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.

Swedish man of letters Lars Bergquist explains the often enigmatic but always fascinating dream journal kept by Emanuel Swedenborg from 1743 to 1744. A scientist, Swedenborg meticulously recorded his dreams and visions, adding interpretations that foreshadowed modern dream analysis. After an Easter vision in 1745, Swedenborg abandoned his scientific studies and dedicated his life to studying the inner meaning of Sacred Scripture. In his diary, he reveals his daily life and the reflections that are a key to understanding his later spiritual works.

"The book enables us to follow Swedenborg...from dismal gloom to inner splendor."
--Gunnar Bronerg, Upsala Nya Tidning

Swedenborg’s Secret is the first major study of the eighteenth-century Swedish philosopher and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) to be published in English for over fifty years, being a translation of the critically acclaimed Swedish biography Swedenborg’s Hemlighet (1999). Beautifully designed and illustrated throughout with ten color plates and forty-four black-and-white pictures, Swedenborg’s Secret is an authoritative and full-length biography that is immensely readable.
 
Using a wealth of historical material, Lars Bergquist paints a vivid portrait of an ambitious and practical man who was one of the greatest figures of the Enlightenment, a polymath who was a poet, inventor, mathematician, mineralogist, anatomist, and cosmologist. Bergquist also reveals Swedenborg to be a “man of two worlds,” someone who not only played an active part in the political life of his nation but who was also a spiritual visionary, setting out a stunning vision of human destiny in works such as Heaven and Hell and New Jerusalem. Swedenborg’s Secret reclaims Swedenborg from the margins of contemporary thought and places him where he belongs: as a founding figure of modern spirituality and Western philosophy.
 
The book also contains a chronology of Swedenborg’s life and contemporary events, an appendix listing the contents of Swedenborg’s personal library and other books he was known to have owned or read, a comprehensive bibliography, and a full index.

In 2001, a Swedenborgian minister found a set of seven magnificent stained-glass windows stored in old crates in a barn in rural Pennsylvania. Their story illuminates a fascinating facet of American art history as well as an important set of spiritual teachings.

In 1902, a Swedenborgian church in Glendale, Ohio, commissioned the seven windows as a gift for their sister church in Cincinnati. Each window depicts an angel that represents one of the seven churches described in the book of Revelation. The windows were designed and created in the studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany, and they reflect not only the rich symbolism found in the Bible, but Tiffany’s hallmark color and brilliance. Tiffany’s love of revealing angels in stained glass shines through in every panel.

After their original home was torn down in 1964, the windows were put into storage, only to be rediscovered and painstakingly restored years later. Now a traveling exhibition, the seven angels have been given a new life as shining examples of Tiffany’s art and as a focus for spiritual reflection and meditation.

Tiffany’s Swedenborgian Angels guides the reader not only through the history of the windows, but the spiritual meaning of each one, weaving Swedenborg’s teachings with the luminous imagery of the angels themselves. If you have seen the exhibition, the book allows you to revisit the windows again any time; if you have not, it is a powerful introduction to a vivid piece of spiritual history.