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Liber XII · Hermeticism

Liber XII · Hermeticism · Chapter III: Correspondences

Arcana Coelestia and Swedenborg's Doctrine of Correspondences

Swedenborg's Arcana Coelestia (1749–56): his eight-volume inner reading of Genesis and Exodus and the doctrine of correspondences between nature and spirit.

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Arcana Coelestia ("Heavenly Secrets", also translated Secrets of Heaven) is the first and largest religious work of Emanuel Swedenborg, published anonymously in Latin in London in eight volumes between 1749 and 1756. It is a verse-by-verse interpretation of Genesis and Exodus that claims to reveal an inner, spiritual sense hidden beneath the literal text, interleaved with reports of what Swedenborg said he had seen in the spiritual world. Its organising idea, the doctrine of correspondences, holds that everything in the natural world corresponds to and arises from something spiritual.

Writing and Publishing Arcana Coelestia§

Swedenborg began work soon after the experience in London in April 1745 that he regarded as his call, described in our biography of Emanuel Swedenborg. He spent two years relearning Hebrew, compiling indexes of biblical words and keeping a spiritual diary before starting the commentary in earnest. The first volume appeared in London in 1749 and the eighth in 1756. The work carries no author's name on its title page; Swedenborg's authorship became generally known only in the 1760s.

The full Latin title promises the heavenly arcana contained in Sacred Scripture, or the Word of the Lord, "laid open", together with wonderful things seen in the world of spirits and the heaven of angels. That double programme defines the book. Each chapter of Genesis and Exodus is translated from the Hebrew into Latin and then explained phrase by phrase in numbered paragraphs; between the chapters stand essays on life after death, the heavens, the senses, the human body and the inhabitants of other planets, based on what Swedenborg claimed to have experienced directly.

The work sold slowly. Swedenborg had it printed at his own cost and distributed it mainly through booksellers in London and on the Continent. Over the following decade he drew on it heavily, and several of his shorter books of 1758, including Heaven and Hell and Earths in the Universe, are in large part reorganised extracts from its interchapter essays.

The Inner Sense of Scripture§

Swedenborg did not deny the literal meaning of the Bible, which he called its "letter" or natural sense, but held that it was a vessel for deeper meanings that angels perceive while humans read. He distinguished three levels: the natural sense of the narrative; a spiritual sense concerning truth, faith and the church; and a celestial sense concerning love and, ultimately, the Lord himself. A single verse might therefore speak at once of historical events, the reformation of the church and the inner life of Christ.

Not every book of the Bible, in his view, possessed this inner sense. He counted as "the Word" in the strict sense the five books of Moses, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, the Psalms, the Prophets, the four Gospels and the Book of Revelation. Other books, including the letters of Paul, he regarded as good and useful for the church but not written throughout by correspondences. This canon within the canon became distinctive of the later New Church.

Genesis as the history of the churches§

The commentary opens with a reinterpretation of Genesis 1. The six days of creation, Swedenborg argued, describe the six stages of a person's regeneration, from the "void" of a mind without truth to the "seventh day" of a celestial person at rest in love. The first eleven chapters of Genesis are not literal history but a symbolic account of successive spiritual epochs. "Adam" signifies the Most Ancient Church, a humanity that perceived truth directly through love; the Flood marks its collapse; "Noah" signifies the Ancient Church, which no longer perceived truth directly but preserved a knowledge of correspondences. Only with Abraham, in Swedenborg's reading, does the narrative begin to concern historical persons, and even then the literal story carries a continuous inner meaning about the glorification of the Lord's human nature.

The Doctrine of Correspondences§

The key that opens the inner sense is correspondence. Swedenborg defined it as the relationship between things of the natural world and the spiritual realities from which they come into existence and by which they are sustained. For him this was not metaphor or arbitrary symbolism. The spiritual world is prior and causal; the natural world is its effect, so that the whole of nature is a kind of theatre representing the Lord's kingdom.

In the Bible, therefore, natural objects consistently stand for spiritual states. Water corresponds to truth, bread to the good of love, a horse to understanding, a garden to intelligence, light to wisdom and heat to love. Because these meanings are fixed rather than invented by the interpreter, Swedenborg believed the inner sense could be recovered systematically, and later readers compiled dictionaries of correspondences from his works.

The Grand Man and the body§

The most striking application concerns the human body. In a long series of interchapter essays Swedenborg described heaven as a "Grand Man" (Maximus Homo), in which angelic societies correspond to the organs and members of the body: some to the heart, some to the lungs, some to the eye, others to the kidneys or the skin. Here the anatomist of the 1740s and the visionary meet, and historians have often pointed out how much of his scientific physiology passes into the spiritual system.

The lost science of the ancients§

Swedenborg also claimed that the knowledge of correspondences was once the chief science of humanity. The Ancient Church, he said, understood it, and its remnants survived in the hieroglyphs of Egypt and the myths of the Greeks, where it degenerated into idolatry and magic once its spiritual meaning was forgotten. This idea of a primordial wisdom later obscured gave his system an affinity with the Renaissance notion of an ancient theology, and it explains why he was later read alongside Hermetic and esoteric writers, as our general guide to correspondences in esotericism discusses.

Swedenborg and the Older Tradition of Correspondences§

Esoteric thought had long spoken of links between the visible and invisible worlds: the Hermetic maxim "as above, so below", the astrological sympathies of the Renaissance magi and the "signatures" of Jacob Boehme. Swedenborg rarely cited such predecessors and presented his doctrine as revealed rather than inherited. Scholars such as Antoine Faivre nevertheless treat correspondence as one of the defining features of Western esotericism and see Swedenborg as one of its most systematic expositors.

There are also differences. Renaissance correspondences were usually horizontal and magical, linking planets, metals, plants and parts of the body in chains of sympathy that a magus might use. Swedenborg's correspondences are vertical and moral: they descend from the Lord through heaven into nature, and they are known in order to be understood and lived, not manipulated. He condemned magic as the abuse of correspondences.

Reception and Influence of Arcana Coelestia§

The book first reached a small circle of readers. English translations began in the late eighteenth century, most influentially that of the Anglican clergyman John Clowes, and the title Arcana Coelestia or Heavenly Arcana became standard in English for more than two centuries. A complete modern translation under the title Secrets of Heaven has been published since 2008 by the Swedenborg Foundation.

Through these translations the doctrine of correspondences entered nineteenth-century literature. Ralph Waldo Emerson praised it as Swedenborg's great contribution, Balzac drew on it, and Charles Baudelaire's sonnet "Correspondances" helped make it a cornerstone of Symbolist poetics, a story told in our article on occult literature and art. In America it shaped Transcendentalist nature-writing and the Swedenborgian-tinged spiritual philosophies that fed into Theosophy and New Thought. Among theologians the inner-sense method has had fewer followers, but the book remains the foundational scripture commentary of the Swedenborgian churches.

Frequently asked questions§

What does Arcana Coelestia mean?§

The Latin title means "heavenly secrets" or "heavenly arcana". Modern translations often use Secrets of Heaven. The title refers to the spiritual meanings Swedenborg believed were concealed within the literal text of the Bible.

Which parts of the Bible does Arcana Coelestia cover?§

It interprets the whole of Genesis and Exodus, verse by verse. Swedenborg later treated the Book of Revelation in separate works, Apocalypse Revealed (1766) and the posthumously published Apocalypse Explained.

What is Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondences?§

It is the teaching that every natural thing exists from, and corresponds to, a spiritual reality, so that nature and Scripture alike can be read as expressions of spiritual truths. Swedenborg insisted that these correspondences are fixed and causal, not poetic inventions.

Is Arcana Coelestia still read today?§

Yes. It is a central text of the Swedenborgian churches, has been retranslated into English as Secrets of Heaven, and is studied by historians of religion and literature for its influence on Romanticism and Symbolism.

Sources and further reading§