/lit/ - Literature

what was his endgame

>>19526863
>What are these magical arts?
I have never read Kant, but if I were to take a stab at it irrc he was intrigued by Emmanuel Swedenborg, who claimed to have been granted the ability to see heaven and the spirit world and converse with spirits there.
Kant had had Swedenborg's expensive eight volume book, Secrets of Heaven, mailed to himself.
He wrote and anonymously published Dreams of a Spirit-Seer in part as an extended critique of Swedenborg, but in letters to friends would later disparage the essay and claimed he wrote it in order to anticipate popular criticism of Swedenborg's thought.

Why does he make /lit/ seethe so much.
Do you really need to believe God punishes people eternally to live a fulfilling life? That's kinda sad.

Why does he make /lit/ seethe so much. All you favorite writers believed in his words.

Thoughts on Swedenborg?

>>18444347
Start with Emanuel Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell then you can move onto his other stuff if that interests you

Does Swedenborg actually give insight in his writings or is the whole thing a bunch of "this is what the spirit world is like because I saw it first hand" type utterances? Will I be disappointed if I read him expecting an Eckhart or a Boehme?

What did Guenon think about Swedenborg? The only reference I found was Guenon saying that Swedenborg accurately talked about Agartha in Tibet and Tartary.

Was he full of shit or not?

Emanuel Swedenborg has to be the weirdest theologian/philosopher. Has /lit/ even read Heaven and Hell? What do you guys think of him?

Can we have a comfy Swedenborg thread?
Post some good Swedenborg and your thoughts on this fellow.
From Divine Love and Wisdom:
"In the Divine-Human One, reality and its manifestation are both distinguishable and united. Wherever there is reality, there is its manifestation:
the one does not occur without the other. In fact, reality exists through
its manifestation, and not apart from it
They are distinguishably one like love and wisdom. Further, love is
reality and wisdom is its manifestation. Love occurs only in wisdom,
and wisdom only from love. So love becomes manifest when it is in
wisdom. These two are one entity in such a way that although they
can be distinguished in thought they cannot be distinguished in fact;
and since they can be distinguished in thought and not in fact, we refer to them as “distinguishably one.”
In the Divine-Human One, infinite things are distinguishably one. It is recognized that God is infinite: he is in fact called the Infinite One. But he
is called infinite because he is infinite. He is not infinite simply because
he is intrinsically essential reality and manifestation, but because there
are infinite things in him. An infinite being without infinite things
within it would be infinite in name only."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Swedenborg

https://swedenborg.com/emanuel-swedenborg/theology/

God is love. And wisdom, too. But mostly love.

We were created to be able to receive that love through the two parts of ourselves called the understanding (to understand spiritual truths intellectually) and the will (to act in the ways we know are right).

By using our ability to learn, think, and act, we develop what’s called our ruling love - our providence, destiny see:
>>282561783 (You)
.
If our ruling love is directed toward doing good for others—our neighbors, our communities, the planet, even God—then we’re on the path to heaven. But if our ruling love is centered around ourselves—self-promotion, winning at all costs, getting as much wealth and power as we can—then we’re on the path to hell.

We can change our ruling love if we want to. If we see that the way we act hurts ourselves or others, or if we feel we’re heading in the wrong spiritual direction, we can gradually start to be more open to divine love and make better choices. This process of spiritual growth is called regeneration.

Spiritual growth isn’t just about all of us receiving divine love as individuals, though. It’s about becoming the kind of people who will bring that love into the world through our actions. In order to truly grow, we have to do things that are divinely useful.

What are your thoughts on Swedenborg? Is he worth reading?

Reading some William Blake after I have read a bit of Swedenborg I appreciate the former vastly more than when I was introduced to his work in my school days.
It has been noted before, and of course spoken about by Blake himself in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, that his body of work can be seen as a response to Swedenborg's thought. He seeks to debase the perceived dualism from Swedenborg's theology by tethering his 'evil' essentially to Jesus Christ. Rather than Love and Wisdom being the prime creative principles, Blake's political focus centers on the tension between Law and Rebellion and their associated properties (chastity vs. indulgence, etc.). Swedenborg's Divine-Human is simply renamed the Poetic Genius. Whereas the Divine-Human is infinitely perfect Love and perfect Wisdom, the Poetic Genius is infinite in that is completely detached from not only the Law but the rebellious urge which is distinguishable one with law; that is, to say, detached from the dualities that inform perception. Instead of the extremity of the Swedenborgian apogee, it is an extremity of systemic liberation.
I couldn't help but draw the parallel to the forces of Love and Strife in Empedocles and help but wonder if Swedenborg was perhaps influenced by this. Blake's cyclical eschatology is of course the necessary mapping of his forces onto that of Swedenborg's reading of Revelation. However, is this reading not similar to the cycles posited by Empedocles? Swedenborg says Earth will be turned towards Hell in the utmost, requiring a New Church to replace the old, wherein the tide turns until there is an overpowering turning towards Heaven, in an imbalanced tug between the two forces. This repeating back and forth flow is the same as the cycles of Love and Strife.
What do you lads think?

What does /lit/ think of swedenborg?

I have a question, but I would like to open the thread up for any Swedenborg related religious discussion.
I have started reading Swedenborg recently. I have finished Other Planets, and am currently reading Divine Love and Wisdom and Heaven and Hell. There is a lot that I have found enjoyable and agree with thus far.
However, it seems there is an inconsistency in his writing when it comes to reconciliation. Although in Divine Love and Wisdom he states that the goal for creation is a return and union to the Creator [section 167-171], he says elsewhere that spirits cannot set aside their evil, 'cannot be reformed', after death in the physical world [Divine Providence 275-8]. These spirits then enter into a hellish community of other evil spirits in hell, which is a turning away from the love and wisdom of the Lord.
If evil cannot be reconciled even for spirits in hell then how can the goal of creation be fulfilled? Does he explain anywhere why evil spirits cannot be reformed even in hell? In Divine Love and Wisdom he says "We must be created out of things created and finite, things so formed that something divine can dwell within. Since we and angels are of this nature, we are life-receivers" [DL&W 4], which seems to imply that angels themselves can change. In fact, he describes movement in heaven in terms of changes in state, and in the aforementioned section of Divine Providence he relays as story where people 'raised into heaven' because of their good lives but still have a belief in their lack of sin are 'sent down from heaven and back into the evils they had fallen prey to in the world', afterwards they are brought back into heaven after acknowledging their fault. This and other stories makes it seem that angels can change even their spiritual lot, and can fall from heaven and be brought back. There are similar stories in Other Planets of spiritual beings (like the Mercury spirits being schooled by the Earth angel) being humbled in the spiritual world, which implies a change in state that occurs after death, which elsewhere Swedenborg seems to deny can even happen.
Why can't evil spirits potentially be brought to the light? If not, then is the goal of creation impossible?

Our guy is undeniably back, lads.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIbpymrlXBA

Move aside Guenon, there's a new sheriff in town

Was this nigga right about the afterlife?

>>12461649
Judgment Day has already occurred, my friend. It is a timeless, eternal moment, that manifests itself in our linear phenomenological history. We have already been judged, and we must be aware of that through a spiritual movement of revelation through the Word.

What was this guy's problem?

>>11982328
based

*accurately predicts own death and final judgment*
GOML

>>10970411
>*steals your bitch*
not so fast