The Arcana Cœlestia, quae in Scriptura Sacra seu Verbo Domini sunt, detecta, usually abbreviated as Arcana Cœlestia (Heavenly MysteriesorSecrets of Heaven) or under its Latin variant, Arcana Cælestia,[1] is an 8-volume theological work published by Emanuel Swedenborg in the 1750s.[2][3]
Swedenborg was born in Sweden in 1688. His father was a Christian pastor in the Lutheran Church. The first part of his life was devoted to studying sciences, especially metallurgy. In 1740 he published Oeconomia Regni Animalis (Dynamics of the Soul's Domain), where he looked at connections between the spiritual and physical worlds. In 1744 he underwent a spiritual awakening and started to record his experiences and visions. Arcana Cœlestia was his first theological publication. It was published in London, partly to avoid Swedish anti-heresy laws.[4]
The publication is a spiritual interpretation of Genesis and Exodus (the first two books of the Bible), according to the doctrine of correspondence (theology), and demonstrated by many supporting quotations from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. While not denying the historicity of the stories of the Patriarchs and the Exodus from Egypt, it explains them as describing symbolically the process of spiritual growth and struggles in each individual person.
The opening paragraph of Arcana Coelestia Volume 1 is the opening statement of the corpus of theological work that Swedenborg claimed was revealed to him.[6]
From the mere letter of the Word of the Old Testament no one would ever discern the fact that this part of the Word contains deep secrets of heaven, and that everything within it both in general and in particular bears reference to the Lord, to His heaven, to the church, to religious belief, and to all things connected therewith; for from the letter or sense of the letter all that anyone can see is that - to speak generally - everything therein has reference merely to the external rites and ordinances of the Jewish Church. Yet the truth is that everywhere in that Word there are internal things which never appear at all in the external things except a very few which the Lord revealed and explained to the Apostles; such as that the sacrifices signify the Lord; that the land of Canaan and Jerusalem signify heaven - on which account they are called the Heavenly Canaan and Jerusalem - and that Paradise has a similar signification. (Arcana Cœlestia #1)
^In the 12-volume standard English edition of the Arcana Coelestia, revised and edited by Rev. John Faulkner Potts and published by the Swedenborg Foundation in 1956, the prefatory notes by the reviser contains a summary of the publishing history for the work originally published by Swedenborg.
