A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

concern was the spirit world. Before the publication of his first religious text, Worship and the
Love of God, Swedenborg had published formative works on cosmology, anatomy, mineralogy
and metaphysics as well as developing weapons and a system for the overland transportation of
boats. At the age of 59, Swedenborg resigned his post as Special Assessor to the Royal College
of Mines and retired to a life of contemplation, study and communion with the world of spirits.
We see again, in the example of Swedenborg’s oeuvre, a simultaneity of science and the world of
spirit rather than some clear split between. As I discussed in the introduction, this overlap
between science and metaphysics was more the rule than the exception up through the eighteenth
century.
Swedenborg’s method of communication with residents of the other world was not
always that of the trance medium - he sometimes entered into communion with his spiritual
interlocutors in a fully conscious state - holding conversations with others present in the room
while conversing with the spirits. “In the midst of company I have sometimes spoken with
spirits and with those who were about me ... At such times they could think no otherwise than
that I was occupied with my own thoughts.” He would enter into a light trance state when
transcribing the words of angels, which is how he consistently referred to the dead. For
Swedenborg, there were no angels aside from humans who had passed on to the Other Side.
This is a central element in the dynamic of demystification recurring throughout his works. The
angels of Swedenborg, humans passed through to the Other side, stand in marked contrast to the
terrible beings of Milton and the Old Testament. Most of Swedenborg’s writings were prepared
in this state of light trance. Swedenborg had cultivated the ability to pass into a trance state
through shallow breathing starting with his boyhood practice of holding his breath during
morning and evening prayers: “My respiration was so formed by the Lord that I could respire
inwardly for a considerable time without the aid of external air ... in order that I may be with
spirits and speak with them.” “When heaven was opened to me and I was able to converse with
spirits, I sometimes scarcely breathed by inspiration at all and merely drew in enough air to keep
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