Daily Alta California, May 19, 1853
Clairvoyance and Spiritualism
EDITORS, ALTA--
Gentlemen, I am much obliged for your insertion of my letters on "Spiritual Predictions" in your paper of the 8th inst. I hope you will do me a similar favor again now. I perceive that the Herald's editorial of yesterday calls attention to a letter in its columns which is termed "a very good burlesque on the spiritual rapping delusion," the letter in question purporting to be an answer to the above letter of mine. I trust it is not for the sake of (word missing) victory over the writers of those articles, but for the sake of truth that I now sit down to pen a few lines on the subject. Indeed, neither of the writers profess to have investigated the phenomena, and consequently I could not expect to gain any great credit, even of the ordinary kind, by showing the fallacy of the judgment which they have pronounced. One appears to view Swedenborg as an infallible revelator, the other views him in the light of a mystic, although both unite in anathematizing this spiritual manifestation of the present day.
By the best informed men, Swedenborg is looked upon as a profound scholar
and philosopher, while at the same time, in many parts of his writings,
there is acknowledged to be much obscurity and some incongruity. This
can all be easily accounted for. In addition to his scholastic education,
he enjoyed to a certain extent the powers of clairvoyance; but was by
no means equally clairvoyant at all times, and never perhaps in the
highest condition of that state, although sufficiently so to be able
to see by spiritual vision what was occurring hundreds of miles distant,
as well as to converse with the inhabitants of the spirit world. He
evidently mixed up in his mind, his educational opinions, with the revelations
which he received by spiritual communion, yet he succeeded in elaborating
a spiritual philosophy, which he predicted would be confirmed in its
essential elements about the middle of the nineteenth century. This
prediction is now being fulfilled. I shall now relate three authenticated
cases of his clairvoyance and spiritual mediumship, and give the authorities
at the same time.
Wilkinson, in his biography of Swedenborg, quotes from Emmanuel Kant the following statements:--On the 19th July, 1759, Swedenborg arrived from England at Gottenburgh, which is three hundred miles distant from Stockholm, and dined that evening at the house of Mr. Wm. Castel, with a party of fifteen persons. About six o�clock, he went out, but shortly returned, ;ale and alarmed, saying that a great fire had broken out and was then raging at Stockholm. At eight o�clock, having been out again, he returned, exclaiming: " Thank God, the fire is extinguished the third door from my house." Two days afterwards a messenger arrived from Stockholm who had been despatched during the fire, and on the third day the royal courier arrived, and both brought accounts describing the fire, etc., precisely in the manner in which Swedenborg had done.
Second instance, in 1761, at Stockholm, he was consulted by a lady, the widow of Louis Von Martinville, who had been ambassador from Holland to Sweden. Her husband had paid away twenty-five thousand Dutch guilders, and she being applied to again for the money could not produce the receipt. She asked Swedenborg to enquire about it of her husband who was in the spirit world. Eight days afterwards Von Martinville told her in a dream where to find the receipt, which at 2 o�clock in the morning she found as directed. She then slept till late, and at 11 A.M., Swedenborg was announced. His first remarks before she could open her lips was, that "during the preceding night he had seen Von Martinville, and had wished to converse with him, but the latter excused himself on the ground that he must go to discover to his wife something of importance." Swedenborg added that "he then departed out out of the society in which he had been for a year, and would ascend to one far happier," owing it may be presumed to his being lightened of a worldly cure.
3d Instance in which Wilkinson selects as his authority, out of many others, Capt. De Stahlhammer. It was in the same year, 1761, that Louisa Ulrica, a sister of Frederick the Great of Prussia, and married to Adolphus Frederick, King of Sweden, received a letter from her sister, the Duchess of Brunswick, in which she mentioned that she had read in the Gottingen Gazette an account of a man at Stockholm who pretended to speak with the dead, and wondered that the Queen, in her correspondence had not alluded to the subject. This no doubt stimulated the Queen�s curiosity, for some time after, Swedenborg was summoned to Court. As soon as he was perceived by the Queen, she asked him if he had seen her brother, the Prince of Prussia, who had died a short time previous; but this was more in jest than from an expectation of receiving any information about him. Swedenborg answered No; when she replied, "If you should see him, remember me to him." Eight days after, Swedenborg came to Court, went to the Queen, and whispered in her ear. She was struck with astonishment, taken ill, and did not recover herself for some time. After coming to herself, she said to her maids of honor and ladies of the Court, who were about hr, "There is only God and my brother who can know what he has just told me." She owned that he had spoken of her last correspondence with the Prince, the subject of which was known to themselves alone.
Similar cases occur now continually. Professor Gregory of Edinburgh University, in a small work entitled "Letters on Animal Magnetism, etc.," mentions several good cases of clairvoyance. The work is published in this country. He and other eminent men, it has been publicly stated, have lately commenced the investigation of the spiritual phenomena on scientific grounds; but there have been reliable witnesses enough on this subject to satisfy any reasoning man, if their testimony and evidence was only well-weighed and analyzed. We court investigation. I desire, however, to make due allowance for the opinions of all who, owing to the want of opportunity or inclination for investigating, are partially or totally unacquainted with these phenomena. And it is simply and solely with a view to the benefits which it is evident tot the investigator, must eventually accrue to mankind generally from a more intimate acquaintance with the philosophy of spiritual intercourse, that the students of that philosophy, at least many of them, are induced, regardless of ridicule and burlesques, to state to the public from time to time, some of the marvels which come under their own immediate observation. I take it for granted Swedenborg's motive was equally disinterested in giving tests of his clairvoyant powers, which motive some who profess to be his followers seem to lose sight of, when they desire to repudiate the very facts upon which his philosophy was founded. Except through well developed mediums, spirits find it extremely difficult to communicate correctly.
We must use our judgment regarding the circumstances under which communications come. There may have been communications regarding the election of General Scott, or there may not. But if a good clairvoyant at San Francisco had been put en rapport in the usual way, with any person in the Atlantic States who knew at the time the result of that election, the mind of that individual might have been seen and read by the clairvoyant, and so the result might have been obtained. When communications on such subjects are given by spirit, they are given as tests, not for the purpose of enabling men to gamble successful, or the like. And if the leading skeptics at San Francisco would publish a question, the satisfactory answer to which they would publicly acknowledge as setting aside in their minds the charges of humbug and delusion, I have little doubt but that they might be very soon convinced of their present error.
Some people profess to be alarmed about evil spirits, but I think our own undisciplined passions and appetites are much greater subjects for alarm. If we keep our minds pure and aspirations high, elevated spirits will be attracted to us; and, even should an undeveloped spirit visit us under such circumstances, instead of harm to us, benefit to the visitor might reasonably be expected to result from such a visit. The spiritual literature of the day is replete with sublime thoughts and forcible elegant language coming from the elevated spirits. One of the most beautiful things I ever read was a communication which came from the spirit of Martin Luther, through a clairvoyant medium, at a circle where I was present on Sunday evening last. It occupied several hours in taking down, and consequently is too long for insertion in a journal. Such communications appear in numbers in the spiritual periodicals of the day, and the readers now number about half a million in the United States alone. The requirement of the age demand some tangible evidence of man�s immortality. This is to be had in all the various phenomena of spiritual manifestations, which have now extended to Europe as well as California.
Emanuel Swedenborg. born in Stockholm on January 29, 1688, was an inventor, a scientist, a civil servant, and a philosopher before he accepted God's call to be a rational revelator during the Age of Enlightenment. His claim to be a revelator, and his spiritual vision, set him apart, and attracted interest in him. His theological writings have been the source of his greatest influence.
In 1710, Swedenborg left Stockholm for England to immerse himself in the most modern scientific currents of his day; he stayed for two years studying mathematics and astronomy. He returned home unsure of his life�s work. He wrote several treatises, including his work on the brain and his rational psychology., and the scope of his theological writings is immense. Swedenborg's religious teachings provide a new vision of God, new insight into the nature of the relationship between the spiritual and natural worlds, and a universal and rational ethic to guide men to a useful life. Shortly after the publication of The True Christian Religion in Amsterdam in 1771, Swedenborg left the Netherlands and again went to England. He suffered a stroke in December 1771 and died on March 29, 1772.
In
presenting a vision counter to the prevailing religious and secular
paradigms of the day, he invited ridicule; and, in not organizing a
group of followers to carry his vision into the future, his ideas did
not become part of the mainstream in the development of modern Western
thought. However Swedenborg's legacy has endured by followers of The
New Church, or The Church of the New Jerusalem.
The Swedenborgian Church was founded in the early 1800s in America. In San Francisco the Swedenborgian Church was created in 1895, influenced by an elite group of early California pioneers: the painter William Keith, naturalist John Muir, architect A. Page Brown, draftsman Bernard Maybeck, and most particularly by the Reverend Joseph Worcester, who would be its first minister. The spirit of the church arose from an appreciation of the beauty of nature, and a will to express that beauty as divinity itself. Its lovely building and adjacent garden still stands at 3200 Washington Street in San Francisco's lower Pacific Heights area.