When Swedenborg condemned merely "natural" marriage, he was not therefore condemning sexual feeling—far from it—but for him "natural" meant selfish, hence something that was bound to fail. And when such marriages failed, as they often did in his day, he said that one or other of the partners was likely to turn to adultery."
Just as "conjugial love" was haloed with celestial radiance for Swedenborg, so the word "adultery" flickers with sulphureous fire through his writings and in his diary. They are the important symbols in his marriage mysticism, equivalent to heaven and hell, since, he said, adultery "signifies" the marriage of falsity and evil. But the meaning of adultery is peculiarly his own. He published a long and liberal list of reasons why a married man could, without committing adultery, have a concubine, though he must not then live maritally with his wife at the same time. The list included many diseases of body and mind, but also "antipathy," or that the wife had "a passion for divulging the secrets of the house," or that she was given to "wrangling." 10
What Swedenborg most often means by adultery is self-regarding lust; whether it is in or out of legal marriage, and by conjugial love he means a union of minds, hearts and bodies, which symbolizes heaven itself.
"Love truly conjugial," however, "at this day is so rare that it is not known what is its quality and scarcely that it exists." It was of infinite variety, "it being in no two persons exactly similar," yet everyone who married from love of one alone of the sex had a glimpse of this love, and he described how it grew from before the marriage ceremony and some time after. At such times, he asked, who would not agree "that this love is the foundation of all loves, and into it are collected all joys and delights from firsts to lasts?"
But, after "this season of ardor," the enjoyment lessens by degrees, until at last it is scarcely felt; and then if asked whether this love is not all delights in one it will not only be denied but even qualified as "nonsense." Only with those who are joined in common interests of soul, mind, and heart will the first heavenly mirage advance by degrees into eternal reality. "But such instances are rare," he adds, and, it would appear from his many talks on the
