The Tale of A Personal Journey, and An introduction to the Swedenborgian Church

The title page of William Blake’s Jerusalem (1819).

On May 18, 2012, as part of the SFTS Lodge’s outreach to other, deeply-rooted spiritual centers in San Francisco, Rev. Junchol Lee, Senior Pastor of the San Francisco Swedenborgian Church, visited and shared the powerful story of his personal spiritual quest from his life as a six year old boy in Korea to the man who sat with us that evening.

In the course of his talk, Lee also delivered a brilliant introduction to the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg.

Philosopher, scientist, inventor and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg exercised a profound influence on many thinkers and artists from the great playwrite August Strindberg to great psychologist Carl Jung. But perhaps the most profoundly influenced of all was the great poet William Blake. According to Mark Schorer in “Swedenborg and Blake” (Modern Philology 36, 1938), Swedenborg was “foundation for this grand thing, for Blake’s concept of Jerusalem exists only because Swedenborg’s New Jerusalem existed first.”

Here is an audio recording of Rev. Lee’s powerful witnessing -