Interwoven with Emanuel Swedenborg’s commentary on the Bible is his system of correspondences, which describes the relationship between the spiritual and the physical worlds in symbolic terms. For Swedenborg, specific people, places, animals, and objects represented spiritual principles or ideas—for example, light corresponds to truth, and darkness to ignorance. Using this system, he interpreted the Bible in a radically new way, using it to illuminate the path to spiritual growth.

First compiled in the decades following Swedenborg’s death, the Dictionary of Correspondences has been continually revised and reprinted for over two hundred years. It provides an essential reference to Swedenborg’s complex thought that can be used by students, scholars, and the curious alike.

George Nicholson (d. 1819) was among the earliest clergy members of the Church of the New Jerusalem. He was first introduced to the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg in London in 1790, and he soon became a regular contributor to the New Jerusalem Journal. He was ordained into the New Church in 1800 and became the pastor of a society in Kingston-upon-Hull, Yorkshire, England. Later in life he was ordained in the Church of England, and spent the rest of his life as curator to a variety of Anglican churches. He was the author of more than fifteen books, including Essays on the Most Essential Theological Subjects (1794) and the Dictionary of Correspondences (1800).