Swedenborg's Secret is the first major study of the eighteenth-century Swedish philosopher and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (16881772) to be published in English for over fifty years, being a translation of the critically acclaimed Swedish biographySwedenborg'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 asHeaven 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.
