedenborg’s The Last Judgment

Beginnings are usually regarded as either hard or energizing times that set our inner world in motion. However, there is a beginning that is more important for humanity than any other: the origin of human life and of the world. The knowledge of our origin and the mystery concerning the beginning of the world have been the most intriguing and most engaging issues since man became aware of their own physical and spiritual existence. For many centuries, it was the duty of religion to provide humanity with a teaching about their origin and the foundation of human dignity. However, the 18th and 19th centuries were critical in the treatment of the biblical creation stories in Europe. The debate between misinterpreted creation myth accounts and scientific theories led to a sharpening confrontation between religion and science, but it also divided the believers and resulted in the birth of new theories. Emanuel Swedenborg, an influential theologist of the period, wrote detailed commentaries and genuine tractates related to the topic that influenced the ideology and art of William Blake, a versatile and ingenious artist and thinker of the era, whose influence is still significant today. The aim of this study is to highlight the parallels and contrasts between Blake’s Genesis myth and Swedenborg’s teachings, mainly through the unusual pairing of The [First] Book of Urizen and The Last Judgment, to show the connection between Swedenborg’s unorthodox views and Blake’s ideas about the creation of man and the world.

Un proyecto cosmogónico con forma humana

El artículo trata la similitud en las nociones de Dios y el Universo del místico sueco Emanuel Swedenborg y el poeta y grabador inglés William Blake. Mediante la asimilación de sus obras, donde describen el mundo espiritual que les ha sido revelado en sus visiones, se extraen las consideraciones imprescindibles para comprender sus respectivos pensamientos religiosos. El posterior análisis comparativo de dichos elementos mediante la interacción palabra-imagen permite establecer una relación en sus obras sobre las nociones tratadas en dos puntos. El primero es la concepción de lo Divino Humano, según la cual Dios y el hombre tienen las mismas cualidades y son la misma persona. El segundo aspecto que tienen en común es la idea de que todas las partes del Universo se interrelacionan a modo de órganos en un gran cuerpo humano.

The painter Meri Genetz and the endless quest for spiritual wisdom

Meri Genetz (1885–1943) was a Finnish painter, esotericist, and a spiritual seeker. Around 1925, she began truly dedicating herself to spiritual seeking and started to make notes of her studies in black notebooks. This article will go through four of those notebooks which today offer a vivid picture of Genetz’s seeking between the years 1925 and 1943. In the beginning, Genetz acquainted herself with Gnosticism, Theosophy, and Kabbalah, as well as the works of Christian mystics, such as Emanuel Swedenborg and Jakob Böhme, the writings of, for example, Paracelsus, and texts attributed to the mythic figure Hermes Trismegistus. Gradually Genetz started to outline her own views, ideas, and theories regarding higher truth and spiritual wisdom. In the beginning of the 1930s her main quest came to be to find her ‘other half’ and become whole. She started attending Spiritualist séances, where she would ask about her other half and discuss the state of her soul, the souls of others, her art and marriage, and the books she had read. In time, Genetz’s quest for true wisdom and self-fulfilment became more and more restless and impatient. When she died in 1943, she was still seeking.

A Comparison of Wolff’s and Kant’s Receptions of Emanuel Swedenborg

Kant’s Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (1766) did not provide the sole perspective through which Emanuel Swedenborg’s work was known in Germany in the eighteenth century. Before Kant, another German philosopher was interested in Swedenborg from a completely different perspective: Christian Wolff. On the one hand, this paper analyzes the meaning of Wolff’s anonymous reviews of Swedenborg’s early writings published in Acta Eruditorum, the authorship of which was only recently discovered, in order to show Swedenborg’s intertwinement with German scholars during the 1720s. On the other, I juxtapose Kant’s and Wolff’s evaluations of Swedenborg’s work at the origins of their different attitudes towards fundamental problems such as the nature of the soul and immortality.

Now the sneaking serpent walks: diabolic as a creation force in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, by William Blake

: In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-1793), William Blake offers a trail to fly through the Universe. His muse, the “sneaking serpent”, elucidates the concept that diabolic does not contain in itself the idea of evil – nevertheless it is an active springing from Energy, for every existence is holy. This study understands the prophetic trip narration to mystery as a way that the poetic voice erects against Reason (Good), to empower himself in the Energy of Devil (or of Hell). Hereby, it was adopted the idea of devilish as a vital force, avoiding dogmatic and religious definitions of the term, a thematic often struggled by the author, mainly concerning his rupture with the thoughts of Emanuel Swedenborg. Another point that was researched was in relation to distinct visual representations of the serpent myth in Blake’s illustrations, as in “The Serpent Attacking Buoso Donatin” (1826–7, reprinted in 1892), and in “The spiritual of Nelson guiding Leviathan” (1805-1809). Both in written and pictorial artworks, the author asserts that the serpent symbolizes the sacred that lives in all profane things.

Cultural experiences with narratives

Method and conclusion (sketch of narratives). Homer, Graves in Troy, Antisthenes, Enemy (from the meaning of him according to the lost treatise from the Cynics in the reconstruction of the late Stoics). Plato and Diogenes, Guy Julius Caesar, Mark Licinius Crassus, Cicero, Appian, astrologer Ptolemy. Julian the Apostate, Simeon Pillar, Francis of Assisi. Rumi, Emanuel Swedenborg, Casanova, Hoffmann, Bismarck. Stolypin, Nietzsche, Camus, Beckett, Lono (Freud), Kafka, Suzuki, with film expressors: Antonioni, Parajanov, Pazolini, Truffo, Godard, Zaillyan, Confession (Makkiaveli). Thinkers from the ancient Chinese way in alleged actions and speeches. Why am I an abstraction: Saroyan, Fellini: a look at Casanova. As now in "Blow-Up" (Cortazar in the face of one of the motives of the memory). "The formula of Origen". The last message of Pontius Pilate to Rome and the future.

Harmonic Spirits and the Music of the Spheres

Chapter 2 traces harmonial ideas from the end of antiquity through the metaphysically based religious and mind cure movements of the nineteenth century. It begins by briefly surveying developments in the early Islamic world and medieval Europe before proceeding to explore astrological medicine and theurgy in the European Renaissance, focusing primarily on the spiritus theory of Marsilio Ficino. It further argues that the legacy of astrological medicine on the one hand and theurgy on the other can be found in the eighteenth-century movements founded by Franz Anton Mesmer and Emanuel Swedenborg, respectively. It concludes by examining the reconvergence of these two strains of thought in the New Thought movement of the late nineteenth century, focusing chiefly on the work of Warren Felt Evans, which synthesizes Swedenborgian ideas with contemporary medical thought, including the importance of breath and physical culture.

From a dialogue of cultures to a dialogue of ideas: The Swedish theosophist Emanuel Swedenborg in the perception of the German psychiatrist Karl Leonhard in the context of the current discussion

This article completes a series of works on the reception of Scandinavian and Dutch cultural heritage in the works of the outstanding German psychiatrist and psychologist Karl Leonhard (1904–1988). His assessments already deserve attention because the portraits of remarkable artists, writers, and thinkers presented in his works, thanks to the research and undoubted literary talent of their author, on the one hand, go beyond the usual pathographies in terms of depth of analysis and mastery of presentation. On the other hand, the portraits serve as artifacts of an era in the history of medicine, when on the foundation of a cultural dialogue between Russia and Germany a unique dialogue of the German and Russian psychiatric thought developed — something that the historical vicissitudes of the twentieth century could not prevent. The authors of the article make an attempt to bring together the approaches available to the history of culture to study the perception of the personality and work of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) as reflected in Leonhard’s last book. Leonhard’s assessments not only capture a certain period in the reception history of the Swedish thinker and naturalist in German culture — they are a monument to the peculiar naturalistic culture of German nosological psychiatry, inscribed in the history of medical thought. Clinical experience leads the German psychiatrist to conclude that Swedenborg’s diagnosis of schizophrenia in its traditional Kraepelinian sense, which the Russian school of psychiatry is inclined to follow, is wrong, but the German psychiatrist himself comes to the conclusion that Swedenborg has an amalgam type of psychosis — phonemic confabulation paraphrenia. Following Leonhard, the authors of the article examine Swedenborg’s works, the testimonies of his contemporaries about him and his family as well as reproduce the picture of symptoms of mental illness taking into account the latest historical, cultural and medical-psychological works about the Swedish mystic. In their critical analysis, the authors emphasize the relevance of the classification of Leonhard’s endogenous psychoses, drawing the reader’s attention to the evidence about Swedenborg’s emotional- volitional and cognitive sphere within the historical and cultural context of 18th century Sweden. In conclusion, the authors announce the publication of the full text of Leonhard’s essay translated into Russian with historical, cultural and medical-psychological commentary.

Doppelgänger – an Ketten gelegt: Zum Einfluss von Emanuel Swedenborg und Salomon Maimon auf E. T. A. Hoffmann und Franz Kafka

In Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik parallelisiert Kant nicht nur die Leibniz- Wolffsche-Philosophie mit der spiritistischen Theosophie Swedenborgs, sondern versucht vor allem die rationalistische Philosophie vor einer Geisterseherei zu bewahren. Dass damit für den „Bürger zweier Welten“ die Vermischung von durchdringlichen und undurchdringlichen Substanzen nicht gebannt ist, sondern vielmehr zum unheimlichen Doppelgängertum mutiert, lässt sich durch die Werke des Kant- und Swedenborg-Lesers Hoffmann aufweisen. Wie es darüber hinaus Kafka vermag, die „Doppelbürgerschaft“ als semantische wie performative Kampfbewegung zu realisieren, wird ein weiterer Untersuchungsgegenstand sein.