The Latin Playground is a new upcoming production from the Swedenborg Foundation. New episodes coming in January, 2025. In this video, host Chelsea Odhner talks to translator Jonathan Rose, the Series Editor of the New Century Edition about the upcoming series.

The Latin Playground is a new way to engage with Swedenborg's writings. Swedenborg wrote in Neo-Latin. At the Swedenborg Foundation, we translate the spiritual insights he wrote down into modern, accessible English in our New Century Edition of Swedenborg's theological works, but something new happens when you interface with the Latin itself. No Latin skills necessary!

In the Latin Playground, we get to learn alongside Jonathan Rose as we delve into the spiritual realities Swedenborg was trying to put into words. The Swedenborg Foundation is a non-profit organization that depends on donations to continue its work of making Swedenborg's ideas accessible. Consider giving at swedenborg.com/donate to the Jonathan S. Rose Translation Fund to help us in our mission.

Look for the Latin Playground wherever you listen to podcasts.

We are excited to share a new podcast offering: the Latin Playground! Alongside translator Jonathan Rose, we delve into the nature of language, the nuances of Neo-Latin, and the spiritual experiences of the scientist and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. Search the Latin Playground wherever you listen to podcasts to learn with us as we explore the inextricable link between spiritual revelation and grammar.

New episodes coming in January, 2025!

Chelsea shares an announcement about the Inside Off The Left Eye podcast, as well as gratitude to our listeners.

Secrets of Heaven volumes 3 and 4 are now available! To read the latest publications on which Dr. Jonathan Rose and his team have been working so hard, follow these links:

https://swedenborg.com/product/secrets-heaven-3-nce/

https://swedenborg.com/product/secrets-heaven-4-nce/

And for a whole library of books and videos to dig into, go to our two websites: www.swedenborg.com and www.offthelefteye.com

Or check out our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/offthelefteye

If you'd like to support our ongoing efforts in translation, publication, and content production, go to https://www.offthelefteye.com/donate/

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:

2798:2

It is also known that he was born to the Virgin Mary, but this was a birth like that of any other person. When he was born again—in other words, was made divine—it was from Jehovah, who was in him and who was the very essence of his life. The uniting of his divine and human natures was a mutual, reciprocal process, so that he united his divine nature with his human nature and his human nature with his divine. 

2894

Moreover, since the Word means the Lord’s divine humanity, it means all the truth that tells of and comes from him, in his kingdom in the heavens and in his church on earth. That is why it says that in him was life, the life was the light of humankind, and the light appears in the darkness.

3441:1-2

Because of Abraham my servant means from the Lord’s divine humanity. This can be seen from the representation of Abraham as the Lord’s divinity and also as his divine humanity (discussed in §§2833, 2836, 3251) and from the symbolism of my servant, where it describes the Lord, as his divine humanity. Not that his divine humanity is a servant, because it too is Jehovah (1736, 2156, 2329, 2921, 3023, 3035), but that the Lord served the human race through it. By it we are saved, as we never could have been had the Lord not united his humanity with his divinity, enabling us to mentally gaze on and worship his human side and in this way approach his divine side. Our union with divinity itself, called the Father, takes place through the divine humanity, called the Son. So it takes place through the Lord, whom spiritual people take to mean his humanity but heavenly people take to mean divinity itself. Clearly, then, the Lord’s divine humanity is called a servant because it serves his divinity by providing us with access to it and because it serves the human race by saving us. That is what Abraham my servant symbolizes. . . .

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:

2799:5

In Hosea: I will strike a pact with them on that day—with the wild animal of the field, and with the bird in the heavens and the creeping animal of the ground. And bow and sword and war I will break off from the earth, and I will make them lie down securely. (Hosea 2:18) This is about the Lord’s kingdom. Breaking bow, sword, and war means that no one there fights over doctrine or truth.

3242:1

Here is how matters stand with a person who focuses on the truth taught by faith: None are allowed into the Lord’s kingdom but those who have the goodness taught by faith, because the goodness taught by faith has to do with life. A religious life stays with us [after death], but religious doctrine does not, unless it is integrated into our life. Still, people who focus on the truth of faith (that is, who champion faith and describe it as essential, because that is how they have been taught) but live good lives (that is, are Christian at heart, not just on their lips) are in the Lord’s spiritual kingdom. 

2873

For this reason, we are all distinguished from each other in the next life according to our type of freedom. To put the same thing another way, we are distinguished according to what we love and are affected by. Consequently, we are distinguished according to the pleasures of our life, which is the same as saying we are distinguished according to our life.

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:

3324:4

People who have no love for others cannot acknowledge the Lord, so they cannot acknowledge religious truth. If they claim to believe, they are being either superficial or hypocritical (2354). There is absolutely no faith without neighborly love (654, 1162, 1176, 2417).

3325:3

In the church, though, there are more people who are not regenerating than who are, and people who are not regenerating draw conclusions on the basis of appearances. So there was a controversy going back to ancient times about the relative priority of truth and goodness. The prevailing opinion among people who had not been reborn (and among people who had not been fully reborn) was that truth came first. They were not yet able to perceive what was good, and as long as we cannot perceive goodness, we live in shadows of ignorance on the subject. People who have been reborn, though, are actually immersed in goodness, which brings them understanding and wisdom, so they are able to discern what is good. They can also tell that what is good comes from the Lord, that it flows in by way of the inner self into the outer, that it flows in constantly, without any awareness on our part, that it links up with doctrinal truth in the memory, and consequently that goodness by its very nature is prior, even though it had not seemed so before.

3412:2

Here is the situation with deep truth that comes from the Divine and is wiped out by the people called Philistines: In the ancient church and after its time, “Philistines” referred to people who had little energy for learning how to live but a great deal of energy for learning theology. Eventually they even rejected life issues and acknowledged belief issues as the essence of the church, detaching them from life.

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:

3304:2

Goodness but not truth is born into humans, with the result that babies lack any knowledge of truth. Truth has to be learned and then united with goodness.

3321:3

As a consequence of these facts and others, our earthly self accepts truth much later and with much more difficulty than our rational self does. The result is combat, which lasts quite a long time and does not end until the vessels in our earthly self for receiving goodness have been softened by inward trial, as shown above in §3318. Truth is just a vessel for receiving goodness (§§1496, 1832, 1900, 2063, 2261, 2269), and the vessel becomes harder the more rigid we are about truth. . . . The more rigid we are, the heavier the battle, if we are to be reborn. Accordingly, since this is what happens in the earthly self to unite truth with goodness there, and it is accomplished through the struggles of inward trial, the biblical text repeats I’m worn out.

3254

The reason it is newness or a new stage that old age symbolizes on an inner level is that angels (the intended audience of the Word’s inner meaning) have no idea of time. So they know nothing of time-related concepts such as the different eras of a person’s life—childhood, youth, young adulthood, full adulthood, and old age. Instead they replace them all with the idea of states. For the period of childhood they picture an innocent state; for the period of youth and young adulthood, a state of desire for goodness and truth; for full adulthood, a state of understanding; and for old age, a state of wisdom (§3183). In old age we pass from temporal concerns to the concerns of timeless life  and therefore put on a new state. As a result, old age symbolizes newness.

Featured quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg's Secrets of Heaven:

3368:3

Let me explain the secret behind the command not to go down into Egypt but to stay as an immigrant in the land of Gerar—that is, not to focus on facts but on rational thinking: All appearances of truth containing something divine belong to the rational level—so much so that rational ideas are the same as appearances of truth. Facts, though, belong to the earthly level—so much so that earthly ideas are the same as factual truth. Rational truth, or appearances of truth, can exist and emerge only from an inflow from the Divine into the rational dimension and through rational ideas into the facts occupying the earthly dimension. The resulting activity on the rational level shows up on the earthly level like the image of a busy scene reflected in a mirror. That is how it presents itself to us and also to angels. The earthly image is not as conspicuous to an angel as it is to those in the world of spirits and those on a spiritual-earthly level.#3368:3.a+ So the latter two groups have truth represented to them.  

3175:1  

This is how the case stands: We are never born into any truth, not even into any earthly truth, such as the idea that we should not steal, not kill, not commit adultery, and so on. Still less are we born into any spiritual truth, such as the idea that there is a God, or that we have a deeper part that will live on after death. So on our own we know nothing about eternal life. Earthly and spiritual truth are things we learn. If we did not learn them, we would be much worse than brute animals. By heredity, we love ourselves above all others and long to own everything in the world. That is why we need to be restrained by civil laws and the fear of losing our position, wealth, reputation, and life. Otherwise we would steal, kill, and commit adultery without the least twinge of conscience. This is obviously the case, because even the educated do such things without remorse and in fact defend the practice, offering many justifications for acting that way, so far as they can get away with it. What would they refrain from if they had not been educated?

2851:3

There are two paths that lead to a person’s rational mind: a higher or more inward path that gives access to goodness and truth from the Lord, and a lower or more outward path through which evil and falsity sneak in from hell. The rational mind itself lies at the meeting-point of the two paths. In the Word, this level of the mind is compared to and called a city, on account of the goodness and truth present in it. Since it is compared to and called a city, gates are marked out for it, and enemies—evil demons and spirits—are described in many passages as besieging or attacking it. Angels from the Lord, which is to say, the Lord himself, are described as defending it. Hellish demons and spirits, with their evils and falsities, cannot go beyond the lower or shallower gate; they never enter the city. If they could enter the city (our rational mind), that would be the end of us. When they advance far enough that it looks to them as though they have captured the city, it is closed, so that goodness and truth can no longer flow into it from heaven. Just a small bit seeps in through cracks all around, as just mentioned.