Swedenborg and his predicted death
Emanuel Swedenborg's life ended in London on 29 March 1772, the day he had foretold when writing to John Wesley.
Swedenborg's death in London happened in Prince's Square, within St George's in the East parish, on 29 March 1772. Encyclopedia sources say he had named that exact day earlier in a letter to John Wesley, the Methodist leader, who had asked to meet him. His servant, Elizabeth Reynolds, reported that he foresaw when he would die and talked about it calmly.
He was laid to rest in Wapping's Swedish Church and later moved to Sweden. One source says the bones were removed in April 1908 at the Swedish government's request, while another puts the move in 1910.
Another tale about him concerns the Great Stockholm Fire of 1759. By an anecdote, Swedenborg saw the blaze while dining in Gothenburg with a friend, William Castel, though he lived at Hornsgatan 43 in Stockholm. Later that evening, so the story goes, he announced that the flames had halted three buildings short of his own house, as they in fact did. Lars Berquist's biography gives the dinner as 29 July in its Swedish edition. The English translation corrects this to 19 July, the day of the fire.
"According to an anecdote, Swedenborg could ”see” the fire during a dinner in Gothenburg with his friend William Castel. At that time, Swedenborg himself lived at Hornsgatan 43 in Stockholm. Supposedly, Swedenborg declared later in the evening that the fire was stopped three buildings from his own – as it indeed was. In the original Swedish edition of Lars Berquist's biography of Swedenborg, the date of the dinner in question is given as "July 29,"[4] but in the English translation this is corrected to "July 19," the very day of the fire."
- Emanuel Swedenborg, Encyclopedia.com (Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology)
- Emanuel Swedenborg - The Favorite Seer of the Occult Revival, The Old Craft
- About Swedenborg, Swedenborg Society