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HE arcana revealed in the following pages are those concerning heaven, together with the life of man after death. The man of the church at this day knows scarcely anything about heaven or hell, nor yet about his own life after death, although these things are all treated of in the Word. Nay, many even among those who were born within the church deny these things, saying in their hearts, Who has ever come thence and told us?

Lest, therefore, such a negative principle, which rules especially among those who possess much worldly wisdom, should also infect and corrupt the simple in heart and faith, it has been granted me to associate with angels and to converse with them as one man with another, and also to see the things which are in the heavens as well as those which are in the hells, and this for the space of thirteen years, so that I can now describe them from