Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/313

XXII ] other world, he was stripped of his self-deceit and appeared as he really was—a devil.

Twelve hours after the execution of the Swedish noble Eric Brahe for conspiracy, Swedenborg says he spoke with this acquaintance of his. Eric Brahe had made a most edifying end, professing saving faith, but, "after two days he began to return to his former state of life, which was to love worldly things, and after three days he became just as he previously was in the world." 27

Polhem, Swedenborg's old teacher, died on a Monday. "He spoke with me on Thursday," Swedenborg notes, when he was at Polhem's funeral. Polhem saw "his coffin and those who were there and the whole procession, and also when his body was laid in the grave; and in the meanwhile he spoke with me, asking me why they buried him when he was still alive . . . besides many other things." It is to be hoped for the sake of the other attendants that Swedenborg did not answer out loud, for he said himself in his diary that sometimes when he was in conversation with spirits he forgot that he was in the body because his attention was not centered on the body.28

Newton he said he had a very pleasant chat with, very happy that Newton was "among his own and is beloved." 29

And in 1759, on the thirteenth day of September, near the eighth hour, Swedenborg had a rare experience in the spirit world, an experience which undoubtedly would also there be labeled "dabbling in the occult." Swedenborg saw a spirit, he said, go into a sleep, or trance, in order to visit a man in this world. The spirit, by means of showing Swedenborg a "representation" of Versailles and other things, conveyed that he was King Louis XIV of France, then he fell into this kind of sleep. When he awakened he told Swedenborg that he had shown himself in a vision to King Louis XV, who was in bed, and exhorted him to desist from applying the papal bull "Unigenitus" against the Jansenists, telling him he must entirely abandon it, or misfortune would befall him.30

Louis XV had, so it seems, been eagerly supporting the Jesuits against the Jansenists and therefore the Bull "Unigenitus," making it the law of the land since 1756, and enforcing it through the year 1759. After that he stopped enforcing it, and expelled the Jesuits, his former favorites from France.31