William Blake and the Radical Swedenborgians

Robert Rix

Introduction: Occultist or Political Radical?

If the philosophy of Immanuel Kant is now studied worldwide, the current climate of
philosophical investigation ignores the mystical thinker Emanuel Swedenborg at
best relegating him to footnote status. But towards the end of the eighteenth century,
the interest in Swedenborg among intellectuals was immense; his writings made a lot
of noise in the speculative world, as the leading journal on esoteric matters, The
Conjurors Magazine, commented in 1791. [1] Kant even felt compelled to respond to
Swedenborg in Trume eines Geistesseher (1766; Dreams of a Spirit-Seer).
Swedenborgs teaching became the main substance of the occult revival in the late
eighteenth century, and his ideas have had a lasting appeal as a source of inspiration to
many intellectuals who were not converts, such as Lavater; Goethe; Coleridge;
Emerson; Balzac; Baudelaire; Whitman; Melville; Henry James, Sr; and, not least, the
poet and painter William Blake, on whom the essay at hand will focus. [2]
From documents we know that on 14 April 1789 Blake and his wife, Catherine,
attended the First General Conference of the Swedenborgian New Jerusalem Church
at the chapel in Maidenhead Lane, just off Great Eastcheap (now Cannon Street) in
Londons East End. The conference lasted four days until 17 April. It was held in
response to a circular letter of 7 December 1788, which had been distributed in 500
copies to all the readers of the Theological Writings of the Hon. Emanuel
Swedenborg, who are desirous of rejecting, and separating themselves from, the Old
Church, or the present Established Churches. The letter drew up forty-two
propositions outlining the terms for a separation, which the Blakes signed. [3]
The Swedenborgian Church is the only religious institution we have any record of
him ever attending. However, if the dating Blake scribbled in blue ink on copy K
ofThe Marriage of Heaven and Hell, his scathing satire on Swedenborg, is correct, it
seems that he was, at this time, not willing to accept Swedenborg as the singular
prophet on which one could build a system of beliefs.
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In the late 1780s and early 1790s, when Blake sought out Swedenborg and other mystical and
occult sources, he was also a radical in politics. Most noticeably, he wrote a eulogy to The
French Revolution (1791), which was originally planned in seven books, and celebrated the
liberation of the thirteen colonies in America: A Prophecy (1793). Traditionally, scholarship has
separated Blakes interest in occultism from his political radicalism. One branch of Blake studies
(originating with another great poet of the occult, W.B. Yeats, and reaching its apex in Kathleen
Raine), sees Blake primarily as a researcher of mystical sources; whereas a line fathered by
David Erdman glosses over the mystical influences in order to draw a picture of a political
Blake, whose writings reflect directly on contemporary events in a straightforward manner.
However, studies by E.P. Thompson, Jon Mee and Marsha Keith Schuchard have encouraged us
to bring these two lines together. [4] The essay at hand proceeds from the historical precepts
brought to light by these scholars and aims to show that the rationalistic ideologies of Voltaire or
Thomas Paine were not alone in fuelling radical or revolutionary programmes. What I intend

below is a historical investigation of how the reception of how Swedenborgs esoteric teaching
was absorbed into the socio-cultural matrix of the late eighteenth century to become a platform
for opposition politics. This, in turn, will give us cause to re-evaluate the motivation behind the
radical Blakes affiliation with the Swedenborgians in the New Jerusalem Church.
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The Rise and Progress of Swedenborgianism in London

Before the establishment of the separatist New Jerusalem Church, the Swedish prophets writings
were discussed in societies that convened on a regular basis. One Swedenborgian gathering in
London was the Sunday morning meetings held at Jacob Duchs flat at the Lambeth Asylum for
orphans. Could Blake perhaps have visited there? At the very least, we find on a list of
Subscribers Names to Duchs Discourses on Several Subjects (1779) not only the appearance
of Blakes friend and fellow engraver William Sharp, but also that of a William Blake. [5]
The Church that Blake visited was a development of the non-orthodox Theosophical Society,
which was established in 1783 by a printer with a Methodist background, Robert Hindmarsh. We
know that a number of Blakes fellow artists were Swedenborgians and met in the Theosophical
Society (in 1785 renamed as The British Society for the Propagation of the Doctrines of the New
Church), which among its members counter Philip de Loutherbourg, Richard Cosway, and
Blakes close friends John Flaxman and William Sharp. [6] The latter two may have been
responsible for introducing him early on to the pre-Church debating societies. David Erdman has
suggested that it was probably Sharp, Blakes friend and fellow engraver, who introduced Blake
to Swedenborg, as they were close in 1789. However, already in 1781, Blake had befriended
Flaxman, who joined the Theosophical Society in 1784. [7]
Swedenborg never advocated the establishment of a separatist Church as it saw the light of day
in Great Eastcheap. His proclamation of a New Jerusalem Church meant that
a spiritual enlightenment was now available for those who would open their eyes to his gospel; it
was an internal church within. Hence, when Jacob Duch made his intellectual shift from
William Law to Swedenborg in 1785, he wrote to his mother-in-law that in Swedenborgianism
he could Look henceforward to an Internal Millennium. [8] For a comparable statement, we
may look to Blakes epic poem, Jerusalem, in which he speaks of a Jerusalem in every
individual man (39.39, E187). [9]
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Swedenborg had contended that his teaching was a new revelation that would replace
the corrupted beliefs perpetuated in all previous Christian churches. He explained that,

historically, the world had seen the rise and fall of four ecclesiastical dispensations:
the Adamic, the Noahtic, the Israelitish and the Christian Church of the present. As the
Christian Church had now reached its end, Swedenborgs New Jerusalem Church
had arrived as the Crown of all Churches, which have heretofore existed on this
earthly Globe. It spiritualised the biblical notion of a Last Judgment by which
mankind would be brought to redemption. Swedenborgs doctrines were promoted as
the revelation of a final and true conception of Christianity, and those accepting the
New Jerusalem Church would be redeemed in the spirit. [10]
Although Swedenborg had not lend support to any directly radical or revolutionary ideology,
comments made by readers of Swedenborg at the time, as we shall see, make it clear that in
setting individual illumination as the desideratum of True Religion over the control of priests,
Swedenborg unwittingly gave confidence to those in English society who felt disempowered
under the traditional ecclesiastical institutions.

We know that in the early years of the New Church, the membership consisted
largely of persons who had come out of the liberal and dissenting ecclesiastical
bodies; and brought with them into the New church their old and favourite notions of
democratic government. [11] The politicisation of Swedenborgian doctrines
penetrated the Church to it very core. Rev. William Hill, an Anglican minister and
Swedenborgian confessor, for example, found reason to complain in a letter of 1794 to
Swedenborgians in America that the New Jerusalem Church in England had been
engaged in questions relating to modes of government, both ecclesiastical and
civil. [12] There was a widespread tendency among Swedenborgians to turn their
prophets teaching into a social gospel that fitted a radical and anticlerical outlook of
the late eighteenth century. Blakes comment in the Marriage, It is so with
Swedenborg; he shews the folly of churches & exposes hypocrites (pl. 21; E43), is
evidence of this posture.
Even when Blake seems to be making purely theological statements, there are
inevitable links to be drawn to Swedenborgs diatribe against the Christian Churches
and the way they have duped man into spiritual inaptitude. This dimension is not
always expressed with full clarity in Blakes writing without familiarity with the
source texts to which he alludes. In the Marriage, for instance, Blake asks a very
Swedenborgian question: How do you know but evry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is
an immense world of delight, closd by your senses five? (pl. 7; E35). What
stimulated Blake to this formulation, beyond the verbal echo of Thomas
Chattertons Bristowe Tragedie, or Dethe of Syr Chales Bawdin (1768), [13] was
Swedenborgs constant affirmation of a world beyond Lockean physics and a True
Religion beyond the instituted Christian churches.
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In Divine Love and Divine Wisdom (1788), which Blake owned and annotated,
Swedenborg elucidates at length how the Divine in the natural universe has been
obscured by the churches. He complains how all the Things of Religion, which are
called Spiritual, have been removed out of the Sight of Man, by Councils and certain
Leaders in the Church. They have mislead Christians to blindly believe that being
born to a natural world, they cannot perceive anything separate from what is
natural. To preserve their worldly privileges, these religious tyrants have conned their
subjects into believing that the spiritual world transcend[s] the Understanding.
They deceive man with the explanation that the spiritual Principle to be like a Bird
which flieth above the Air in the ther where the Eye-sight doth not reach; but,
Swedenborg counterattacks, the spiritual principle of the world (By the Sight of the
Eye is meant the Sight of the Understanding) is visible to those who break the mental
restrains superimposed by the churches. The spiritual world is like a Bird of Paradise,
which flieth near the Eye, and toucheth its Pupil with its beautiful Wings, and
wisheth to be seen. [14]
From the late 1780s, conservative censors were on the watch for Swedenborgians potential
threat to social order. A few months before a group of Swedenborgians were to make steps
towards separating from the old Church, a reviewer in the Monthly Review of May 1787 assessed
Swedenborgs doctrines for their appeal to radical thinking:

They are the harmless ravings of a spiritual, but disordered fancy the Barons writing will
neither create a schism in the church, nor a rebellion in the state for Swedenborg knew
nothing of that dark and dangerous fanaticism which under the specious pretence of a spiritual
commonwealth, endeavoured to sap the foundations of all lawful government Let men enjoy
their influxes: let them converse with their angels If they suffer us to sleep in peace, let them
dream on. (435)

We see here how the memory of the constitutional havoc wrought by sectarianism in the previous
century haunted the public imagination of a politically unstable age. The conclusion reached by
the reviewer is however comforting. In comparison with the fanatical religious sectarians who
gave their support to Cromwells Commonwealth, Swedenborgs writing is acquitted. It does not
constitute any real danger; Swedenborg is seen as too eccentric to excite insurrection among the
people. Yet the need to assess Swedenborgianism for its potential threat to monarchy and the
Government is an indication that the early members were those who were believed to be likely to
be taken in by democratic ideologies.
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After the Revolution in France had struck fear into the hearts of English
conservatives, evaluations of Swedenborgianism were not always so favourable. In the
debate over the dissenters campaign for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, some
Anglicans feared that amendment of the current laws would result in an uprising
among:

the numberless multitude of Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, Antinomians,

Muggletonians, Swedenburgians [sic.], New-Light-Men, Sandemanians, and the
various motley description of modern Schismatics aided by the Turks and Infidels of
all names and nations, with Lord George Gordon at their head and Jewish priests
sounding the horns of sedition in his train. [15]

Interestingly, Swedenborgianism is erroneously seen to originate with seventeenthcentury sects, which were popularly connected with the social upheaval of the Civil
War although Swedenborgs theosophical writings, of course, appearing nearly a
century later. The comparison with the radical Lord Gordon, the instigator of the
Gordon Riots in 1780, only reinforces the sense of political danger the
Swedenborgians were seen to constitute.

Masonic Swedenborgianism
The prevalence of an unmistakable political dimension in Swedenborgianism warns us not to
limit the scope of our understanding of Blakes motives for seeking out the New Jerusalem
Church only to questions of theology. There are undeniable links between the reading of
Swedenborg and radical activity, centered on a branch of radical Freemasons who operated
internationally, but gathered in London. [16] However, it has been obfuscated largely due to the
historian on the early developments in the New Jerusalem Church, Robert Hindmarsh.
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In his history of the Rise and Progress of the New Jerusalem Church (published posthumously in
1861), Hindmarsh significantly plays down the mystico-political Freemasons extensive
involvement in the early Swedenborgian movement. The history he produced aims to present a
respectable picture of the Church where earlier radical and fanatical origins are sometimes
glossed over, having the status of mere footnotes, or entirely vanishes. But before we give our
attention to what has been suppressed, we need first to establish the attitudes towards Masonry

that help to explain the background for Hindmarsh and the New Jerusalem Churchs policy of
evasion.
An insight into conservative reaction is best typified in the French migr priest Abb
Barruels widely read Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (1797). Barruel, a former
Jesuit drawing on his past experiences as a Mason, had taken a conservative turn and now led a
diatribe against European Freemasonry. His Memoirs was atour de force of political conspiracy
theory, in which Masonic lodges were exhibited as a threat to the peace of society and as an
Anarchy against every religion natural or revealed; not only against kings, but against every
government, against all civil society, even against all property whatsoever. [17] Barruel made
the point that The very name of Free-mason carries with it the idea of Liberty; as to Equality it
was disguised under the term Fraternity, which has a similar signification (2:279).
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In the fourth volume of his piece of scare-mongering, Barruel singles out the Swedenborgian
Masons for particular attention (esp. 4:119-51), because he sees them as the heretical glue that
binds together a variety of what he calls antisocial (i.e. revolutionary) societies. He describes
Swedenborgs visions as prophecies of rebellion and his teaching as intended to eradicate true
Christianity from the minds of their dupes, and to make their New Jerusalem a plea for those
revolutions that aim to overthrow the present churches and government (4:132). The
underlying meaning of the claim for spiritual regeneration is really to sweep from the earth
every prince and every king, that the God of Swedenborg may reign uncontroled [sic.] over the
whole globe. And that revolution which they saw bursting forth in France, was nothing more in
their eyes than the fire that was to purify the earth to prepare the way for their new Jerusalem
(4:126).
The most radical of the Swedenborgians were those Masonic brethren found in the Society at
Avignon, which Barruel saw as a hive of revolutionary activity. Before the papal city of Avignon
was annexed to France at the end of 1791, it was indeed a hotbed of much religio-mystical and
political experimentalism. Many conservatives consequently linked Avignon with having played
an active role in the Revolution, or being directly responsible for it.
The Society at Avignon was founded in 1779 by Antoine-Joseph Pernety and Count
Grabianka. [18] But because of their travels around Europe (most notably visiting the
Swedenborgians in London), it was not until early in 1787 that the Society was reformed as
Acadmie des Illumins Philosophes, a Masonic rite that drew on a mixture of Swedenborg and
Cabalistic lore mixed in with other mystical philosophies. Barruel lists Grabianka, as well as
Cagliostro (founder of the Egyptian Rite) and Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (founder of the Elus
Coens) as brethren of Avignon, who recognized the Illumines of Swedenborg as their parent
Sect. All three achieved European-wide notoriety for their radical politics flown under a
mystical banner. In Rise and Progress of the New Jerusalem Church, Hindmarsh recognises the
Societys strong Swedenborgian connections but is eager to dissociate its affiliation with the New
Jerusalem Church. [19]

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If we turn to London, we find that predating Duchs Lambeth meetings and the Theosophical
Society was a quasi-Masonic society, which was the first to catch on to Swedenborgs teaching.
It was formed in 1776, partly on the initiative of Benedict Chastanier, a French physician and
high-ranking Mason who resided in Britain over forty years, having emigrated from France in
1774. Chastaniers society went under the name of the London Universal Society. The interests
of the Society continued the Masonic system of Theosophic Illuminati (Illumins theosophes)
Chastanier had formed in France. Though all the members of the Universal Society were
Masons, they do not, however, seem to have had any rites or Masonic degrees. Chastanier had
been in contact with the Masons at Avignon and introduced their teaching to England. He had
discovered Swedenborgs works in 1768, albeit, at first, without knowing who the author
was. [20]
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Throughout the 1780s, the Universal Society had a permeating influence on the reception of
Swedenborg, as Marsha Keith Schuchard has shown. [21] The main purpose of the Universal
Society was missionary in the Masonic philanthropic sense (philanthropic being a Masonic
buzzword at the time), working for universal redemption. For this reason, the members were
involved in the translation and printing of Swedenborgs works. [22] Chastanier also published a
periodical entitled Journal Novi-Jerusalemite, in which he called on all Masons to accept
Swedenborgs teaching. He is thus an important figure in facilitating a rapprochement between
Swedenborgianism and Catholic Franco-Masonry.
The members of Chastaniers Universal Society were regular guests at the Sunday morning
meetings held at Duchs asylum, and they also attended the meetings of the Theosophical
Society. The Universal Society was so closely connected with the Theosophical Society and its
programme for publishing Swedenborgs works that they shared the same printing press. Their
presence facilitated the visits of many international and high-ranking Masons. [23] It was thus a
specific Masonic version of Swedenborg that dominated London Swedenborgianism throughout
the 1780s.
An occult tradition of seeking spiritual illumination thrived in the seventeenth century but had
since gone underground, marginalised by the progress of rationalist and empiricist modes of
thinking, and was preserved most fully and systematically in clandestine Freemasonry. At the
inception of Swedenborgianism into the European network of irregular Masonry, it blended in
with the mainstays of Hermeticism, Cabalism, Rosicrucianism, Spiritualism, Astrology etc.
Many lodges and Masonic societies welcomed Swedenborgs teaching. His central idea of
Correspondences, which linked all things material to a spiritual source was used to back up
notions of unusual rapport with other realities. Swedenborg, who had practiced as a Natural
Philosopher for over fifty years, carried over a systematic and scientific sensibility to his
cosmology. For many, Swedenborgianism became an umbrella philosophy under which other
occult ideas could be given a collective rationale even if these were only remotely related to
Swedenborgs doctrines.

Both the Theosophical Society and Duchs gatherings were open meetings in the sense that
the Masons (primarily noblemen or haute bourgeoisie) here mixed with tradesmen, artisans and
other local Londoners. This was part of a philanthropic programme, by which the Masons
with democratic intent wanted to create a new space within society where members of
differing classes could meet upon the level [24] The discussion groups became a conduit for
the Masons heady blend of mystical ideas and radical politics, which trickled down to segments
of the lower orders. The result was that Swedenborgian ideas came to blend in with a longestablished plebeian cosmology, which had roots in the native millennial traditions of the
Muggletonians, Jane Leads Philadelphian society, the English translations of Jakob Boehme (on
whom Lead drew heavily) and a tradition of seventeenth-century radical Protestantism.
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In his history of the Rise and Progress of the New Jerusalem Church, Hindmarsh, much like
Coleridge in Biographia Literaria, cultivates a selective memory when it comes to his youthful
radicalism. He does mention the visit of the notorious charlatan Cagliostro, who, in the mid1780s, visited the Swedenborgians in London in order to recruit members for his Egyptian Rite.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, a Rose-Croix Mason, who publicly criticised Cagliostro, heard that he
received a warm welcoming among the London Swedenborgians and reported this in
his Italieniesche Reise. [25] But Hindmarsh chooses to forget that, from late 1785 to late 1786,
the Swedenborgians were visited by Count Grabianka, who was not really a Count, but a
Polish Nobleman. He was known under several aliases according to where he travelled; in
England he went under the name Suddowski. Grabiankas Masonic system, a mixture of
Swedenborg and Cabalism, had significant political overtones. He nursed a desire to succeed to
the elective Polish throne, claimed that papal authority would be brought to an end and that there
would be a mass social uprising. [26]
When Grabianka arrived in London on 7 December 1785, he immediately sent for Chastanier,
who went to meet him at the Hotel in the Adelphi, which shows the strong connections between
the London Swedenborgians and Avignon. [27] The purpose of his visit was to enlist recruits
among the London Swedenborgians to his own rite named Nouvel Israel Avignon. Most
notably, Hindmarsh forgets to tell us that he had been accepted into Grabiankas Masonic system;
and that he had acted as a printer for Grabiankas propagandistic Letter from a Society in France,
to the Society for Promoting the Heavenly Doctrines of the New Jerusalem in London (1787), by
which he sought to recruit members for his Masonic system. [28]

-106-

Another Swedenborgian Mason mentioned by Abb Barruel was Claude Saint-Martin. His
radicalism was obvious, as he was directly connected with the Revolution, serving in the Garde
Nationale. Saint Martin had in 1787 been elected honorary member of the Exegetical and
Philanthropic Society in Sweden. In collaboration with the leader of the Society from 1788,
Gran Ulrik Silverhjelm (Swedenborgs nephew) he published the Swedenborgian tract Le
Nouvel Homme (1792) in collaboration with and leader of the Swedenborgian movement in
Sweden. The work was written in 1790 with the aim to describe what we should expect in
regeneration. [29] That there was a considerable degree of criss-crossing between international
Masonry of European noblemen and the vernacular traditions of London artisan culture can be
seen in the fact that Saint-Martin travelled to London in 1785 to study the writings of Jane
Lead. [30] He became so convinced of her Boehme-inspired theology that he converted to the
German mystic in the early 1790s, and, like Blake in the Marriage, somewhat shifting his
sympathies away from Swedenborg.

In London, Saint-Martin visited the Theosophical Society. So there is a good chance Blake
could have been exposed to his Masonic mystico-religion through contact with his friends in the
Society; but influence may also have found its way through other channels. For instance, in
his Journal Allemand of December 1790, Lavater eulogised one of Saint-Martins treatises as
one of the books most to his liking. Blake valued Lavater highly (as it is clear from his
annotations to Aphorisms of Man), and Blakes close friend Fuseli, who was a close
acquaintance of Lavaters, may have provided an alternative route for such influences.

In his anti-Masonic Memoirs, Barruel, who resided in England, did not let pass that
the Masons he calls the brethren of Avignon, Grabianka, Cagliostro and SaintMartin, were welcome visitors to Chastanier and the Swedenborgians in London
during the 1780s. Thus, Barruel claims, one could see

their disciples thirsting after that celestial Jerusalem, that purifying fire (for these
are the expressions I have heard them make use of) that was to kindle into general
conflagration throughout the earth by means of the French Revolution and thus
Jacobin Equality and Liberty was to be universally triumphant in the streets of
London.[31]
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The aforementioned expressions are commonplace in much mystical Christianity and spiritual
alchemy, and are also appropriated by Blake. The rhetoric of celestial Jerusalem features most
notably in Milton and Jerusalem, and, in the early prophecy, America, Blake (echoing
Nebuchadnezzars millennial dream in Daniel 2) depicts revolution as an alchemical
transformation of man: Fires inwrap the earthly globe, yet man is not consumd;/ Amidst the
lustful fires he walks: his feet become like brass,/ His knees and thighs like silver, & his breast
and head like gold. (8:15-17; E54).
Barruels account may be both populist and opportunistic, capitalising on the general paranoia
and rumour-mongering that swept Europe at the time, but there is no denying that, for many
Swedenborgians, spiritual and political regeneration were handmaidens. The Swedenborgian
lecturer James Glen would, for example, in 1795 welcome the French Revolution, which he
believed was sweeping a way for the New Church of the Divine Human. [32] A similar
conjunction is found in Blakes The French Revolution, written shortly after he had been in close
contact with the Swedenborgians. For instance, the beginning of the political resistance that will
result in the Revolution (the valleys of France shall cry to the soldier, throw down thy sword
and musket,/ And run and embrace the meek peasant. Her nobles shall hear and shall weep, and
put off/ The red robe of terror, the crown of oppression, the shoes of contempt etc.) is

described as a mystical experience of transcendent vision, by which man will raise his darkend
limbs out of the caves of the night, his eyes and his heart/ Expand: where is space! (ll. 217-38;
E296)

Swedenborgianism and the Rights of Man

When the First General Conference in the New Jerusalem Church was held in 1789,
the backbone of Swedenborgianism in London was still the Universal Society. The set
of Resolutions of 16 April 1789, which came out of the first General Conference, was
the work of Chastaniers Universal Society, its members signing the resolutions on
behalf of this Conference. [33] This is indicative of the extent of their influence in the
New Jerusalem Church at this time. Being part of a wide Masonic network of contacts,
a number of international Masons also came to visit London through the Universal
Society, and some of them joined the Church during its first year of existence. As it
will appear below, the ideas they imported were not only decisive in the developments
in the Church during the time of Blakes affiliation, but they may also have influenced
Blake in his well-known brand of mystico-political art.
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Among these Swedenborgian Masons, we find an undeniable revolutionary strain

which substantiates Abb Barruels accusations. The official Church documents from
the hands of Chastaniers Universals were concerned with the practical doctrines to be
used in the congregation in Great Eastcheap and thus reveal little in the way of
politics. But a significant radical strain is notable in Chastaniers other writings. In
1791 he published the book Emanuel Swedenborgs New-Years Gift to His Readers,
which purports to be a communication from the ghost of the deceased prophet. On the
very first page, Chastanier makes the ghost of Swedenborg address his readers: Sons
of Liberty, Children of the Free-born Woman. This was inspired by current political
events. Hence, on the Revolution in France, he makes Swedenborg comment that
kind Providence has left a door wide open for the TRUTH OF THE KINGDOM to
enter in and to establish itself with all possible, or even desirable liberty, in spiritual
matters. [34] It is the claim that a new political order will further the establishment of
mankinds spiritual enlightenment, or perhaps even that it is its prerequisite. In an
interpretation which was paralleled by many other radicals at the time, Chastanier
attempts to show that Swedenborgs millennial expectations were now being realised
in and through contemporary political developments.

That spiritual and political liberty was seen as complementary is even clearer in a
letter also of 1791, which Chastanier printed in the Swedenborgian splinter
periodicalNew Magazine of Knowledge concerning Heaven and Hell:

It is something very astonishing, Sir, how civil truths are connected with spiritual
truths. Little did Mr Thomas Paine ... think he was writing in confirmation of a
spiritual truth, at present the very bone of the dispute all over Europe, between the
friends of the doctrine of the New ... Church ... I can assure you it gave me no small
satisfaction, when I saw my own sentiment in spiritual matters so unanswerably
settled by this great political writer. [35]

Despite the insurmountable differences in their theological outlook, both thinkers are
seen as leaders in the struggle to release man from his age-old subjugation to false
religion. Paines programme of anticlericalism and anti-institutionalism is analogised
with Swedenborgs claims that the old churches have kept man in spiritual bondage,
imposing on him false doctrines. It is a strikingly similar view Blake presents in his
defence of Paines The Age of Reason against the attacks on the Anglican Bishop
Watson. Chastaniers enlistment of Paine as a willy-nilly servant of spiritual truth
correlates with Blakes hailing of Paine as a better Christian than the Bishop (E620).
As much as Paine, the doyen of Rationalism and Deism, would have been surprised to
learn from Chastanier that he wrote in support of Swedenborgianism, he would
equally have objected to Blake calling him a Christian, because it was his very aim
in The Age of Reason to replace Christianity by Deism.
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Paine and Swedenborg were also compatible philosophies for Blakes friend and fellow
engraver, William Sharpe, who was a member of the Theosophical Society since 1787 and also
joined the Society for Constitutional Information, a Wilkite organisation which had been given
new life in the early 1790s primarily to promote Paines writings. In fact, the correlation between
Swedenborg and Paine seems not at all to have been uncommon.
Carl Frederick Nordenskjld, a Finnish Mason from the Exegetical and Philanthropic Society
in Sweden, wrote extensively on Swedenborg; among other things he contributed a selection of
biographical anecdotes on the prophet to Pernety, which were prefixed as an Account of
Swedenborg in Pernetys 1782 French translation ofHeaven and Hell. [36] C.F. Nordenskjld
had also copied several of Swedenborgs manuscripts, which he carried to England in 1783 to
hand over to Chastanier with a view to publication. He stayed as a guest of the Universal Society

until 1786 and here became familiar with English politics. After his return to Sweden, he was
kept up-to-date through correspondence with the Swedenborgian Masons in London. Back in
Sweden, he became the translator of Paines Rights of Man. He was probably also behind the
Swedish translations of the popular fifteenth chapter of C.F. Volneys Ruins of Empire in 1792
and the French Constitution. [37] C.F. Nordenskjld combined an interest in the interpretation of
dreams in Oneiromantien (1783) and his translations of Swedenborgs vision into Swedish of
1787 with the translations of rationalist philosophy, such as Montesquieu, Hume and
Tacitus. [38] In his own phrase (appropriately mixing religion and politics), the aim was to create
Gods Republic. [39]

C.F. Nordenskjld was just one of a number of Swedenborgian Masons from

Sweden who came to London carrying Swedenborgian manuscript to be translated,
published and disseminated. In Sweden, the Gothenberg Consistory had deemed the
prophets teaching subversive to the Lutheran State Church, so the Royal Council had
imposed a ban on Swedenborgian publications in 1770. [40] The Exegetical and
Philanthropic Society therefore usually had their Swedenborgian-related material
printed in Copenhagen, Denmark. But with the extensive publication programmes
launched by the Universal Society and the Theosophical Society, a new window of
opportunity was opened up.
-110-

Another Mason who came to London with Swedenborgian manuscripts was Carl Bernhard
Wadstrm, who became one of C.F. Nordenskjlds most important correspondents in England.
Prior to his departure from Sweden, Wadstrm had been president in the Exegetical and
Philosophical Society. He was baptised into the New Jerusalem Church in Great Eastcheap on
Christmas day 1788. [41] With his close friend, Chastanier, he became a leading member of the
Church, signing the series of Resolutions from the First General Conference on behalf of the
Church. Wadstrm had earlier undertaken industrial espionage in Germany and would attempt to
set up a textile factory in the Manchester area, which got him into financial trouble. Wadstrms
political sympathies were clear. He combined his interest in Swedenborg with frequent visits to
the reformist Manchester Constitutional Society. [42] In 1795 he emigrated to France to offer his
services to the French Directory, and was later appointed chief director of the Crdit agricole in
Paris, where he lived until his death in 1799 in high favour of the Directory and Napoleon. [43]

Wadstrm was not the first Swedenborgian Mason to join actively in the French
Revolution. From the Exegetical and Philanthropic Society there was even an attempt
to make Swedenborgianism play an active role in the republique. In a letter of 1791,
Chastanier printed in The New-Jerusalem Magazine, a Swedenborgian journal
launched by the Universal Society, a Baron de Bulow (who begins by expressing
shame at his aristocratic title) writes that although The great revolution in France is
a great benefit for humanity at large, it needs to be supported by Swedenborgs

teachings for its continued success. De Bulow informs us that a New Political
Constitution was presented by a member of the New-Jerusalem Church of the Lord
at London, to the national assembly in France. [44] This refers to a tract
entitled Tableau dune Constitution incorruptible, written by the Finnish Mason
August Nordenskjld (brother to C.F. Nordenskjld), who became a member of the
Universal Society in London and also joined the New Jerusalem Church. Although
there were high-ranking Mason of the illuminist sort among the leading
revolutionaries such as Marquis de LaFayette, Blakes hero inThe French
Revolution and an initiate in Saint-Martins Swedenborg inspired Rite [45] we have
no account of how the proposal for a constitution was received, only that nothing
came of it.
-111-

Plan for a Free Community

While active in the New Church, C.B. Wadstrm and August Nordenskjld, with some of their
international Masonic contacts, published a pamphlet in English describing a plan for
establishing a colony on the coast of Sierra Leone founded and run on Swedenborgian principles.
Its title is more than a little indicative of the politics underwriting the project: Plan for a Free
Community upon the Coast of Africa under the Protection of Great Britain; but Intirely
Independent of All European Laws and Governments.
In an appendix to the pamphlet, a number of articles for governance in the colony are set up.
These are conceived on a fairly democratic basis with suffrage for all adult males to an assembly
and the dissolution of all social class. Central to the argument of the Plan is the eventual
abolition of slavery and that the European and the Negro should live together in
harmony. [46] The political intentions go beyond the question of abolition, for, as the
authors ask, To what purpose is Spiritual Liberty without Civil Liberty? (xi). There are in fact
two kinds of slavery to be abolished: that of the Negros literal and the Europeans Civil
slavery under the abject servility to innumerable monied Tyrants (iv-v). It is arresting that
Blake in The French Revolution, written shortly after the publication of the Plan, uses the
African slave as a cipher for the European enslaved by both tyrannical monarchies and
oppressive Churches. He speaks of the people of France as The millions of spirits immortal
were bound/ To wander inslavd; black, deprest in dark ignorance, kept in awe with the whip
Till man raise his darkend limbs out of the caves of night (ll.213-19; E295-96). Blakes
metaphor here also captures the millennial expectations that were inherent in the project for the
African colony.
It is normally assumed that Nordenskjld wrote the text to the Plan for a Free
Community, [47] but it is Wadstrm who made his fame as a prolific abolitionist. During his

years in England, Wadstrm worked with the abolitionists Henry Gandy, Thomas Clarkson and
Granville Sharp to turn public opinion against slavery. He was also a member of the African
Institution, which worked for abolition of slavery. [48]
A praise of Swedenborg appears already in the preface. And although it is granted that
religion must be free in the colony, it is made clear that in order to preserve Harmony and
Unity in a State, the whole Government must necessarily be of the same Religion, which should
be the DOCTRINE OF THE NEW JERUSALEM CHURCH [because it] is superior to all
others and best calculated for a Free Community. It is also stated that governors in the highest
offices of the colony must be Swedenborgians.[49] The unapologetic Swedenborgianism in this
propagandistic tract is important, because it underscores the point that the hope for spiritual
regeneration appealed to the same readers who sought social renewal.
-112-

It warrants attention that Wadstrm and Nordenskjlds philanthropic programme was more
than just abolitionism with Swedenborgianism embellishment. In fact, the anti-slavery
programme was predicated on central tenets in Swedenborgs theology. Following a common
template in eighteenth-century mythography, Swedenborg believed that the original Christian
Gospel - which was once known as unmediated vision and understood by man - had been
corrupted and forgotten over time. This template was also adopted by Blake, most notably on
plate 11 of the Marriage, plate 10 of Europe, plates 3-4 of The Song of Los, plate 25 of The Book
of Urizen, and it is a general main theme in the mythological works of the 1790s. Swedenborg
hailed himself as the one who had returned Christianity to its ancient origins and purity, but he
also postulated that there was a tribe in Africa, which, undisturbed, had preserved the original
Gospel and possessed the highest degree of inner knowledge. Thus he spoke of the Africans as a
more Interior People than any other of the Gentiles. [50]
Swedenborg had said nothing on the institution of slavery, but his mystical notion of the high
spiritual status of the African race provided intellectual fuel for the abolitionist cause, which we
otherwise mostly think of as couched in the Evangelical idiom of William Wilberforce or Hannah
More. The link between Swedenborg and abolitionism goes back to 1779 when Wadstrm, in
Norkpping, had established a society, which was probably the first organised abolitionist
movement in the world. He writes in an account that this was a society of affectionate admirers
of the writings of that extraordinary man, Emanuel Swedenborg ... in consequence of reflection
on the favourable account this eminent author gives, both in his printed works and manuscripts
of the African Nations. [51]
Blake would undoubtedly have been familiar with the Plan; not only was it widely advertised in
Swedenborgian publications during 1789-90, but its abolitionist programme would also have
stirred his interest. Swedenborgs thinking on the Africans is relevant in regard to Blakes
revolutionary spirit Orc, who is referred to as the Image of God who dwells in the darkness of
Africa (America 2:8-9; E52). Blake appears to draw on Swedenborgs lengthy praise of the
Africans, who excel all other Gentiles in clearness of interior judgment, and therefore have a

superior understanding of God. To Swedenborg, God is not insubstantial ether or in the form
of a cloud as he is to some Christians. The Africans understand that God is man raised to
awareness of his own divinity, and they have no other idea of God than that of a Divine
Man. [52]
-113-

In Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, Swedenborg writes that the Africans, who entertain the Idea
of God as of a Man, reject the Idea of God as existing in the Midst of a Cloud, and, when it
is said among the Christians, they deny that it is possible (n11). This passage was annotated by
Blake: to think of holiness as distinct from man is impossible to the affections. In the poetry
of Jerusalem, Blake would equally rejected the notion of a God who dwells in Chaos hidden
from the human sight (23.30; E168), in the dreary Void wide separated from the Human
Soul (28.16; E174). The counter-theology offered is that the Lord is seen as Universal
Humanity, the form a Man (96.1-6; E255). In fact, Blake argues a concordant notion
throughout his writing: as early as in the Divine Image of Songs of Innocence, he speaks ofthe
Human Form Divine (E12-13). Blakes aversion against a distant sky-god is spelled out in his
satire ofold Nobodaddy aloft, who is the Christian Churches Godhead put to political use. In
the poetry of Blakes Notebook, he proclaims tolove hanging & drawing & quartering (the
punishment for High Treason against the State) and condemns those whorebel togo to hell
(E499).

-114-

The convergence between mystical enlightenment and the discourse of reform in the
Swedenborgian milieu opens up a new perspective on what is usually regarded as Blakes more
straightforward social commentaries. For example, when first reading The Little Black Boy
from Songs of Innocence, it appears to share a common ground with abolitionist poems such as
Cowpers Negros Complaint (1779) or William Roscoes The Wrongs of Africa (1787). But, in
fact, it is a poem that most clearly evinces a Swedenborgian influence. We are told that,
compared with the white English boy, the black boy is better prepared for Heaven. This is
expressed by the metaphor that he has a greater ability to bear the Suns beams of love and that
he can therefore shade the white English boy till he can bear/ To lean in joy upon our fathers
knee (ll.26-27; E9). That there in the Spiritual World ... is a Sun distinct from that of the
Natural World, the essence of which is pure love from Jehovah God, who is in the midst thereof:
that the heat ... is in its essence love, and the light ... [of] Wisdom is a central belief with
Swedenborg, which is why it was also included in section 13 of the circular letter Blake
signed. [53] Swedenborgs claim that the African and the child both have unmediated insight into
Truth and both live in a state he calls Regnum innocentiae may also be at play in Blakes song
of Innocence.

-115-

If we go beneath the veneer of polite social utilitarianism in the Plan for a Free Community, it
is quite clear that the whole project was nurtured in the soil of millennial Enthusiasm a return
to innocence. Already on the page following the title, Revelations 21:5 is quoted: Behold, I
make all Things New. The Swedenborgians saw here an opportunity of establishing an external
kingdom in which Swedenborgs dispensation of an internal Millennium could thrive. For the
Swedenborgians, the socio-political programmes and millennial thinking were indiscriminate
areas.

TheSwine in theChapel of Gold

Only shortly after the First General Conference in the Great Eastcheap congregation there was a
rift in the New Jerusalem Church, which resulted in the New Church withdrawing herself from
six of her members, among which we find Wadstrm, August Nordenskjld and Robert
Hindmarsh. [54] The true account of the events that led to the exclusion cannot be told, as
fourteen pages covering the period from 4 May 1789 to 11 April 1790 have been torn out from
the New Church Minute Book. However, from sparse anecdotal reference found in the letters and
accounts of members from that time, it is clear that the rift revolved around the publication of
Swedenborgs tractDelitiae sapientiae de amore conjugiali (1768). The tract, which existed only
in an obscure Latin edition published in Amsterdam, contained Swedenborgs sexual doctrines
and the permission for men of the Church, under certain circumstances, to hold concubines. At
the heart of Swedenborgs conception of True Religion was a sexual theology. This and its
influence on Blake have been discussed at length by Marsha Keith Schuchard in the present
journal. [55]
The Plan for a Free Community advocates a society of sexual liberty (the first elementary,
powerful, and universal Union, or Bond of Society, is the Love of the Sex).[56] Nordenskjld
and his associates saw love between married couples laid waste by a degenerate social structure:
It is distressing to observe marriages in their present state are but Seminaries for a corrupt
Generation ... false Religions and false Politics have enveloped them in such a thick Darkness
(v-vii). It is the link between political and sexual repression that most closely approximates a
staple in Blakes writing. He refers memorably to the marriage hearse (London; E27), and
laments that she who burns with youth. and knows no fixed lot; is bound/ In spells of law to one
she loaths (Visions of the Daughters of Albion 5.21-12; E49). Blake says of the spirits who rest
in Eternity that they neither marry nor are given in marriage (Jerusalem 30.15; E176).
-116-

Swedenborgs authorisation of concubinage must be seen within the larger context of

his mystical theology of conjugial love. Robert Southey, who had studied the
Swedish prophet for his semi-autobiographical Letters from England, wrote that
Swedenborg dilate[s] with more pleasure on conjugality, which is what flows from
the Creator into all things; from the Creator it is received by the female, and

transferred through her to the male ... it finds its way through the breast into the genital
region. [57]As Southey is well informed, Swedenborg saw the sexual union as a
means for man to unify the portions of his divinity separated in the fallen world.
Rather than the traditional mystics solitary forgetting of the body and cultivation of a
passivity of mind, the mystical experience for Swedenborg could come about through the
physical activity of sex. In Conjugial Love, he maintains that a healthy sexual libido is what
sustains holiness in life. Carnal love can be holy because it is the first step on the ladder to the
true love of God. The love of the Sex may first be corporeal, but as man was born to
become spiritual it also becomes spiritual. For the man who has been united with divine love
and wisdom, this love and wisdom will flow back and act on love in the body and the flesh ...
whilst man is in meditation of it [and] while he is in its ultimate; i.e. one may receive spiritual
influx in the act of making carnal love. Access to the divine state of the human through
conjugial love lies not only in the unification of minds but also in the organs consecrated to
generation. [58]

Swedenborgs teaching on conjugial love was no doctrine of sexual libertinism,

and concubinage was not meant to priority as a central issue. Marriage was always the
proper institution for the pursuance of these states of transcendence. Only for
unmarried men or those in unfulfilled marriages, was concubinage a necessary evil in
order not to exclude them from spiritual influx. [59]
In the earliest phase, Visions of the Daughters of Albion is Blakes most sustained
attempt at describing a pathology of sexual violence, conjoining sexual liberation with
human freedom. Here we meet the female Oothoon, castigating her lover Theotormon
for his hypocrite modesty. Oothoon describes herself as A virgin filld with virgin
fancies; and, in accordance with the image of the virtuous woman at the time, she is
barred from expressing her true sexual desires.
In what appears to be a landscape setting akin to the paradise on the coast of Africa described
in the Plan, Oothoon describes a utopian future time of free love, where she can catch girls for
Theotormon and lie on a bank & view their wanton play/ In lovely copulation bliss on bliss.
This is a vision of a future time when Love! Love! Love! happy happy Love! can be Free as
the mountain wind (7:16-30; E50). The reference to happy copulation has attracted some
attention.
-117-

With the Swedenborgian project for a colony of free blacks and free sexual emancipation in
mind, it is suggestive that Blake in Visions of the Daughters of Albion uses abolitionist rhetoric
as a context for his characters sexual subjection. For instance, Bromion, who rapes Oothoon and
makes her his slave, equates his new possession with colonial and plantation oppression, as in
addressing Oothoon: Thy soft American plains are mine stampt with my signet are the

swarthy children of the sun:/ They are obedient, they resist not, they obey the scourge (1.21-23;
E46). A little later, Theotormon is described as entrapped in a cave, listening to The voice of
slaves beneath the sun, and children bought with money./ That shiver in religious caves beneath
the burning fires/ Of lust, that belch incessant from the summits of the earth (2:8-10; E46).
Moreover, it may be a depiction of Theotormons self-enslavement we see in the flagellating
figure on plate 9, while a naked woman is fleeting in despair. This is complemented by the image
at the bottom of the plate of a naked black figure struggling to rise from the ground.
For Blake, the paradigmatic form of oppression is sexual, and marriage out of necessity is the
primary form that such sexual oppression takes. In America of 1793, Orcs political liberation of
the thirteen states concords with a defeat of religious tyranny and a defeat of sexual restraints.
Anticlerical/ anti-marriage sentiments such as popularised by Godwin in his radical Political
Justice in the same year here becomes a vehicle for a millennial event:

The doors of marriage are open, and the Priests in rustling scales
Rush into reptile coverts, hiding from the fires of Orc,
That play around the golden roofs in wreaths of fierce desire,
Leaving the females naked and glowing with the lusts of youth
For the female spirits of the dead pining in bonds of religion;
Run from their fetters reddening, & in long drawn arches sitting:
They feel the nerves of youth renew, and desires of ancient times,
Over their pale limbs as a vine when the tender grape appears (15.19-26; E57)
-118-

The origin of the metaphors here is biblical. The tender grape alludes to the most
sensual of Scripture books, the Song of Songs (7.12), which also speaks of bodysexuality in metaphors of a fertile farmland. But the really significant pattern that
emerges from the passage has been framed in Morton Paleys general observation that
Blake envisions, not revolution and sexual freedom, but a revolution which is
libidinal in nature. [60]

Several critics have written of how Blake sees the sexual union of man and woman
as a means of restoring the androgynous state of unfallen man. [61] The notion has
roots in both Paracelsus and Boehme, whom Blake praises in the Marriage as capable
of inspiring the artist to produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with
Swedenborgs (pl. 22; E43).
Paracelsus finds it natural that man and woman seek each other when they once
formed a singular body: because they are of one flesh and one blood, it follows that
they cannot let go of each other. Paracelsus saw the female as an analogue of
(Mother) Nature. But just as Nature exists so that God can become manifest, woman
exists so that the divine principle can be brought into being. [62] Sexual love is
sacramental to Blake; as he writes in Jerusalem O holy Generation! [Image] of
regeneration! Birthplace of the Lamb of God incomprehensible! (J7.65-67; E150).
In the sexual union, the divine incarnation and the subsequent raising of the human to
become regenerated spirit is mirrored and repeated.
We have some interesting textual clues that may be Blakes reflections over his alienation from
the New Jerusalem Church. On page 115 in the Notebook, among the drafts to the poems that
would go into the Songs of Experience, Blake wrote a poem which begins, I saw a chapel all of
gold/ That none did dare to enter in/ And many weeping stood without/ Weeping mourning
worshipping (E467-68). This is a description of a religion having turned to institutional
exclusivity imposing regulation and censorship on believers.
-119-

That the chapel all of gold refers to the New Church is suggested by its resemblance to
Swedenborgs description of his vision in True Christian Religion, in which the new dispensation
he is to bring to the world is revealed to him:

On a certain Day there appeared before me a magnificent Temple of a square Form,

whose Roof was like a Crown, arched above, and elevated round about; its Walls
were continued Windows of Chrystals, and its Gate of a pearly Substance ... I saw
that the Temple signified the New Church ... as I approached nearer, I saw written
over the Gate these Words, Now it is Allowable, which signified, that now it is
allowable to enter intellectually into the Mysteries of Faith. (n508).
-120-

Now it is Allowable was a dictum of great symbolic significance for the New
Jerusalem congregation, who posted Swedenborgs original Latin Nunc Licet above
the door to their rented chapel in Great Eastcheap. In Blakes poem, the gates to the
mysteries of faith are, significantly, shut off. The phrase was also quoted as
proposition thirty-three in the document to which Blake puts his signature.
In the Notebook, Blakes I saw a chapel all of gold ... is written in a parallel
column on the same page as The Garden of Love. In the latter poem, Swedenborgs
Now it is Allowable is transformed by Blake into a Thou shalt not, written over
the door of the chapel erected in the garden. It was probably also meant as an ironic
charge against the pious New Churchmen who had imposed a ban on the mysteries of
love when Nunc Licet was chosen as a motto on the cover of the splinter
magazine, New-Jerusalem Magazine, edited by the Universal Society, which now also
included Wadstrm and Nordenskjld. This magazine had one purpose: to publish a
translation of Swedenborgs controversial tract on conjugial love. An instalment was
included in each number throughout 1790 until it folded due to lack of subscriptions.

-121-

The translation they printed was prefaced with two plates. The first illustrated a scene
from Conjugial Love, which, interestingly, also alluded to the proposed African project. The
design (by the unknown Metz) showed two Africans taken into Heaven, welcomed by angels.
The text below (Cidaris Erit Africo) refers to Conjugial Loven.114, which is the last number of
Swedenborgs account of a dream vision (n103-114), in which wise men in the kingdoms of
Europe are assembled together in heaven to help unfold the secret RESPECTING THE
ORIGIN OF CONJUGIAL LOVE, AND RESPECTING ITS VIGOUR OR POTENCY. After
much debate, some Africans step forward and proclaim: You Christians deduce the origin of
conjugial love from love itself; but we Africans deduce it from the God of heaven and earth
You Christians deduce it conjugial virtue of potency from various causes rational and natural; but
we Africans deduce it from the state of man's conjunction with God of the Universe.
Swedenborg experiences how their understanding of conjugial love surpasses that of the ever so
wise representatives from the European nations, and for this they are divinely commended. But
the African references did not stop here; the second design had the title of magazine garlanded
among palm trees and exotic vegetation.
In a Prospectus published in advance of the magazine, the editors make clear that religious
knowledge is en par with the knowledge of political rights that Painite rationalist strove to
disseminate as a prerequisite of establishing an opposition in the population against the
Establishment. They proclaimed that they had

in their possession a great number of very valuable manuscripts, on the most

interesting and important subjects (never before published) ... the circulation of
which they thought might prove not only entertaining, but highly useful, to every
friend of civil and religious Liberty.
Religious Knowledge, it must be confessed, hath of late Years greatly increased in
this as well as in other Countries; and the very important Revolutions now taking
Place in the World, may serve to convince even the careless and incredulous, that
many of the great Events, predicted in the sacred Records, are absolute[l]y fulfilling
at the present Period.
Impressed with this Conviction, and warmed with a benevolent Wish to diffuse a
Knowledge of the most important Truths relating to Mans present Welfare and
eternal Felicity, the Authors of this Performance will unite their best Efforts for a
periodical Publication, on a religious Plan . [63]
-122-

In Blakes poem on the chapel of gold, priestcraft and corruption of doctrines makes the
speaker turn his back on the chapel and go into a sty and lay down among the swine. The

speakers identification of his new position as swinish may echo the anti-revolutionary Edmund
Burkes notorious passage in Reflections on the Revolution, calling those possessed with the spirit
of revolution for swine. Like Blakes speaker, radical satirists readily applied this to themselves
in mockery of the loyalists condescending attitudes. That Blakes draft can be dated to 1792-93
substantiates this interpretation. Swinish had at this time become a key metaphor for the
radicals resistance to hegemonic suppression, as is seen in the cheap penny-magazines published
by the left-wing opposition: Pigs Meat; or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude andPolitics for the
People, or a Salmagundy for Swine (both begun in 1793).

With the exclusion of the radical Masons, the New Church was clearly seeking to
weed out its earlier republican and revolutionary associations. Already at the Second
General Conference in 1790, prayers for the priests and bishops of the Old Church and
the monarchy had been introduced. In addition to this, a petition was prepared to
Parliament for religious toleration, which entailed a readiness to swear allegiance to
the State and Crown. [64] This was also reflected in a change in the body of believers
who became members. By the turn of the century, most of the plebeian following
seemed to have left the New Church. At least, Robert Southey wrote in 1803 (an
observation later published in his Letters from England [1807]) that a visit to the New
Jerusalem Church in Great Eastcheap showed that few or none of the congregation
belonged to the lower classes, they seemed to be respectable tradesman. [65]
In Rise and Progress, Robert Hindmarsh tells us that the General Conference of
1792 took place at a time when the whole country, from one end to the other, was
agitated by contending political opinion, in consequence of the licentious and deistical
principle, which followed in the train of the French Revolution, and which were
promulgated with much zeal on this side of the water, particularly by the democratical
THOMAS PAINE. Thus, a Protest was entered in the Minutes of this Conference
against all such principles of infidelity and democracy as were then circulating in the
country. [66] Blake, who wrote his most direct political poetry at this time, would
certainly have chosen the side of the swine over the fallen chapel of gold, which
could now be seen to betray its former radical principles.
-123-

By way of conclusion, it can be established that to describe Swedenborgianism in the late

eighteenth century only from what is in the prophets works (as Blake scholarship has usually
done) makes as much sense as attempting to give an accurate account of Christianity in 21century Britain by restricting oneself to deducing it from what is in the Old and New Testaments
alone. The reception of Swedenborgs occultist writings was not a bibliophile armchair study but
an active forum for theo-political debate. Blake noted in the annotations to Swedenborgs Divine
Love and Wisdom, The Whole of the New Church is in the Active Life (E605). Contemporary

Swedenborgians various pursuits apparently meant for Blake than merely the sum of
Swedenborgs writings.

-124-

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Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.

. Apocalypse and Ambivalence: The Politics of Millenarianism in the 1790s, The South
Atlantic Quarterly 95(1996): 671-97.
Menneskeliga och medborgerliga rttigheter. Copenhagen?: J.R. Thiele?, 1792.
Nelson, Philip K. Carl Bernhard Wadstrm: Mannen bakom myten. Norrkping: Foreningen
Gamla Norrkpping, 1996.
New Magazine of Knowledge concerning Heaven and Hell.
New-Jerusalem Magazine, or a Treasury of Celestial, Spiritual, and Natural, Knowledge.
Nordenskjld, C.F. Oneiromantien, eller Konsten at tyda drmar. Stockholm: Stolpe, 1783.
Odhner, Carl T.H. Robert Hindmarsh. Philadelphia, 1895.
Observations sur la Franc-Maonnerie, les visions de Swedenborg. Published by the Society at
Avignon, 1786.
-128-

Paine, Thomas, Menniskans rttigheter. Trans. C.F. Nordenskjld. Stockholm: C.G. Cronland,
1792.
Paley, Morton. Energy and Imagination: The Development of Blakes Thought. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1970.
Paracelsus, Selected Writings. Ed. Jolande Jacobi. London: Routledge, 1951.
Plan for a Free Community upon the Coast of Africa under the Protection of Great Britain; but
Intirely Independent of All European Laws and Governments. London: R. Hindmarsh, 1789.
Proposals for Publishing on the First of January next The New-Jerusalem Magazine. London,
1789.
Swedenborg, Emanuel. The True Christian Religion, containing the Universal Theology of the
New Church, trans. John Clowes, 2 vols. London: J. Phillips et al., 1781.

. A Treatise Concerning Heaven and Hell and of the Wonderful Things Within. 2nd ed.
London: R. Hindmarsh, 1784.

. The Wisdom of Angels concerning Divine Love and Divine Wisdom [Blakes annotated copy
in the British Library]. London: W. Chalken, 1788.

. The Delights of Wisdom on the Subject of Conjugial Love, followed by the Gross Pleasure of
Folly on the Subject of Scortatory Love, trans. John Chadwick. London: Swedenborg Society,
1996.

. The African and True Christian Religion: His Magna Charta. Ed. J.J.G. Wilkinson. London:
J. Speirs, 1892.
Schuchard, Marsha Keith. The Secret Masonic History of Blakes Swedenborg Society, Blake:
An Illustrated Quarterly 26 (1992): 40-51.
-129-

. William Blake and the Promiscuous Baboons: A Cagliostroan Sance Gone Awry, British
Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 18 (1995): 185-200

. Blakes Tiriel: Lifting the Veil on a Royal Masonic Scandal, in eds. Jackie de Salvo et
al., Blake, Politics, and History. New York: Garland, 1998: 115-35.

. Blake and the Grand Masters (1791-1794) in eds. S. Clark and D. Worrall, Blake in the
Nineties. London: Macmillan, 1999), 173-93.

. Why Mrs. Blake cried: Blake, Swedenborg, and the sexual basis of spiritual
vision, Esoterica 2 (2000): 45-93.
Sieversen, Sverker. Sexualitet och ktenskap i Emanuel Swedenborgs Religionsfilosofi. Helsinki:
Luther-Agricola Sllskapet, 1993
Southey, Robert, Letters from England: by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella. Translated from the
Spanish (1807), ed. Jack Simmons. London: Cresset Press, 1951.

. Swedenborg and Freemasonry, New Jerusalem Messenger (1869): 26-67.

Theosophical University Press Online Edition (24 Dec.
2001), http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/stmartin.
Thompson, E.P. Witness against the Beast: William Blake and Moral Law. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
-130-

White, William, Emanuel Swedenborg: His Life and Writings, 2 vols. London: Simpkin,
Marshall & Co., 1868.
fwersttning och utdrag af Hamburger historiska och poliska magazine. Copenhagen?: J.R.
Thiele?: 1792.

NOTES:
[1] The Conjurors Magazine (Nov. 1791): 130.
[2] For Swedenborgs influence on later thinkers, see the collection of essays in Erland J. Brock
et al. (eds.), Swedenborg and his Influence (Bryn Athyn: Academy of the New Church, 1988).
[3] It is important to note that the Blakes signed as sympathisers, not as Church members.
Among the seventy-seven signers, fifty-six were actual members, while the eighteen other names
(among which we find William and Catherine) did not commit themselves to membership. The
document and other papers related to the New Jerusalem Church have been reprinted in Harvey
Bellin and Darrel Ruhl (eds.), Blake and Swedenborg: Opposition is true Friendship (New York:
Swedenborg Foundation, 1985), 121-32.
-131-

[4] For the relevant works; see bibliography.

[5] Jacob Duch, Discourses on Several Subjects, 2 vols. (London, 1779), 1:3.
[6] Other artist members were the engraver J. Emes, the miniature painter J. Sanders, the artist
Daniel Richardson and the musician F.H. Bartlemon. Swedenborgs biographer William White
mentions these names and their occupations on a list of twenty-five members of the

Theosophical Society, see Emanuel Swedenborg: His Life and Writings, 2 vols. (London:
Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1868), 2:599-600.
[7] David Erdman, Blakes Early Swedenborgianism: A Twentieth-Century
Legend, Comparative Literature 5 (1953): 247-57; White, Swedenborg, 2:606-7.
[8] Jacob Duch to M. Hopkinson, 5 May 1785, quoted in Peter J. Lineham,The English
Swedenborgians: 1770-1840, University of Sussex, Ph.D.-thesis (1978), 166.
[9] All Blake citations are from The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David V.
Erdman, rev. ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1988) and will be marked as E in the text. Page
references are preceded by plate and line numbers when applicable.
[10] Emanuel Swedenborg, The True Christian Religion, containing the Universal Theology of
the New Church, trans. John Clowes, 2 vols. (London: J. Phillips et al., 1781), n786, n753-90.
References to Swedenborgs texts are marked withn for the section number.
[11] Carl T.H. Odhner, Robert Hindmarsh (Philadelphia, 1895), 37.
[12] Letter to Robert Carter of the Swedenborgian Society in Baltimore, quoted in Marguerite
Beck Block, The New Church in the New World: A Study of Swedenborgianism in
America (1932; New York: Swedenborg Publishing Association, 1984), 329.
[13] The identification was made by Harold Bloom, seeCommentary, E898.
-132-

[14] Emanuel Swedenborg, The Wisdom of Angels concerning Divine Love and Divine
Wisdom [Blakes annotated copy in the British Library] (London: W. Chalken, 1788), n334.
[15] [Rev. Mr. Bradshaw], A Scourge for the Dissenters; or, Non-Conformity
Unmasked (London: printed for the author, 1790), 51-52.
[16] The connections have been outlined by Marsha Keith Schuchard in The Secret Masonic
History of Blakes Swedenborg Society, Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 26 (1992): 40-51;
William Blake and the Promiscuous Baboons: A Cagliostroan Sance Gone Awry, British
Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 18 (1995): 185-200; and Blakes Tiriel: Lifting the Veil
on a Royal Masonic Scandal, in Blake, Politics, and History, ed. Jackie de Salvo et. al. (New
York: Garland, 1998): 115-35..
[17] Augustin Barruel, Memoirs, illustrating the History of Jacobinism, trans. Robert Clifford, 4
vols. (London: Burton and Co., 1797-98), 3:5.

[18] On the Society at Avignon; see Clarke Garrett, Respectable Folly: Millenarians and the
French Revolution in France and England (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1975), 97-120. Pernety was one of the earliest admirers of Swedenborg, producing a series
of very bizarre and conspicuously inaccurately translations of the prophets works into French.
He had published a French version of Swedenborgs Heaven and Hell in Berlin in 1782. An
insight into the reception of Swedenborg in the Society was made available in Observations sur
la Franc-Maonnerie, les visions de Swedenborg, which was published by the Society at
Avignon in 1786.
[19] Robert Hindmarsh, Rise and Progress of the New Jerusalem Church in England, America
and Other Parts, ed. Rev. Edward Madely (London, 1861), 41-49.
[20] For biographical and historical information, see James Hyde, Benedict Chastanier and the
Illuminati of Avignon, New Church Review April (1907): 181-205;Documents Concerning the
Life and Character of Emanuel Swedenborg, ed. R.L. Tafel, 2 vols. (London: Swedenborg
Society, 1875-1877), 2:1176-80; and Block, New Church, 58.
[21] Marsha Keith Schuchard, Secret Masonic History and Blake and the Grand Masters
(1791-1794) in S. Clark and D. Worrall, Blake in the Nineties (London: Macmillan, 1999), 17393.
-133-

[22] In part one of the journal (1787), Chastanier prints a programme for the Universal Society
(Plan gnral dune Societ Universelle). This is a re-print of the programme which had first
appeared in his French translation of Swedenborg, De la Nouvelle Jrusalem et de sa Doctrine
Cleste (London: R. Hawes, 1782). For a list of some of Chastaniers other translations of
Swedenborg, see Hyde,Chastanier: 189-90.
[23] For an overview of Swedenborgian Masonry in an international perspective, see Rudolph L.
Tafel, Swedenborg and Freemasonry, New Jerusalem Messenger (1869): 26-67.
[24] Al Gabay, Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Covert Enlightenment, The New Philosophy:
The Journal of the Swedenborg Scientific Societies, 100 (1997): 629-30.
[25] Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Italian Journey (1786-88), trans. W.H. Auden and E. Mayer
(London [Verona printed]: Collins, 1962), 245.
[26] M.L. Danilewicz, The King of the New Israel: Thaddeus Grabianka, Oxford Slavonic
Papers (new series) 1 (1968): 69.
[27] Hyde,Chastanier: 192-93.
[28] Schuchard,Secret Masonic History: 44.

[29] Letter from Saint-Martin to Kirchberger, Paris, 8 June 1792,trans. Edward Burton Penny,
Theosophical University Press Online Edition (24 Dec.
2001),http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/stmartin.
[30] Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, Theosophy, 26 (1938), 482-488.
[31] Barruel, Memoirs, 4:54.
[32] Lineham,English Swedenborgians, 272.
-134-

[33] Bellin and Ruhl (eds.), Blake and Swedenborg, 26-29.

[34][Benedict Chastanier], Emanuel Swedenborgs New-Years Gift to His Readers for
1791 (London, 1791), 37.
[35] New Magazine of Knowledge concerning Heaven and Hell 2 (1791): 358.
[36] Documents Swedenborg , 1:620-22.
[37] Thomas Paine, Menniskans rttigheter (Stockholm: C.G. Cronland, 1792). The fifteenth
chapter of Volneys Ruins appears in fwersttning och utdrag af Hamburger historiska och
poliska magazin (Copenhagen?: J.R. Thiele?: 1792); Dclaration des droits de l'homme et du
citoyen appears in Menneskeliga och medborgerliga rttigheter(Copenhagen?: J.R. Thiele?,
1792).
[38] C.F. Nordenskjld, Oneiromantien, eller Konsten at tyda drmar [Oneiromantien, or the Art
of Interpreting Dreams] (Stockholm: Stolpe, 1783). The translations of Montesquieu et al. appear
in C.F. Nordenskjld (ed.), Allmnna magazinet, eller Nyttiga och njsamma mnen; samlade til
strre delen utur knde snillens arbeten(Stockholm: Holmberg, 1790). The preface to the second
edition of 1793 is an account of how the book was banned and many copies burned.
[39] Ronny Ambjrnsson, Det oknda landet: Tre Studier om Svenska Utopister (Stockholm:
Gidlunds,
l981), 104-5.
[40] See the Royal Resolution in Documents Emanuel Swedenborg, 2:365-67.
[41] Documents Swedenborg, 2:811.
[42] Invitation cards from the Manchester Constitutional Society can be found among C.B.
Wadstrms papers in Norrkpings Stadsbibliotek.

[43] Two rather different biographies are offered by Ellen Hagen, En frihetstidens son: Carl
Bernhard Wadstrm (Stockholm: Gothia Aktiebolag, 1946), which lauds him as a Swedish
national hero; and Philip K. Nelson, Carl Bernhard Wadstrm: Mannen bakom
myten (Norrkping: Foreningen Gamla Norrkpping, 1996), which presents a more critical and
less flattering picture.
-135-

[44] Appendix to the New Jerusalem-Magazine (1791): 274-76.

[45]Saint-Martin, 482-488.
[46] Plan for a Free Community upon the Coast of Africa under the Protection of Great Britain;
but Intirely Independent of All European Laws and Governments (London: R. Hindmarsh, 1789),
see esp. Article xv, 50.
[47] Ambjrnsson, Oknda landet, 81.
[48] Nelson, Wadstrm, 52-53.
[49] Plan for a Free Community, 39.
[50] Swedenborg, True Christian Religion, n835-40. Swedenborgs writing on Africa and the
Africans religion as exemplifying his theology of the Divinum Humanum is extensive and has
been collected by J.J.G. Wilkinson in The African and True Christian Religion: His Magna
Charta (London: J. Speirs, 1892). Wilkinson was a great admirer of Blake and published in 1839
a copy of the Songs (London: Pickering, Newbury) with a Swedenborgian preface.
[51] Quoted in Block, New Church, 54.
[52] Swedenborg, True Christian Religion, n836.
[53] Emanuel Swedenborg, A Treatise Concerning Heaven and Hell and of the Wonderful Things
Within, 2nd ed. (London: R. Hindmarsh, 1784), n117). The spiritual sun is also treated at length
in Divine Love and Divine Wisdom. In n82, it is specified, in the spiritual World there is equally
Heat and Light, as in the natural World; but the Heat there is spiritual, and in the Manner the
Light, and spiritual Heat is the Good of Charity, and the spiritual Light is the Truth of faith.
-136-

[54] Odhner, Hindmarsh, 26.

[55] Marsha Keith Schuchard, Why Mrs. Blake cried: Blake, Swedenborg, and the sexual basis
of spiritual vision, Esoterica 2 (2000): 45-93.
[56] Plan for a Free Community, 35.
[57] Robert, Southey, Letters from England: by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella. Translated from
the Spanish (1807), ed. Jack Simmons (London: Cresset Press, 1951), 387.
[58] Emanuel Swedenborg, The Delights of Wisdom on the Subject of Conjugial Love, followed
by the Gross Pleasure of Folly on the Subject of Scortatory Love, trans. John Chadwick (London:
Swedenborg Society, 1996), n447, n310.
[59] On sexuality as a dominant theme in Swedenborgs theological writings, see Sverker
Sieversen, Sexualitet och ktenskap i Emanuel Swedenborgs Religionsfilosofi(Helsinki: LutherAgricola-Sllskapet, 1993), esp. 46-49; on concubinage, see 88-96.
[60] Morton Paley, Energy and Imagination: The Development of Blakes Thought (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1970), 16.
[61] For a classic analysis of Blakes sexual theology in these terms, see J.G. Davies, The
Theology of William Blake (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), 146-50. On how sex can lead one
back to a lost paradise, see also John Beer, Blakes Humanism (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1968), 89-93.
[62] Paracelsus, Selected Writings, ed. Jolande Jacobi (London: Routledge, 1951), 100, 107, 109.
[63] Proposals for Publishing on the First of January next The New-Jerusalem Magazine, 1-2.
This prospectus is dated London, 1st of December 1789. It was reprinted in the first number of
the magazine, which was published in January 1790, i.
-137-

[64] Minutes of the First Seven Sessions of the General Conference of the New Church signified
by the New Jerusalem in the revelation, together with those of other contemporary assemblies of
a similar character. Ed. J.R. Boyle (London: James Speirs, 1885), 53-54.
[65] Southey, Letters, 380. Southey was in this case relying on the observations of his younger
brother Henry.
[66] Hindmarsh, Rise and Progress, 142

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The New England Illuminati and late 18th Century

Conspiracy Theory
Date(s):

1799

Location(s):

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Tag(s):

Religion, illuminati, secret society, Conspiracy Theory

Course:

Civil War and Reconstruction, Juniata College

Rating:

3.5 (2 votes)

In Reverend John Ogdens pamphlet, he described the Bavarian Illuminati as secret

organization obsessed with destroying and undermining religion and government in the
United States prior to the nineteenth century. Throughout the course of the late eighteenth
century the very powerful and rich, who were extensions of the individuals in Europe,
met monthly as members of the secret Clergy.
According to Ogden, their design, tendency, and effect have been to destroy established
law, morals, order, universal toleration; they bear too near an affinity to the Illuminati
Societies of Europe. This New England Secret Society was identified as the last standing

obstacle between America and becoming the land of religious freedom. The Illuminati
movement towards disestablishment of the church was heightened by the conspiracy that
the enemies across the Atlantic were out to get them. Charles C. Bradshaw, writer for
the New England Quarterly, uses historian David Brion Davis to explain the influence of
conspiracy within the context of the late eighteenth century. David Brion Davis explains,
Conspiracy not only informed ideological expression, but extended into a special
language or a cultural form. Conspiracy took form in speculation that doctors and
professors from different institutions across the New England region were coming
together to form this powerful society that would undermine religious tradition. Powerful
college institutions like Yale, Princeton, and Columbia all were suspected of Illuminati
influence and subjected to criticism.
The hysteria surrounding the New England Illuminati was heightened at the end of the
eighteenth century by New England conservatives. The New England Illuminati was said
to be an extension of the French Bavarian Illuminati. A cross-international relationship
between Illuminati members, coupling that into believing in the Bavarian Illuminati, led
to their disdain for federalist policies in the United States government. Regardless, The
New England Illuminatis attempt to shape American history fell short. Conspiracy
theory, however, is still prevalent in United States society today.

Citations
http://.
John Cosens Ogden, A view of the New-England Illuminati: who
are indefatigably engaged in destroying the religion and
government of the United States, under a feigned regard for their
safety, and under an impious abuse of true religion (Philadelphia
Pennsylvania: Pamphlet Collect, 1799).

 Charles C. Bradshaw, "The New England Illuminati: Conspiracy

and Causality in Charles Brockden Browns Wieland," The New
England Quarterly 3 (2003): 356-377.
David Brion Davis, The Fear of Conspiracy: Images of UnAmerican Subversion from the Revolution to the Present (New
York: Cornell University Press, 1971), whole book.
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