INTRODUCTION

Swedenborg (1688-1772) worked for decades as a scientist (especially metallurgy and mining), but his reputation today is primarily as a mystic. He kept a dream journal during the period of his great change from engineer to visionary, early 1743 to late '44; one of the world's oldest surviving dream-journals. It was never meant for publication--scrawled, with scratch-outs, abbreviations and highly personal references--difficult even before translation. However, Swedenborg's scientific habits serve him well--dates are clear, dreams are in sequence, and he regularly attempts interpretation; he's practical, reasonable, and sometimes records multiple possibilities.

Yet he was devout; he seems determined to emulate Christ, purging all selfish and worldly urges to become, essentially, a saint. Curious ambition for a scientist! Odder still, he achieved it--at least his practical demonstrations of miraculous knowledge (see Swedenborg's Visions) were the best-documented of his century; he influenced Blake and Emerson, and troubled Kant. If he'd been Catholic he'd likely be a saint--if a controversial one like Francis of Assisi. As it is, he's a strange, powerful figure making both scientists and conventional Christians uncomfortable. Good for him!

BROMAN'S DOG

I went to bed at 9:00 o'clock. The temptation accompanied with trembling continued till 10:30. I then fell into a sleep in which the whole of my temptation was represented to me: how Erland Broman had sought me in different ways, and endeavored to get me to take his side and to belong to that party (luxury, riches, vanity); but he could not manage to win me over. I grew more and more resolutely opposed, because he treated me with contempt.

Afterwards I was in strife with a serpent, dark, grey, which lay down, and was Broman's dog. I struck at it with a club many times, but could never hit it on the head; it was in vain. It tried to bite me, but could not. I laid hold of it by its open jaws: it could not bite me; nor could I do it much harm. At last I got it by the jowl and squeezed it hard; also the nose, which I squeezed until poison squirted out. I said that though the dog was not mine, yet as he had wished to bite me, I must correct him. Thereupon he seemed to say that he could not get me to say a word to him; I quarreled then with him. When I wakened, the words I was saying were: "Hold your tongue."

...Afterwards I wakened and slept again many times, and all was in answer to my thoughts, yet in such wise that there was such a life and such a glory in all that I can give no account of it in the least; for it was all heavenly; clear for me at the time; but afterwards I can explain nothing of it. In a word, I was in heaven and heard speech that no human tongue with the life in it can utter; nor the glory and innermost delight...

Editor's Note

Swedenborg fights his own worldly impulses, embodied first as a worldly acquaintance, then the man's dog (Swedenborg's dreams often use dogs to represent our animal nature).

Source: Swedenborg's Journal of Dreams 1743-1744, 1989 ed. with intro by Wilson van Dusen. Paragraphs 40-41, 44. Descriptive titles are mine; untitled in journal. Interpretations are Swedenborg's, though run together with dream text; I offset interpretations for clarity.

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