Saturday, May 29, 2010

Lecter series - unified analysis - part 5: Introduction to Emanuel Swedenborg

CATEGORY: MOVIES

Portrait of Emanuel Swedenborg by Carl Frederik von Breda. [Image from the Wikipedia 'Emanuel Swedenborg' page, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.]














Emanuel Swedenborg (born Emanuel Swedberg; January 29, 1688 – March 29, 1772) was a Swedish scientist, philosopher, Christian mystic, and theologian. Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. In 1741 at the age of fifty-three he entered into a spiritual phase in which he eventually began to experience dreams and visions beginning on Easter weekend April 6, 1744. This culminated in a spiritual awakening, where he claimed he was appointed by the Lord to write a heavenly doctrine to reform Christianity.

In the next several posts, we will be analyzing the Lecter movies within the context of certain writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. One of Swedenborg's ideas that is considered most crucial for the understanding of his theology is his notion of correspondences. The basis of the correspondence theory is that there is a relationship between the natural ("physical"), the spiritual, and the divine worlds. The foundations of this theory can be traced to Neoplatonism and the philosopher Plotinus in particular. With the aid of this scenario, Swedenborg now interpreted the bible in a different light, claiming that even the most apparently trivial sentences could hold a profound spiritual meaning.[a]

Below is quoted some material from one of Swedenborg's works, Divine Love and Wisdom ('D.L.W.'), so that the reader of this analysis can get a sense of his manner of speaking.

THE DIVINE IS NOT IN SPACE. But since angels and spirits see with eyes, just as men in the world do, and since objects cannot be seen except in space, therefore in the spiritual world where angels and spirits are, there appear to be spaces like the spaces on earth; yet they are not spaces, but appearances; since they are not fixed and constant, as spaces are on earth; for they can be lengthened or shortened; they can be changed or varied. Thus because they cannot be determined in that world by measure, they cannot be comprehended there by any natural idea, but only by a spiritual idea. (--from D.L.W. n. 7.)

At the bottom of each post in the Swedenborgian analysis, there will be a link like the one provided below, which will allow you to skip over the remaining posts having to do with Swedenborg, and to move ahead to part 24 of the unified analysis.


a. Wikipedia, 'Emanuel Swedenborg'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Swedenborg.

To skip over the remainder of the Swedenborgian analysis of the Hannibal Lecter movies, click here.

The works of Emanuel Swedenborg from the Internet Sacred Texts Archive
Divine Love and Wisdom, by Emanuel Swedenborg, [1763], tr. by John C. Ager [1890] at sacred-texts.com. Web. 29 May 2010.


      

Posted at 7:46 PM
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