WHERE WAS GOD BEFORE CREATION

A dismaying work of theological plagiarism masquerading as revealed literature.

In Emmanuel’s (Fallen Angel, 2007, etc.) latest treatise, the author piques interest by claiming that the book was actually written by spirits and angels. However, the author also explains that various writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg, the Enlightenment-era mystic, are utilized throughout the book, with the proviso that Emmanuel and Emmanuel Swedenborg have shared the same spirits and angels. Readers expecting perhaps Swedenborg’s powerful theosophical writings to be used as support for the author’s arguments will be disappointed. Much of the book’s content is unadulterated quotation from the Bush-Smithson 1833 translation of Swedenborg’s famous Spiritual Diary. Though there is some original commentary in the book–for example, Emmanuel’s interesting discussion on the equivalence of all sins via a dissection of the moral complexities of the second World War–it is fleeting, and much of the work is simply truncated Swedenborg. Public domain may not have been institutionalized in the Decalogue, but it seems the most relevant ethic to invoke here; it’s the only way a text like this could be foisted on a modern readership. Interesting and influential people, from the poet William Blake to the progressive Helen Keller, have been profoundly influenced by Swedenborg’s philosophies; as such, today’s readers would do better to seek out the original, and very available, texts. The amount of disorganized material presented makes this book, at best, a poorly edited and confusing anthology of Swedenborg’s writings. Unfortunately, with no real narrative or even argumentative arc, it is also inessential.

A confusing mix of authentic 18th-century mysticism and New Age propheteering.