What happens to us after we die? What is heaven like? How do angels live? In his classic work Heaven and Hell, Swedish visionary Emanuel Swedenborg gives readers a detailed road map to the afterlife, describing the process that our soul goes through after death, the nature of heaven and hell, angels and demons, all in meticulous detail. Afterlife is an abridged version of Heaven and Hell, with passages specially chosen to highlight the essence of Swedenborg's work.

Angels live in communities, wear clothes, and have no wings! So said Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish scientist and seer who, for the last twenty-seven years of his life, visited heaven and hell almost daily and met angels and evil spirits. Swedenborg's visions and the meaning they can have in our lives are explained in this remarkable book. Author Robert H. Kirven also shows how angels work for us from birth through death and how we can be angels on earth.

"...an engaging, fascinating contribution to angelic studies."
---Reviewer's Bookwatch

This fresh translation brings together the most remarkable selections from Swedish visionary Emanuel Swedenborg's works about the wisdom imparted to him by angels. These stories reveal the angels' natures, their spiritual loves, their heavenly education, and the true source of wisdom and beauty. These spirits share their knowledge for the good of those on earth, who are themselves created to become angels.

Look for this book's companion piece, Debates with Devils.

What happens to us when we die? Are heaven and hell real? If so, what are they like? Heaven and Hell contains the answers to these questions as seen by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).

This new translation of Swedenborg’s most popular work paints a detailed picture of life in the spiritual realms. A Swedish Enlightenment scientist of extraordinary accomplishment, Swedenborg underwent a spiritual crisis that led to an unparalleled series of paranormal experiences. He spent his last twenty-seven years in almost daily experience of heaven and hell, recording his observations and conversations, many of which are reported in Heaven and Hell. This sustained and detailed description of the nonphysical realms has left its impression on the minds of many great thinkers, including Goethe, Blake, Coleridge, Emerson, Borges, and Milosz.

The New Century Edition of the Works of Emanuel Swedenborg is a modern-language, scholarly translation of Swedenborg’s theological works. The series’ easy-to-read style retains the dignity, variety, clarity, and gender-inclusive language of Swedenborg’s original Latin, bringing his thought to life.

This large-print edition contains the text of the translation, but not the introduction, annotations, or other supplemental materials found in the deluxe edition.

What happens to us when we die? Are heaven and hell real? If so, what are they like? Heaven and Hell contains the answers to these questions as seen by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).

This new translation of Swedenborg’s most popular work paints a detailed picture of life in the spiritual realms. A Swedish Enlightenment scientist of extraordinary accomplishment, Swedenborg underwent a spiritual crisis that led to an unparalleled series of paranormal experiences. He spent his last twenty-seven years in almost daily experience of heaven and hell, recording his observations and conversations, many of which are reported in Heaven and Hell. This sustained and detailed description of the nonphysical realms has left its impression on the minds of many great thinkers, including Goethe, Blake, Coleridge, Emerson, Borges, and Milosz.

This deluxe edition contains an introduction by religious historian Bernhard Lang setting the volume in the context of its time.

The New Century Edition of the Works of Emanuel Swedenborg is a modern-language, scholarly translation of Swedenborg’s theological works. The series’ easy-to-read style retains the dignity, variety, clarity, and gender-inclusive language of Swedenborg’s original Latin, bringing his thought to life. Introductions and annotations by eminent, international scholars place Swedenborg’s writings in their historical context and illuminate obscure references within the text, enabling readers to understand and trace Swedenborg’s influence as never before.

What happens to us when we die? Are heaven and hell real? If so, what are they like? Heaven and Hell contains the answers to these questions as seen by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).

This new translation of Swedenborg’s most popular work paints a detailed picture of life in the spiritual realms. A Swedish Enlightenment scientist of extraordinary accomplishment, Swedenborg underwent a spiritual crisis that led to an unparalleled series of paranormal experiences. He spent his last twenty-seven years in almost daily experience of heaven and hell, recording his observations and conversations, many of which are reported in Heaven and Hell. This sustained and detailed description of the nonphysical realms has left its impression on the minds of many great thinkers, including Goethe, Blake, Coleridge, Emerson, Borges, and Milosz.

The New Century Edition of the Works of Emanuel Swedenborg is a modern-language, scholarly translation of Swedenborg’s theological works. The series’ easy-to-read style retains the dignity, variety, clarity, and gender-inclusive language of Swedenborg’s original Latin, bringing his thought to life.

This portable edition contains the text of the translation, but not the introduction, annotations, or other supplemental materials found in the deluxe edition.

What happens to us when we die? Are heaven and hell real? If so, what are they like? Heaven and Hell contains the answers to these questions as seen by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).

This new translation of Swedenborg’s most popular work paints a detailed picture of life in the spiritual realms. A Swedish Enlightenment scientist of extraordinary accomplishment, Swedenborg underwent a spiritual crisis that led to an unparalleled series of paranormal experiences. He spent his last twenty-seven years in almost daily experience of heaven and hell, recording his observations and conversations, many of which are reported in Heaven and Hell. This sustained and detailed description of the nonphysical realms has left its impression on the minds of many great thinkers, including Goethe, Blake, Coleridge, Emerson, Borges, and Milosz.

The New Century Edition of the Works of Emanuel Swedenborg is a modern-language, scholarly translation of Swedenborg’s theological works. The series’ easy-to-read style retains the dignity, variety, clarity, and gender-inclusive language of Swedenborg’s original Latin, bringing his thought to life.

This portable edition contains the text of the translation, but not the introduction, annotations, or other supplemental materials found in the deluxe edition.

In this original study of the making of saintly reputations, Aviad M. Kleinberg shows how sainthood, though frequently seen as a personal trait, is actually the product of negotiations between particular individuals and their communities. Employing the methods of history, anthropology, and textual criticism, Kleinberg examines the mechanics of sainthood in daily interactions between putative saints and their audiences. This book will interest historians, anthropologists, sociologists, medievalists, and those interested in the study of religion.

"[A] fascinating and sometimes iconoclastic view of saints in the medieval period." —Sandra R. O'Neal, Theological Studies

"[An] important new book. . . . [And] an excellent piece of scholarship." —Diane L. Mockridge, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion

"[Kleinberg's] style is clear and accessible and his observations insightful; the book is a pleasure to read." —Veronica Lawrence, Theological Book Review

"Original and interesting. . . . [Kleinberg] has made a major contribution." —Anne L. Clark, American Historical Review

"Kleinberg's concern is not just with perceptions of sanctity, but, refreshingly, with what actually happened: and he is especially good on the conflict of the two. . . . [This] is not just a book but a way of thought, and one that promises interesting conversations at all levels from the church porch to the tutorial and the academic conference." —Helen Cooper, Times Literary Supplement

By the mid-1930s, Emil Cioran was already known as a leader of a new generation of politically committed Romanian intellectuals. Researching another, more radical book, Cioran was spending hours in a library poring over the lives of saints. As a modern hagiographer, Cioran "dreamt" himself "the chronicler of these saints' falls between heaven and earth, the intimate knower of the ardors in their hearts, the historian of God's insomniacs." Inspired by Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, Cioran "searched for the origin of tears." He asked himself if saints could be "the sources of tears' better light."

"Who can tell?" he wrote in the first paragraph of this book, first published in Romania in 1937. "To be sure, tears are their trace. Tears did not enter the world through the saints; but without them we would never have known that we cry because we long for a lost paradise." By following in their traces, "wetting the soles of one's feet in their tears," Cioran hoped to understand how a human being can renounce being human. Written in Cioran's characteristic aphoristic style, this flamboyant, bold, and provocative book is one of his most important—and revelatory—works.

Cioran focuses not on martyrs or heroes but on the mystics—primarily female—famous for their keening spirituality and intimate knowledge of God. Their Christianity was anti-theological, anti-institutional, and based solely on intuition and sentiment. Many, such as Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, and Saint John of the Cross, have produced classic works of mystical literature; but Cioran celebrates many more minor and unusual figures as well.

Following Nietzsche, he focuses explicitly on the political element hidden in saints' lives. In his hands, however, their charitable deeds are much less interesting than their thirst for pain and their equally powerful capacity to endure it. Behind their suffering and their uncanny ability to renounce everything through ascetic practices, Cioran detects a fanatical will to power.

"Like Nietzsche, Cioran is an important religious thinker. His book intertwines God and music with passion and tears. . . . [Tears and Saints] has a chillingly contemporary ring that makes this translation important here and now."—Booklist

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.

This Spanish edition of the English-language Afterlife takes the essence of Emanuel Swedenborg’s classic Heaven and Hell and presents it chronologically, starting with the process of awakening after death and then taking the reader on a journey through both heaven and hell. This shorter format provides an eye-opening introduction to Swedenborg’s philosophy.

“A través de mucha experiencia, se me ha demostrado que cuando somos trasladados del mundo natural al espiritual, lo cual ocurre al morirnos, nos llevamos todo lo que pertenece a nuestro carácter menos el cuerpo terrenal.  Lo que es más, cuando entramos en el mundo espiritual o en nuestra vida después de la muerte, estamos en un cuerpo como cuando estábamos en este mundo.  No parece haber ninguna diferencia, puesto que no sentimos ni vemos que nada haya cambiado. . . . Entonces, cuando nos hemos convertido en espíritus, no tenemos la sensación de que ya no estamos en el cuerpo que habitamos en el mundo, y por consiguiente, no nos damos cuenta de que hemos muerto.”

– Emanuel Swedenborg, Un recorrido por los cielos y sus maravillas