Originally written more than fifty years ago by eminent scholar Ernst Benz, this volume stands as one of the most comprehensive biographies of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) ever published.

Benz examines Swedenborg’s life through the lens of the intellectual atmosphere of the eighteenth century. Growing up at a time when the classical view of the world was being challenged by the new philosophers and scientists of the Enlightenment, Swedenborg was deeply immersed both in the religious teachings of the Lutheran church and the explorations of rational science. His quest for understanding eventually led to his spiritual awakening and the unique insights that continue to inspire seekers and thinkers today.

Now available for the first time in paperback, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s eminently readable translation shines a new light on the Swedish seer.

Ernst Benz was professor of church history at the University of Marburg. His bibliography embraces hundreds of learned articles and some fifty books, ranging from studies of Eastern Orthodox churches and Asian religions to the mystical sources of German Romanticism and the interaction of theology and science in such movements as mesmerism and electrotheology.

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke is the director of the Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism at the University of Exeter in England. He is also the author of The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction (2008), Helena Blavatsky (2004) and The Occult Roots of Nazism, which has been in print continuously since its first publication in 1985.