Swedenborg

Spiritual Diary, by Emanuel Swedenborg: 5051-5100

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This is an excerpt from Emanuel Swedenborg's *Spiritual Diary*, a first-person visionary record in the Protestant mystical tradition, in which Swedenborg documents his claimed direct perception of the afterlife over many years. The entries describe a vast spiritual geography of mountains and cities populated by souls undergoing judgment: the good are separated from the evil and elevated, while the evil sink into hellish abysses, with specific named individuals (Lars Benzelstjerna, Polhem, the Hesseliuses) identified as perpetrators of spiritual wickedness. A structurally distinctive claim runs throughout: societies of spirits form cities on mountains that correspond anatomically to parts of the human body, so that the spiritual and moral condition of those on "upper mountains" directly governs the life and behavior of those below them, as well as the hells beneath those. Notably, Swedenborg depicts Muslims (Mohammedans) as faring better than most Christians in the afterlife, attributing this to their civic obedience, moral coherence, and capacity for rational discussion—including a recorded dialogue with Muslim elders who engage thoughtfully with Christian theology and express bewilderment at Christian theological obtuseness. The sharpest polemical edge is directed at Protestant "faith alone" doctrine: Swedenborg argues that those who placed all religion in faith without living charitably are among the chief infestors of the good in the spiritual world. Readers drawn to heterodox Christian cosmology, visionary literature, or the theological controversies of eighteenth-century Lutheranism will find this most rewarding; those expecting coherent narrative or systematic argument will find it fragmented and opaque.

Spiritual Diary, by Emanuel Swedenborg: 5051-5100

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