From the unexplained to the mundane, come join
us on a Journey to the Fringe. And I feel like
any documentary after that on the making of the
last one would just keep adding to that. There
would be an endless cycles of Journey 2, which
I think at some point we might have to do. But
at this point, I'm not that ambitious. We are
your Strictly podcast host for now, Taylor and
Chelsea. And tonight. We are stepping into the
life of a man who lived in two worlds at once.
The man we're going to be looking at today is
Emanuel Swedenberg. I've never heard of him,
I don't think. No, you haven't. He's kind of
a forerunner of a few things that we talk about,
but I kind of want to leave that as a surprise
as we go. Without much more, just get right into
this. Because Emanuel Swedenberg refused to stay
in one lane. He was an inventor who sketched
flying machines long before airplanes, a scientist
who mapped the human body in ways that anticipated
modern neuroscience, and a mystic who claimed
he could walk freely between heaven and hell.
His story is one of visions, revelations, and
ideas that unsettled both church and state. Now,
Emanuel Swedenberg was born in Stockholm, Sweden
on January 29th, 1688. He was the son of Jesper
Svedberg, a pastor in Sweden's Lutheran State
Church. At 11, Emanuel entered the University
of Uppsala. When his father left to become Bishop
of Skara, Emanuel remained, completing his studies
in 1709. At this point, it's Svedberg. Okay.
It does change, which is a little confusing.
It's funny that he's in Sweden and his name sounds
like Sweden. I know. In fact, I think his last
name means Swedenborn. I don't know for sure.
I didn't look it up, but I think that's what
he ends up getting as a last name. Okay. Okay.
Strange. It's easy to remember. Yeah. And I find
it very interesting. He was able to start university
at 11. I don't know what the curriculum was like
back in the day. Maybe that was normal. I missed
that one. His dad was a professor there, so maybe
that's how nepotism works. I would be more expecting
an 11 year old to be at university if his dad
taught there. Yeah, interesting it doesn't come
up all that often anymore. No. Now, like many
wealthy young Swedes, he embarked on a grand
tour of Europe after this. In England, he studied
astronomy under John Flamsteed, the royal astronomer,
and moved in the same circles as Isaac Newton
and Edmund Halley. He dabbled in geology, botany,
zoology, and mechanics, later continuing his
studies in Amsterdam and Paris. After more than
five years abroad, he returned to Sweden and
became assistant to inventor Christopher Polum.
This connection brought him to the attention
of King Charles XII, who appointed him to the
prestigious Board of Mines. When Charles XII
died in 1718, his sister, Alrica Eleonora, ennobled
the Swedenberg family, giving them the name by
which Emmanuel is remembered today, Swedenberg.
Because he got a favor he was liked by the king,
his sister ended up giving them a new title,
a new last name. I mean, they just added an M.
More or less. That would be so weird these days
if, like, I don't know, Prime Minister of Canada
calls you up and he's like, hey, I think you're
doing a good job, you're getting a new last name.
Yeah, we're just gonna add like a few extra letters.
We're gonna add Canada to the start of your name
or something like that. I don't know that I would
like that. It would be weird. I think I'd be
like, no, thank you. It's a different culture.
I like my country and all, but... I have my signature
down. I don't want to have to introduce myself
with extra... That's three extra syllables. I
don't know that I need it as a part of my name.
Could it be silent, perhaps? Yeah. I'm sure it
could actually, knowing how English works. In
these early years, Emanuel Swedenberg poured
his energy into science and invention. He launched
a journal, Da Dallas Hyperboreus, meant to showcase
Polen's work, the inventor he was working under,
but also filled it with his own ideas, including
a design for a flying machine. Yes. The inventor
that he was working with, his name was Polen?
Polen. Like P -O -L -H -E -M. I was like, what
the hell's up with this episode? Nobody was named
but countries back in the day. At least the people
who survived. They went on to found countries.
Just needed to clarify that quick. Included in
the journal was his design for a flying machine,
which is in the early 1700s. Oh, I love that.
I think it's a beautiful Chelsea. I'm just going
to share my screen because there's actually a
picture of his flying machine that he has sketched.
And if I can find where I need to be. Oh, I love
how un -aerodynamic these flying machines used
to be. Yeah. They're pretty clunky. Oh, wow.
What is that? Is that a blimp? I'm not quite
sure how to take it. Like I think it's one wing
and you're like floating underneath it. Oh. But
it also kind of looks like a blimp from the side.
It does look like a blimp. So I'm not quite sure
which angle we're looking at it. And it's really
small writing and it's Swedish writing even if
we could read it. So I'm not quite sure how to
take it. Anyhow, this flying machine actually
has its own entire Wikipedia entry. Oh, okay.
So he drafted this up in the early 1700s and
there's a conversation between him and Pohlheim
where Swedenberg admits that this contraption
that he invented wouldn't fly, but he saw it
perhaps as a first step. He specifically wrote
apparently on this page. It seems easier to talk
of such a machine than to put it into actuality.
Perhaps in time to come, someone might know how
to better utilize our sketch. Although when the
first trials are made, You may have to pay for
the experience and not mind an arm and a leg.
He also did basically say like this wouldn't
work with just like human power. Like you'd need
something else far before engines had been invented.
What does he mean by human power? Like we wouldn't
be strong enough to make it fly. Okay, well then
what's he looking for? Something that would give
it power. I don't know. More than humans. Yes.
Horses, perhaps. Like, is he a god -man? Or,
like, he quits looking? Oh, he's definitely a
god -man, but he's more - he didn't want to pray
it into the sky. I think he just thought, like,
somebody might invent something stronger than
a human at some point that could power it. Okay.
But I'm speculating here, unfortunately. Like,
I was thinking, like, is he thinking extraterrestrials
will come down and strike it with lightning?
And then it's, I don't know. I don't know. No,
this is well before extraterrestrials. This is
God times. The 1600s. Okay. In 1734, Swedenborg
published what's called the Opera Philosophica
et Mineralia. It's Latin. It's about minerals
because he's on the board of mining. Sometimes
he's doing interesting stuff, but a lot of his
mid -years where he's super successful is about
mining. So kind of a dull guy at this point.
Yeah, that does sound dull. And he publishes
this book. The second and third ones are called
On Iron and On Copper, and they earn the attention
for their technical detail throughout Europe.
But it was his first volume, Principa Reurum
Naturalium, Basic Principles of Nature, that
laid the philosophical groundwork for his later
explorations of the soul. Oh, the soul. He followed
this with anatomical studies, including Dynamics
of the Soul's Domain, there's a Latin version
out of it, I'm not going to attempt it, which
examined the heart, blood, brain, and nervous
system. And here Swedenberg began to bridge science
and spirituality, describing a subtle spiritual
fluid that sustained all living things, an energy
he believed that flowed directly from God. But
his scientific work was soon interrupted by something
far stranger. He has a spiritual crisis. So beginning
in 1743, which would make him about 55 I believe,
late midlife crisis but nonetheless he's here,
Swedenberg's nights were filled with vivid dreams
and visions. He recorded them in his diary, often
interpreting them as divine warnings or calls
to purify himself. By April 1745, His vision
spilled into waking life. Swedenborg claimed
he could now see and converse with beings from
the spiritual world. And in 1747, he resigned
from the Board of Minds, turning down a promotion
so he could devote himself entirely to theology.
His first major theological work after this is
Arcana Coelestia, Secrets of Heaven, and it's
appeared in 1749, published in London to avoid
Sweden's strict heresy laws, and it's stretched
across eight volumes by 1756. In it, Swedenberg
argued that the Bible could not be read literally.
Instead, every verse contained a hidden spiritual
meaning, a correspondence between the physical
and the spiritual world. Alongside this, alongside
his commentary, he described the structure of
heaven and hell, the lives of angels and demons,
and the intimate connection between body, soul,
faith, and cherry. In 1758, he returned to London
with five new works, Heaven and Hell, White Horse,
other planets, Last Judgment, and New Jerusalem.
Here, he made one of the boldest claims that
the Last Judgment had already happened, not on
Earth but in the spiritual realm in 1757. He
said he had witnessed it himself and that it
marked the dawn of a new spiritual age for humanity.
In 1759, Swedenborg's reputation as a mystic
was about to explode. That summer, while attending
a dinner party in Gothenburg, he suddenly grew
pale and agitated. He announced that a fire was
raging in Stockholm, over 250 miles away, and
that it was threatening his home. Hours later,
he calmly reported that the fire had been extinguished
just three doors down. Two days later, messengers
arrived from Stockholm every detail matched Swedenberg's
account. In 1760, the widow of the French ambassador
to Sweden faced a troubling bill for an expensive
silver service. She was certain her husband had
paid, but the receipt was missing. After consulting
Swedenborg, she dreamed of her husband revealing
the receipt's location, and the next day, she
found exactly where the dream had shown. In 1761,
Queen Luisa Elrica herself put Swedenberg to
the test. She asked him to relay a private question
to her deceased brother, Prince Augustus Wilhelm
of Prussia. Three weeks later, Swedenberg returned
with an answer so precise that the Queen reportedly
gasped, quote, only my brother could have known
this, end quote. These incidents, widely reported
and discussed, made Swedenberg a sensation across
Europe and for the first time he openly acknowledged
authorship of his theological work. But perhaps
the strangest part of Swedenborg's legacy is
this, Chelsea. In the 18th century, the idea
that other planets might be inhabited wasn't
as strange as it sounds today. Philosophers like
Fontenelle and even Kant speculated about a plurality
of worlds, a universe that was teeming with life.
But while most thinkers treat it as a theory,
Swedenborg went further. In his 1758 book, Earths
in the universe, he claimed not only that other
planets were inhabited, but that he had actually
met and spoken with their inhabitants through
his spiritual journeys. Each planetary society,
he said, reflected different aspects of divine
order. This was more than speculation. It was
a bold theological claim. Swedenborg suggested
that God's creation was far too vast to be limited
to Earth alone and the spiritual destiny of humanity
was shared across the cosmos. This is centuries
before UFO - sightings or science fiction Swedenberg
was already describing encounters with beings
from other worlds it is more than speculation
but it is speculation at this point not really
speculation because he's saying in his dreams
he's talking to people from other planets specifically
in the solar system it's still speculation well
it's not speculation if you're saying i have
talked to a person from venus in my dreams You're
forgetting that part. That's not speculating
though, that's grounding it where you've got
this information from. It would be different
if he's saying that I think there's people on
Venus because... Um, I spoke to them in my dreams.
He's like, no, I'm speaking to people on Venus.
Regularly. In my dreams. In my dreams. Yeah.
I mean, that's not really grounded in reality
though. I could say a lot of things happen in
my dreams and my dreams are crazy. Oh no, I'm
not saying it's grounded in reality. I'm saying
it's not speculation. Well, the speculation is
that there's life on another planet. Other people
are speculating. He's saying it's true. Okay.
I'm not seeing why it's not speculation, but
okay. I guess we're splitting hairs. I'm saying
there's no uncertainty in how he's saying it
because it has happened to him. He is sure of
it, whereas speculation is kind of like, I think
this. Which is what the other philosophers of
the day are doing. I would go out on a limb to
say that he is thinking that he thinks that.
I don't think we necessarily need to have a semantics
argument, I guess. The reason I decided to cover
Emanuel Swedenberg, a guy that neither of us
had heard until very recently for both of us,
for you right about now, is because he is considered
the first person to have interacted with other
entities on other planets. In his dreams. How
else, Chelsea? And this is something you see
today still, is people saying like I'm interacting
with these people from the Pleiades, from Sirius
B, things like that. Do you know how much stuff
I've done? and talked within my dreams. I don't
know. And I don't know for me either, because
I don't remember many of my dreams. I remember
a lot of my dreams and it is all pretty much
nonsense. But I'm out there doing it. Yeah. And
this is the first point we can draw everyone
back who is claimed to have spoken with people
from other planets to this. This is the first
time it ever happens. I mean, that is a long
time ago. I'll give them that. Not everyone saw
Emanuel Swedenberg as a prophet or visionary
to many of contemporaries and plenty of scholar
sins, he was something else entirely. Some accuse
him of madness, suggesting his visions were hallucinations
brought on by illness or stress. Others dismiss
his elaborate theology of correspondences. as
arbitrary, even incoherent, grand system built
on imagination rather than revelation. The famous
stories of his seership, the Stockholm Fire,
the widow's missing receipt, the queen's private
question, were retold across Europe, but skeptics
argue they could be explained by coincidence,
rumor, or exaggeration. Even within Sweden, his
writings were controversial, enough to be banned,
in fact, and his followers were charged with
heresy. And while writers like William Blake
and Ralph Waldo Emerson admired him, others found
his books unreadable, verbose, and rep— and filled
with claims too extravagant to be taken seriously.
Well I'm personally surprised that he wasn't
tried as a witch. Too rich! Too rich. Okay, fair
enough. It's not Germany, where apparently the
rich could be taken for it. What I do find strange
about it is where would the inspiration for this
come from? Like, it doesn't seem anything in
his background other than religion, maybe? His
dad was a pastor, like the religion's in him
from deep, and I do just think it might be maybe
a midlife crisis mixed with some weird dreams.
Remember, these are back in the days where religion
was a lot more literal and everywhere, so If
you did get a dream, God was sending you those
dreams. You can put more stock in his dreams
than I was putting because where else would he
have heard something like this? But I don't know
what they're doing in this time. There are theories
out there at this time that basically every planet,
every star, everything has life on it. The universe
is teeming with life. Yeah. So it's not unheard
of to think of there being habitants of other
planets. It's just he's the first to say he met
them and talked to them. OK, I like them. So
in the years that followed, Swedenberg published
some of his most influential writings, Divine
Love. wisdom, divine providence, revelations
unveiled, and marriage and love, the final of
those being in 1768. Divine love and wisdom explored
the very nature of God, arguing that God's essence
is both love and wisdom, the source of all life.
Divine providence tackled free will, evil, and
the hidden spiritual laws that govern existence.
Revelation, unveiled, returned to his method
of uncovering the Bible's inner meanings, this
time focusing on the book of Revelation. Here
Swedenberg introduced what he called memorabilia,
vivid accounts of a encounters with angels, demons,
and spirits. And then there was A Marriage of
Love. Despite its title, it was not just about
earthly marriage. Swedenberg described true married
love as the highest spiritual bond, one that
continued beyond death. In heaven, he wrote,
a man and woman who are truly compatible will
recognize each other instantly and unite as one
spirit. For Swedenberg, who was never married,
this teaching may have carried personal weight.
All of Swedenberg's theological books were written
in Latin and published outside of Sweden. most
often in London or Amsterdam. This was deliberately
strategized to avoid Sweden's strict censorship
laws, which forbade publishing anything that
contradicted the teachings of the Lutheran state
church. But in 1769, two of his followers were
charged with heresy after promoting his ideas
in Swedish. During the trial, Swedenberg's work
was scrutinized. In 1770, the verdict came. His
books contained doctrinal errors but were not
outright heretical. Still, they were banned in
Sweden and his followers lost their teaching
posts. Partly in response, Swedenborg began his
final great work, True Christianity, in 1771.
It was both a defense and manifesto, laying out
his vision for a quote, new church, end quote.
Not a sect, but a new spiritual age in which
humanity would grasp divine truth more directly.
True Christianity would be Swedenborg's last
book. The main text was printed in Amsterdam,
but he traveled to London to prepare a supplement.
It was never published in his lifetime. In December
of 1771, he suffered a stroke. Though he partially
recovered, he seemed to know the end was near.
In February, when a friend suggested meeting
in six months, Swedenborg replied, quote, that
will be impossible, for I shall die on the 29th
day of the next month. And? True to his word,
Emanuel Swedenberg died on March 29th, 1772 at
the age of 84. Geez. The U .S. wasn't even a
country at that point. Do we talk about what
he was talking in his dreams to these people
about? I'm trying to keep it an overview of everything.
I'm not going too specific into that. You know,
the other night I had a dream that Jupiter was
falling out of the sky and the world went into
chaos. I just want to put it out here for the
listeners. Okay. Being as the topic. of this
episode. Just a non sequitur, of course. Editor's
note here from Taylor I've realized that it's
probably important to actually have quotes of
what Swedenberg said about other planets and
their inhabitants So I decided to add a few in
the editing process So without further ado Swedenberg
wrote about many of the planets and their inhabitants
of Mercury He wrote the spirits of Mercury are
very intelligent They care little for material
things but are eager to learn about spiritual
and natural matters They said that on their earth
they do not speak much but transmit ideas by
a kind of thought speech. They mocked Earth's
reliance on books. They made jokes about pieces
of paper on Earth, knowing things that the people
there do not know. Of the people of Venus, Swedenborg
wrote of two kinds of inhabitants. One is savage,
more than the rest of the inhabitants of the
other Earths. The other kind is gentle and humane.
The savage group lived in forests and preyed
on others, while the gentle group lived separately
and were devoted to worship. Of the inhabitants
of Mars, he wrote, these are the best of all
in the solar system for they are in greater obedience
to the Lord than the rest. They acknowledge and
adore him and rejoice to be instructed by angels.
Of Jupiter, he writes, the spirits of Jupiter
are of a mild and gentle disposition. They detest
hatred and in their world they live in mutual
love. They said that they do not allow anyone
to speak of God except in human form for they
know that the Lord alone is the God of heaven
and earth. They also were described as living
simple lives and avoiding luxury and focusing
on spirituality. Of the inhabitants of Saturn,
he writes, He also claimed they were deeply contemplative
and spiritually oriented. He also wrote about
meeting beings from beyond our solar system.
He states that there are innumerable Earths in
the starry heaven, each inhabited by human beings.
The end of creation is the human race from which
heaven is formed. Swedenborg has a huge legacy
and influence that moves forward from 1772. Swedenborg's
writings didn't end with his death. In fact,
they sparked a movement that rippled through
art, literature, and philosophy for centuries.
Like I said earlier, the poet and artist William
Blake read Swedenberg early in his career. Though
he later criticized him in The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell, Blake still called Swedenberg a divine
teacher and wove his ideas of heaven and hell
and correspondence into his own visionary art.
In America, Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists
drew inspiration from Swedenberg's sense of nature
as a living symbol of the divine. Emerson praised
him as a, quote, colossal soul whose writings
open a new way of seeing the spiritual in the
everyday. Helen Keller was another surprising
admirer. She credited Swedenberg's writings with
shaping her understanding of the afterlife and
giving her some comfort and clarity about the
spiritual world. Even the legendary folk figures
like Johnny Appleseed, John Chapman, was a devoted
Swedenbergian. Was Johnny Appleseed a real person?
Oh yeah, he was. He was? Although everything
he planted was cider apples, not actually eating
apples. He carried Swedenberg's books across
the frontier and shared them with his settlers.
Writers as diverse as Honoré de Balzac, Jorge
Luis Borges, and Robert Frost all engaged with
his ideas finding in Swedenberg a bridge between
imagination and eternity. So while Swedenberg
may have been dismissed by some as a dreamer,
his influence has been anything but fleeting.
His vision seeded the imagination of poets, philosophers,
reformers, and mystics. proof that his strange
journey between two worlds continues to inspire.
Swedenberg's influence didn't stop with poets
and philosophers though. In the 19th century,
his visions were rediscovered by a very different
audience. The occultists and spiritualists of
the Victorian era. For these seekers, Swedenberg
was more than a theologian. He was a proto -occultist,
a man who had mapped the invisible worlds long
before seances and spirit circles became fashionable.
His doctrine of correspondence, the idea that
every physical thing mirrors a deeper spiritual
reality, became a cornerstone for mystics who
wanted to read the universe as a vast symbolic
text. The Theosophical Society, founded in 1875
by Helena Blavatsky, HPB, drew heavily on this
idea. Blavatsky herself called Swedenborg, quote,
the greatest among the modern seers, end quote.
And his descriptions of layered heavens and cosmic
laws resonated with her visions of a universe
governed by hidden spiritual hierarchies. Aleister
Crowley, though rarely citing him directly, inherited
much of the same esoteric soil. Swedenberg's
layered heavens and existence on personal spiritual
experience echo in Crowley's ceremonial magic
with a K. Meanwhile, the Fox sisters whose spirit
wrappings in 1848 ignited the spiritual movement
were often compared to Swedenberg as the man
who had already mapped the afterlife they claimed
to contact, and Daniel Dunglass -Holme, Korean
medium, famed for levitations and seances before
royalty, was Cassus Swedenberg's showman, Heir,
bringing to life in drawing rooms what Swedenberg
had described in books. At the same time, the
emerging new thought movement, with its emphasis
on the power of mind, positive thinking in the
unity of spirit and matter, found in Swedenborg
a kindred spirit. His insistence that divine
energy permeates all life and that thought itself
shapes reality became a kind of blueprint for
metaphysical healing and self -transformation.
By the late 19th century, Swedenborg's books
were circulating not just in churches but in
occult libraries, seance parlors, and esoteric
study groups. To these readers, he wasn't a relic
of the He was a toolmaker, someone who had left,
someone who had left behind a set of maps and
symbols that could guide mystics, mediums, and
visionaries into the unseen. In this way, Swedenborg
became a bridge, a scientist mystic, of the 18th
century whose writings fueled occult revival
of the 19th century and whose ideas still echo
in spiritual subcultures today. By the end of
his life, Emanuel Swedenborg had written volumes
on science, theology, and the afterlife. He was
praised as a visionary and dismissed as a madman.
But perhaps the most startling part of his legacy
is this. Centuries before UFO sightings or modern
science fiction, Swedenberg claimed to have met
beings from other planets in our own solar system.
To him, the universe was alive with countless
worlds, each inhabited each part of a vast spiritual
order. So was he a prophet of cosmic truth or
a dreamer lost in his own imagination? That's
for us to decide. What's certain is that Swedenberg's
visions of heaven, hell, and even life beyond
earth still challenge us to wonder how thin the
boundary really is between the known and the
unknown. So he's an interesting guy that neither
of us have heard of, but he's inspired pretty
much everyone. We've done an episode. Well, not
everyone. We've done more than four episodes,
guys. Yeah. The occult side. That's super interesting.
I can't believe how far back that goes. I just
I'm still having trouble wrapping my mind exactly
what the hell just happened and why he inspired
so many people because basically he dreamed it
and by that logic I'm a seer. I'm an important
seer the way that I dream. The important part
of seeing is telling and he told about his seeing.
see and i only got one idea out on this episode
but i promise you guys i'll be sharing more oh
good i think that's what everyone's thinking
okay it's so interesting actually i don't think
he's an asshole he might be but i don't know
if our modern -day concept of assholes within
our reviews can really dissect people from this
era. I just don't think we can. No, I don't think
so. We don't have enough information. The witch
people, the people who hunted the witches did
that and they just burned them. Yeah, they did
so without fully knowing whether or not they're
an asshole. I think the witch burners were the
assholes, to be honest with you, because they
didn't fully find out if they were assholes or
not. I really hope that's not the twist we're
leading up to with Journey to the Fringe. Me
too. I guess we'll find out in our dreams. Well,
I will. You won't, because you don't remember
your dreams. Unless you tell them. But if you
dream that, just don't tell them, okay, please?
I guess I won't tell them, but... Okay. Who's
to say? I might share freely. Just like that
last one, maybe I shouldn't have told you that
Jupiter falls out of the sky. Maybe it was better
you didn't know. And with that, I have been Taylor,
here with Chelsea. We are Journey to the Fringe.
Thank you all for listening, and we'll see you
next week. Bye. Thank you for listening to Journey
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