The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love: To Which is Added The Pleasures of Insanity Pertaining To Scortatory LoveSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love: To Which is Added The Pleasures of Insanity Pertaining To Scortatory Love
Swedenborg, Emanuel
Marriage -- Religious aspects -- New Jerusalem Church; New Jerusalem Church -- Doctrines; Sexual ethics
225. XVI. WHERE THERE IS LOVE NOT CONJUGIAL, THIS SPHERE IS RECEIVED
INDEED BY THE WIFE, BUT NOT BY THE HUSBAND THROUGH HER. This conjugial
sphere flowing into the universe is in its origin divine; in its
progress in heaven with the angels it is celestial and spiritual; with
men it is natural, with beasts and birds animal, with worms merely
corporeal, with vegetables it is void of life; and moreover in all its
subjects it is varied according to their forms. Now as this sphere is
received immediately by the female sex, and mediately by the male, and
as it is received according to forms, it follows, that this sphere,
which in its origin is holy, may in the subjects be turned into what is
not holy, yea may be even inverted into what is opposite. The sphere
opposite to it is called meretricious with such women, and adulterous
with such men; and as such men and women are in hell, this sphere is
from thence: but of this sphere there is also much variety, and hence
there are several species of it; and such a species is attracted and
appropriated by a man (_vir_) as is agreeable to him, and as is
conformable and correspondent with his peculiar temper and disposition.
From these considerations it may appear, that the man who does not love
his wife, receives that sphere from some other source than from his
wife; nevertheless it is a fact, that it is also inspired by the wife,
but without the husband's knowing it, and while he grows warm.
226. XVII. LOVE TRULY CONJUGIAL MAY EXIST WITH ONE OF THE MARRIED
PARTNERS, AND NOT AT THE SAME TIME WITH THE OTHER. For one may from the
heart devote himself to chaste marriage, while the other knows not what
chaste marriage is; one may love the things which are of the church, but
the other those which are of the world alone: as to their minds, one may
be in heaven, the other in hell; hence there may be conjugial love with
the one, and not with the other. The minds of such, since they are
turned in a contrary direction, are inwardly in collision with each
other; and if not outwardly, still, he that is not in conjugial love,
regards his lawful consort as a tiresome old woman; and so in other
cases.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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