# Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic/Chapter 24

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Marriages in Heaven
THE new book had a long but promising title: The Delights of Wisdom pertaining to Conjugial Love, after which follow The Pleasures of Insanity pertaining to Scortatory Love, and it was signed by Emanuel Swedenborg, A Swede, the first of his books since his scientific publications that he had signed. (In plain English "scortatory" means whorish.)
But the book was also about his religious ideas and about his observations in the other world. When Dr. Beyer wrote to him, asking him about certain attributes of God, Swedenborg answered that he would write further about these when he was dealing with angelic wisdom concerning conjugial love. He was fully aware that too many abstractions were not readable by most people, for as he said to Beyer, "To write a separate treatise on these Divine attributes without the assistance of something to support them would cause too great an elevation of the thoughts, wherefore these subjects have been treated in a series with other things which fall within the understanding." $^1$
These other things in the present book were certainly if not within the understanding at least very much within the interests of everybody, for here Swedenborg frankly gave his views on love and sex, and love versus sex, in and out of marriage, on earth and in the other world.
As Baron Tilas had written, gossip in Stockholm mentioned that Swedenborg claimed there was marriage in heaven, and gossip was right. Tilas was "all in a flutter" for fear his deceased wife might have remarried, and he might well be. According to Swedenborg if the Baroness had not been united with him in "conjugial" love (the word "conjugial" is peculiar to Swedenborg) the chances were that she either had or would eventually find not only a mate for her soul but one who would be a mate of her body as well, when she had advanced so far as one of the heavens.
​Except for certain forms of Hinduism or Tantric Buddhism, it is doubtful if in any advanced form of religion so much stress has been laid on the symbolic significance of sex. In Swedenborg's philosophy "good and truth" (or love and wisdom) are united, or married, so as to form "one" in the Lord, or, as he sometimes says, good and truth are the Lord. Therefore, he says, "a universal conjugial sphere proceeds from the Lord and pervades the universe from its first things to its last, thus from angels even to worms." $^2$ It is the same, he says, as the "sphere of propagation." But as it is the sphere of propagation, "it follows that from this comes the love of the sex." It flows differently into all the different forms of the universe. In man "as he increases in wisdom his form is perfected; and this form receives, not the love of the sex, but the love of one of the sex," and that enables him to be united with heaven. If "the form of his mind" doesn't progress toward intelligence and from intelligence to wisdom, he can receive the influx of the universal sphere of sex "no otherwise than as the lower subjects of the animal kingdom." $^3$
Swedenborg's marriage mysticism, which he elaborates in great detail and works into his theology, may have stemmed partly from his own longing for an ideal marriage or it may have been another one of the topics that he received via automatic writing—there are conversations on the subject with angels recorded in the diary—or it may have been both. (The great modern Hebrew scholar Gershom G. Scholem has pointed out that certain Kabbalists used sexual imagery to describe the union of God and His "Shekhinah"—the feminine element in God—and saw this union as "the central fact in the whole chain of divine manifestations in the hidden world.") $^{39}$
At any rate the long new book with the alluring title contained a great deal of shrewd wisdom about the relations of men and women, whether in or out of this world. Swedenborg was not afraid of "the flesh." When asked in the other world as to whether marriages were not "doings of the flesh," he said, "Are they not also deeds of the spirit? And what the flesh does from the spirit is it not spiritual?" $^4$
That, in brief, was his philosophy of sex.
​"I once saw three spirits recently deceased," he told in this book, "who were wandering about in the world of spirits, examining whatever came their way and inquiring concerning it. They were all amazement to find that men lived altogether as before. . . they by turns viewed and touched themselves and others, and felt the surrounding objects, and by a thousand proofs convinced themselves that they were now men as in the former world; besides which they saw each other in a brighter light . . ."
Two angelic spirits talked with them and the newcomers were curious to hear about heaven. "As two of the three newcomers were youths there darted from their eyes a sparkling fire of lust for the sex," and the angelic spirit said, "Possibly you have seen some women?" They admitted it, and asked if there were any in heaven. The angelic spirits said there were youths and maidens in heaven. Was the human form, the newcomers inquired, altogether similar to that in the natural world? Nothing was wanting, they were told, either in the man or the woman. "Retire, if you please," they said to the youths, "and examine whether you are not a complete man as before."
"Is there then the love of the sex there?"
"Not your love of the sex," they were told, "in heaven we have the angelic love of the sex, which is chaste and devoid of libidinous allurement."
"If there be a love of the sex devoid of all allurement," the youths observed, "what in such case is the love of the sex?" And they sighed, and said, "Oh how dry and insipid is the joy of heaven! What young man if this be the case can possibly wish for heaven?"
The angelic spirits smiled and explained that it was a kind of exchange of pure celestial sweets, tone of voice, eyes, gestures, speech, but the newcomers declared, "What is a chaste love of the sex but a love deprived of the essence of its life . . . we are not stocks and stones . . ."
They were told by the angelic spirits that angelic chastity common to each sex prevented their chaste love from descending below the heart. Yet it was an indescribably joyous and abundant delight, and they possessed it because they had conjugial love only, which was a love of the spirit and thence of the body, not a love infesting the spirit. ​The two young men grasped at the straw. "There still exists in heaven a love of the sex—what else is conjugial love?"
"That," they heard, "is not love of the sex, but love of one of the sex." It went from the soul to the mind, to the body, "and thus becomes love in its fullness." The angelic spirits added, "In heaven they are in total ignorance of what whoredom is . . . with the male all the nerves lose their proper tension at the sight of a harlot, and recover it again at the sight of a wife."
The newcomers, now all attention, asked, "Does a similar love exist between married partners in the heavens as in the earths?"
Altogether similar, the angelic spirits said, even to "the ultimate delights," but it was "much more blessed because angelic perception and sensation is much more exquisite than human . . ." Furthermore, the only offspring was an increase in both partners of love and wisdom, ". . . hence it is that angels after such delights do not experience sadness as some do on earth, but are cheerful . . ." also because their powers continually refreshed themselves, "for all who come into heaven return into their vernal youth and into the vigor of that age . . ."
The three newcomers, Swedenborg says, were "made glad by this intelligence," and fired with a-new-found-desire for heaven and with the hope of heavenly nuptials, they declared they meant to lead a chaste life, "that we may realize the enjoyment of our wishes." $^5$
The hope of reward, needless to say, was not Swedenborg's idea of the right reason for morality, but here he was speaking to the kindergarten.
Like a primer too, with answers to many questions from people he knew, is the account he gives of what he saw as happening to earth-marriages after death. Explaining that for some time in the world of spirits, man behaves outwardly as he always did, he says that married partners come together again and live together until their real inclinations manifest themselves, "and if it be in mutual agreement and sympathy they continue to live together a conjugial life, but if it be in disagreement and antipathy their marriage is dissolved."
In cases where a man had been married several times he lives ​with his wives in the same order that he did on earth, but only while he is still in the "external" state. When he has been induced into sincerity, "He either adopts one or leaves them all." The same with women, but, "It is to be observed that husbands rarely know their wives, but that wives well know their husbands, women having an interior perception of love and men only an exterior."
Separations take place after death, because so many marriages in the natural world are made for geographic reasons or for ambition or purely of the body, "when yet it is the conjunction of souls which constitutes a real marriage."
"All those married partners who are merely natural are separated after death." (Here as nearly always Swedenborg means by "natural" those who are without any real love.) "Married partners of whom one is spiritual and the other natural are also separated after death; and to the spiritual is given a suitable married partner; whereas the natural one is sent to the resorts of the lascivious among his like." $^6$
Those celibates who "have altogether alienated their minds from marriage" remain single if spiritual, but if natural they become "whoremongers" in the lower world. As to monks and nuns, they are given their choice. If they really prefer celibacy, "they are conveyed to those who live in celibacy on the side of heaven." This, Swedenborg says (with perhaps the greatest compliment a bachelor ever paid to marriage) is because the sphere of perpetual celibacy disturbs that of conjugial love, "which is the very essential sphere of heaven."
Blessed marriages are provided, he says, for those who in their single state have desired marriage, if they are spiritual, "but not until they come into heaven."
In one passage Swedenborg hints that the heavenly marriage of the celibates or the mismarried may take place on the basis of a union of souls which has already taken place on earth, "as happens with those who from an early age have loved, have desired, and have asked of the Lord an honorable and holy connection with one of the sex, shunning and abominating the impulses of a loose and wandering lust." $^7$
Whether he was speaking of himself here, one can only guess. ​Even in his most private diary Swedenborg hardly ever put down names, only feelings.
According to his theories there was nothing to prevent his having met an unattained love in the world of spirits even before either of their deaths. In a charming passage,$^8$ he describes how once, when he was "in the spirit" and yet now and then concerned with worldly matters, he was asked by a teacher-spirit what it meant that he kept appearing and disappearing from their sight, was he really of their world? Swedenborg explained that he was of both worlds. Since to him man's real self was his spiritual self, he believed that when man was in such deep abstract thought that his soul was unaware of the body, or when he was asleep, his spiritual self, or soul, might become visible in the spirit world. Such thinkers are sometimes seen there, he asserted, deep in thought, visible to the inhabitants, but not aware of them, except in cases such as Swedenborg's, amphibious as he was. In this way too, he had seen, he said, and even conversed, with people still alive, whose spirit was set free in sleep.
But it is guesswork as to whether he felt he had formed a kind of precelestial marriage with the Countess Gyllenborg while they were both alive. He had rented an apartment in their house in Stockholm, calling them his friends, as early as 1733. The Count had borrowed money from Swedenborg. After the Count's death, Swedenborg noted in the diary that Gyllenborg became one of the worst of spirits; one, moreover, who was always trying to injure Swedenborg. The Countess died in 1769. It was after that date that Swedenborg is said to have spoken of a Countess Gyllenborg as his future mate to the English Member of Parliament, C. A. Tulk.
In any case, while in the book Heaven and Hell, published in 1758, he had spoken of marriage in heaven as purely of minds, in Conjugial Love, published ten years later (but which he had planned at least as early as 1759),$^9$ he had concluded that heavenly marriage included the same physical sensations as a successful marriage on earth. It was logical for him that he did so, because of his belief that sensation was a power of the soul rather than of the body, a power the soul continued to possess after "death," to such an extent that it could hallucinate itself a spiritual body with more exquisite sensations than it had before.
​When Swedenborg condemned merely "natural" marriage, he was not therefore condemning sexual feeling—far from it—but for him "natural" meant selfish, hence something that was bound to fail. And when such marriages failed, as they often did in his day, he said that one or other of the partners was likely to turn to adultery."
Just as "conjugial love" was haloed with celestial radiance for Swedenborg, so the word "adultery" flickers with sulphureous fire through his writings and in his diary. They are the important symbols in his marriage mysticism, equivalent to heaven and hell, since, he said, adultery "signifies" the marriage of falsity and evil. But the meaning of adultery is peculiarly his own. He published a long and liberal list of reasons why a married man could, without committing adultery, have a concubine, though he must not then live maritally with his wife at the same time. The list included many diseases of body and mind, but also "antipathy," or that the wife had "a passion for divulging the secrets of the house," or that she was given to "wrangling." $^{10}$
What Swedenborg most often means by adultery is self-regarding lust; whether it is in or out of legal marriage, and by conjugial love he means a union of minds, hearts and bodies, which symbolizes heaven itself.
"Love truly conjugial," however, "at this day is so rare that it is not known what is its quality and scarcely that it exists." It was of infinite variety, "it being in no two persons exactly similar," yet everyone who married from love of one alone of the sex had a glimpse of this love, and he described how it grew from before the marriage ceremony and some time after. At such times, he asked, who would not agree "that this love is the foundation of all loves, and into it are collected all joys and delights from firsts to lasts?"
But, after "this season of ardor," the enjoyment lessens by degrees, until at last it is scarcely felt; and then if asked whether this love is not all delights in one it will not only be denied but even qualified as "nonsense." Only with those who are joined in common interests of soul, mind, and heart will the first heavenly mirage advance by degrees into eternal reality. "But such instances are rare," he adds, and, it would appear from his many talks on the ​subject in the spirit world, incredible to any but the denizens of the higher heavens.
In language much more rainbow-colored and with much more detail than is usual with him, Swedenborg in this book described visions of his, such as that of a married pair from heaven who descended to him that he might see two angels that yet were spoken of as one angel, because they utterly complemented each other.$^{11}$ It must be confessed that many of the discussions Swedenborg said he had in the spirit world, especially with women about the nature of love, have a flavor not of the eighteenth century but of the salons of the seventeenth. A little less emphasis on the other world, and one might be in the salon of the Marquise de Rambouillet, discussing the points of the Carte du Tendre.
But he had a reason for it. In a garden called, in other-world language, "Adramandoni," among laurel and palm, olive trees and flowers, he said he saw near a fountain husbands and wives, youths and maidens, seated on the grass and listening to two angels, clad in purple and scarlet, telling them about marriage and its delights. "This being the subject of their discourse, the attention was eager and the reception full," Swedenborg says, and one suspects he knew what he was doing when he chose these wrappings for his messages about ethics, religion, and the other world. The angels told the eager listeners that conjugial love was divine because it consisted of divine love, divine wisdom, and divine use. Without wisdom love was a mere infatuation; without use even love and wisdom were but a transitory emotion. "Love cannot rest unless it is at work, for love is the essential active power of life," the angels declared, "and to work is use." $^{12}$
The specific "use" of earthly marriage, as Swedenborg saw it, was of course the procreation of children, for otherwise the communities of heaven might lack new citizens, but his "doctrine of use" became one of the foundation pillars of his teachings. Swedenborg was nothing if not practical; he had had too many of his good memorials dustily filed not to want theory carried out into practice.
Having established the high ancestry of sexual psychophysical pleasure, Swedenborg also discussed with the spirits many of its problems, with amazing knowledge and shrewdness for a ​bachelor. He wrote of marital "coldness" as matter-of-factly as any modern doctor, tracing its origins to mental and emotional factors. He favored neither sex against the other; in that wonderful table of weights, so to speak, in which he assesses the gravity of various kinds of adulteries; he blames equally a "crafty wife" who inflames a man and a man who "by powerful enticements" leaves a woman no longer mistress of herself "by reason of the fire kindled in her will." $^{13}$
With his idea of adultery as self-regarding lust it was natural that he saw the place in hell for those who delight in adultery as also "the place for those who delight in cruelty . . . they think nothing can be more pleasant." This kind of pleasure, he adds, "is today so common as to extend even to infants." $^{14}$
In a series of deeply etched pictures from hell, he gave his report on the fate of those who sinned even more grievously against love. Those whose lust it had been to deflower maidens, among whom there were many of the rich and noble, he said he had seen in hell where they inquired after virgins and were shown harlots who assumed a florid beauty, but who turned into monstrous shapes when the bargain was clinched. Nevertheless the Casanovas had to remain with them. Among themselves, Swedenborg said, these men might indeed still look like men, but to the eye of others who were allowed to see them "instead of their former agreeable and courteous expression of countenance they appear like apes with faces stern and bestial, walking with their bodies bent forward, and they emit a disagreeable smell. They loathe females, and turn away from those they see, for they have no desire for them." $^{15}$
In similar plight Swedenborg saw those who had lusted for variety, wanting "all the women in the world, and wishing for whole troops and a fresh one every day." They, he said, think of "the whole female sex as a common harlot, and of marriage as common harlotry . . ." In hell they are rationed to a harlot a day, but they lose their potency and on this account, he says, they loathe the sex.$^{16}$
Still viler are those who need to be stimulated by resistance and thus become violators. Fighting cats, they look like, when at "their theatrical venery" in hell, and Swedenborg gives an extremely vivid description of such a "brothel-contest." $^{17}$
​But lust, for Swedenborg, was an aspect only of that state of love of self with its desire for profit and dominion which he saw as being hell. The book Conjugial Love contains some of his best vignettes from that realm.
There were the judges who warped justice in favor of their friends, being acclaimed with "O, how just!" by their clients, but shown by the angel who was with him to Swedenborg as they looked in the sight of one of the celestials: "Their faces appeared as of polished steel, their bodies from the neck to the loins as graven images of stone, clothed with leopard skins, and their feet as snakes; the law books too, which they had arranged in order on the table were changed into packs of cards" and, instead of judging, they were given the job of mixing up paint "to bedaub the faces of harlots." $^{18}$
Another time, while Swedenborg was pondering on the love of dominion grounded in self-love, he saw "a devil ascending from hell, with a square cap on his head, let down over his forehead even to his eyes; his face was full of pimples as of a burning fever, his eyes fierce and fiery, his breast swelling immensely; from his mouth he belched smoke like a furnace, his loins seemed all in a blaze, instead of feet he had bony ankles without flesh, and from his body exhaled a stinking and filthy heat."
On seeing this personage, Swedenborg admits that he was alarmed, crying to him, "Approach no nearer; tell me, whence are you?"
He replied in a hoarse tone of voice, "I am from below, where I am with two hundred in the most super-eminent of all societies. We are all emperors of emperors, kings of kings, dukes of dukes and princes of princes . . . we sit on thrones of thrones and despatch mandates through the whole world and beyond it."
Swedenborg suggested that he was insane, to which the devil replied, "How can you say so when we absolutely seem to ourselves, and also are acknowledged by each other, to have such distinction?" $^{19}$
By linking up his discussions of sexual joys and problems with his doctrines and his other-world experiences, Swedenborg had not hurt the circulation of his new book. Published when he was ​eighty, it became one of his most popular. In April, 1769, a year after it was out, he wrote to a friend, "The book is very much in demand in Paris, and in many places in Germany." And the Dutch reviewed it favorably. Copies even trickled into Sweden.
The fact was that since it became known about 1760 that Swedenborg claimed to have communication with the other world, people of all classes, high, middle and low, flocked to him to consult him about such things—especially, of course, those who had lost their spouses, and who hoped to regain—or lose—them in the other world.