Emanuel Swedenborg From Scientist to Mystic

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Picture a warm evening in July. The year is 1759

You are sitting at this incredibly lavish dinner party in the coastal city of Gothenburg, Sweden.

SPEAKER_2 (0:09)

Oh, sounds like a pretty nice evening.

SPEAKER_1 (0:11)

Right? The wine is flowing, the conversation is super lively.

But then you notice one of the guests. He's this highly distinguished 71-year-old nobleman, and he suddenly becomes just incredibly agitated.

SPEAKER_2 (0:23)

Like out of nowhere.

SPEAKER_1 (0:24)

Totally out of nowhere. He goes completely pale, he excuses himself, steps outside and just starts frantically pacing the garden. Oh, wow. Yeah. And when he finally comes back to the table, he announces to everyone that a massive catastrophic fire has just broken out.

SPEAKER_2 (0:39)

Which, I mean, in an era of wooden cities, that would be alarming enough on its own.

SPEAKER_1 (0:43)

Exactly.

SPEAKER_2 (0:44)

But the fire he's describing is in Stockholm, and that is roughly 400 kilometers away.

SPEAKER_1 (0:49)

Yeah, 400 kilometers.

And he isn't just saying, you know, I have a bad feeling there's a fire. He's giving the dinner guests a real-time play-by-play account of its path of destruction.

SPEAKER_2 (1:02)

Like he's watching it.

SPEAKER_1 (1:03)

Yes. He's describing exactly which houses are burning, whose property has been turned to ash.

And for two agonizing hours, he provides these live updates to a very confused dinner party.

SPEAKER_2 (1:15)

I can imagine.

SPEAKER_1 (1:16)

Until finally, he lets out this massive sigh of relief. He tells the whole bewildered room that the fire has been extinguished, and it stopped just three doors down from his very own home.

SPEAKER_2 (1:28)

See, it's the kind of story that usually ends with a polite chuckle and someone quietly escorting the eccentric older gentleman up to bed.

SPEAKER_1 (1:35)

Right. You think he just had too much wine.

SPEAKER_2 (1:37)

Except a few days later, royal couriers arrive in Gothenburg from Stockholm, and they confirm every single detail. Every single one? The timing, the exact path of the flames, the specific house where it finally stopped. I mean, everything he described from 400 kilometers away was completely, terrifyingly accurate.

SPEAKER_1 (1:56)

And that dinner party incident is just the perfect entry point for our deep dive today. Because we are looking at the life of that 71-year-old guest, a man named Immanuel Swedenborg.

SPEAKER_2 (2:06)

Such a fascinating figure.

SPEAKER_1 (2:07)

He really is. Using historical records, biographical archives and encyclopedias, our mission today is to explore one of the most baffling dual lives in all of recorded history.

SPEAKER_2 (2:17)

It really is a dual life, yeah.

SPEAKER_1 (2:18)

We want to figure out how a deeply pragmatic, pioneering scientist and inventor, I mean, a guy obsessed with gears, mining, biology, how he completely pivots in his 50s to become a mystic. A mystic who claims to just casually converse with angels, demons, and extraterrestrials.

SPEAKER_2 (2:36)

It's a staggering transformation.

To understand the mystic, you absolutely have to start with the scientist. Right. The early part of his life fundamentally grounds everything that comes later. He was born in Stockholm in 1688 into a very prominent family. His father, Jesper, was a controversial bishop.

SPEAKER_1 (2:54)

Controversial mainly because he had this very deep-seated, literal belief that angels and spirits were just constantly present in everyday human life.

SPEAKER_2 (3:03)

Exactly.

SPEAKER_1 (3:04)

Like you are just going about your chores, making breakfast, and there is literally an angel watching over your shoulder. It was a seed planted very early in Emanuel's mind.

SPEAKER_2 (3:12)

It was, but initially, Emanuel really pushes back against that mystical worldview. He is very much a child of the Enlightenment.

SPEAKER_1 (3:21)

Oh, totally.

SPEAKER_2 (3:22)

He goes on this massive grand tour of Europe. He's visiting England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and he is just soaking up everything he can about physics, mechanics, philosophy. He wants to know how the physical world works.

SPEAKER_1 (3:35)

He was entirely obsessed with the nuts and bolts of reality. I actually like to think of him as an 18th century Leonardo da Vinci.

SPEAKER_2 (3:41)

Oh, that's a good comparison.

SPEAKER_1 (3:43)

Yeah. You look at his early career, he isn't staring up at the clouds looking for spirits. He's sketching out blueprints in 1714, well over a century before the Wright brothers. He is sketching out concepts for a human-powered flying machine.

SPEAKER_2 (3:55)

Which is wild.

SPEAKER_1 (3:57)

He's designing submarines, automated weapons, advanced water pumps. He even founded a scientific journal to publish mechanical and mathematical discoveries.

SPEAKER_2 (4:04)

His brilliance was certainly recognized by the state. When the Swedish King Charles XII died, the Queen ennobled his family, which was actually a somewhat common reward for prominent bishops' families at the time.