Emanuel Swedenborg’s system of correspondences is one of the most influential theories in the history of ideas. Instrumental in the rise of Romanticism, Symbolism and Modernism, and cited as key to the work of Goethe, R.W. Emerson, Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, Wassily Kandinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, to name but a few, it offers to poets, artists, writers and composers a blueprint for navigating the gap between the material world and non-material values. In this brief introduction, Gary Lachman gives an accessible overview of the many fascinating ways in which Swedenborg’s idea has impacted upon the past 250 years.

Gary Lachman was a founding member of the seminal rock group Blondie, with whom he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. He has written for numerous publications, including The Independent, The Guardian, and The Fortean Times and is the author of numerous books. He previously authored a biography of Swedenborg that was published by the Swedenborg Society in London as Into the Interior: Discovering Swedenborg (2009), republished by Tarcher as Swedenborg: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas (2012).