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
293. To the above I will add TWO MEMORABLE RELATIONS. FIRST. Some time
ago as I was looking through a window to the east, I saw seven women
sitting in a garden of roses at a certain fountain, and drinking the
water. I strained my eye-sight greatly to see what they were doing, and
this effort of mine affected them; wherefore one of them beckoned me,
and I immediately quitted the house and came to them. When I joined
them, I courteously inquired whence they were. They said, "We are wives,
and are here conversing respecting the delights of conjugial love, and
from much consideration we conclude, that they are also the delights of
wisdom." This answer so delighted my mind (_animum_), that I seemed to
be in the spirit, and thence in perception more interior and more
enlightened than on any former occasion; wherefore I said to them, "Give
me leave to propose a few questions respecting those satisfactions." On
their consenting, I asked, "How do you wives know that the delights of
conjugial love are the same as the delights of wisdom?" They replied,
"We know it from the correspondence of our husbands' wisdom with our own
delights of conjugial love; for the delights of this love with ourselves
are exalted and diminished and altogether qualified, according to the
wisdom of our husbands." On hearing this, I said, "I know that you are
affected by the agreeable conversation of your husbands and their
cheerfulness of mind, and that you derive thence a bosom delight; but I
am surprised to hear you say, that their wisdom produces this effect;
but tell me what is wisdom, and what wisdom (produces this effect)?" To
this the wives indignantly replied, "Do you suppose that we do not know
what wisdom is, and what wisdom (produces that effect), when yet we are
continually reflecting upon it as in our husbands, and learn it daily
from their mouths? For we wives think of the state of our husbands from
morning to evening; there is scarcely an hour in the day, in which our
intuitive thought is altogether withdrawn from them, or is absent; on
the other hand, our husbands think very little in the day respecting our
state; hence we know what wisdom of theirs it is that gives us delight.
Our husbands call that wisdom spiritual rational, and spiritual moral.
Spiritual rational wisdom, they say, is of the understanding and
knowledges, and spiritual moral wisdom of the will and life; but these
they join together and make a one, and insist that the satisfactions of
this wisdom are transferred from their minds into the delights in our
bosoms, and from our bosoms into theirs, and thus return to wisdom their
origin." I then asked, "Do you know anything more respecting the wisdom
of your husbands which gives you delight?" They said, "We do. There is
spiritual wisdom, and thence rational and moral wisdom. Spiritual wisdom
is to acknowledge the Lord the Saviour as the God of heaven and earth,
and from Him to procure the truths of the church, which is effected by
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