The purpose of this paper is to examine a philosophical basis for the biohacker movement. The paper discommends the dominating narrative of the movement, which portraits it as being exclusively motivated by scientific progress. In contrast, I argue that the biohacking phenomenon, besides scientific discoveries, has social, cultural and above all religious incentives. The hypothesis is that the concept of biohacking cannot be fully understood within the bounds of a modern scientific discourse.  The proposed narrative is put into practice via a comparison between the biohacking community and eighteenth-century mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. The comparison is established by this paper; Swedenborg is not recognized by biohackers at large. By associating Swedenborg with the phenomenon, I intend to present a tangible example that the questions raised by the biohackers outdates the scientific discoveries that is normally regarded as their primordial cause. By way of the parallel, the paper aims to highlight a structure of reasoning that would not be as protruding if the movement was to be examined on its own. The comparison centers around how Swedenborg and the biohacker community uses metaphors to depict new and presumably better ways of being human. Their usage of the figure puts the traditional Lakoffian understanding to question. With this paper I explore the possibility of the metaphor shaping not only their understanding of the world, but also their understanding of the human condition. By examining how the rhetorical device is used by both traditions respectively, I intend to bring to light how they dissolve the border between man and the concept of god.

In this thesis, the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) encoding scheme is investigated as a system for storing metadata about manuscript material and 18th century first prints in the Swedenborg Archives at the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences. The aim of the study is to test the functionality of TEI as a metadata system in cataloguing a special collection. Some criteria of functionality are formulated, and examples of encoded catalogue entries are described and analysed. It is demonstrated how descriptive metadata have been registered within the TEI header, while structural metadata have been recorded within the text element of the TEI file. On the whole, TEI is considered to be a functional tool that matches the present purposes. Some weaknesses are pointed to, however: For example, the TEI encoding scheme is not perceived to be fully satisfying for presenting descriptive metadata about manuscripts and prints in the same volume, and, moreover, it is not considered fully appropriate for describing abstract logical text structure in relation to the physical structure of the document. Lastly, TEI is compared to two other metadata systems, the AACR2, ch. 4, and AMREMM. A general conclusion is that the TEI offers a set of guidelines that can easily be adapted to specific needs, while a system for cataloguing in a more proper sense must also contain a set of rules concerning what categories of data are to be included, and in what form it is to be done. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The present Ph.D. dissertation proceeds from poetry on the theme of the Virgin Mary which blossomed for several decades during the Romantic era and is dedicated to the use of its virgin and maternal themes in the work of C.J.L. Almqvist and P.D.A. Atterbom. The first chapter discusses Almqvist's description of the perfect complementary unity of male and female - and divine and human - in his juvenile work Murnis (1819). In this sexually explicit work, theology and religious experience is eroticized while sexuality is sacralized. In Amorina (1822), a burgeoning transformation of Almqvist's "wholeness" vision can be observed. While wholeness can only be achieved through the perfect union of man and woman in Murnis, Amorina emerges as a perfect figure in and of herself. In the second chapter, the figure of Tintomara in Drottningens juvelsmycke (1835) is analyzed. In this novel, the dream of the merging of "twoness" into "oneness" seems to have been abandoned in favour of an experiment, wherein the unity of masculinity and femininity is realized in one single individual, the androgynous Tintomara. Despite the fact that the novel's androgynous idea is formulated with direct reference to Plato's Symposium, the significance of Jakob Böhme's speculations on androgyny are also emphasized here. The third chapter deals with the poetry about Mary written by Almqvist, especially Isidoros av Tadmor and Marjam (1839). Almqvist's image of Mary is characterized in terms of "perfection" and "complexity". In Marjam, this complexity is expressed both through the drama's upholding of the paradoxical content of the dogma of the Virgin Mary and the main theme of the double drama, the tension between the earthly and the eschatological family. The fourth and fifth chapters of this dissertation are dedicated to the maternal theme in the work of P.D.A. Atterbom. I proceed from the hypothesis that the transformations which the figure of Mary undergoes reflect a tension between Romantic syncretism and classic Christianity. I analyze four texts by Atterbom in which this conflict is particularly apparent. In Atterbom's prose draft for his fairy play Fågel blå (1818), as in his sonnets dedicated to Mary (1817-18), I discern a shift away from Romantic syncretism and toward more Biblical patterns. In the fairy play Lycksalighetens ö (1824-27), this tension emerges anew in the two Nyx epiphanies in the piece. The elegy "Ave Maria" (1831) comprises the clearest example of the shift in Atterbom's writing toward classical Mariology. In the conclusion, Almqvist's and Atterbom's respective thematic use of Mary - where she is portrayed as a complex, transgressive figure - is contrasted with an early example of Swedish Biedermeier poetry, Carl von Zeipel's "Jesus Christus. Evangeliska romanser" (1822), where Mary is placed in the context of the little, idyllic family. / digitalisering@umu

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Eric Hermelin, the translator and mystic who, while being incarcerated at a mental institution outside Lund in Sweden, managed to write himself into the history of literature by translating the Great Persian sufi poets of the Middle Ages, Rumi, Attar and Sadi, to name a few. Amongst his other translations we find the native Emanuel Swedenborg who will be the focus of this study.The purpose for this study is to look upon how the teachings of Swedenborg affected Hermelin through a comparative analysis where the translations of Hermelin will play a key role. By comparing them to the original texts of both Swedenborg and the Persian poets and by putting Hermelin in context with his times we hope to find out in what way Hermelin related to Swedenborg.Analysis is centered around three concepts; the Personality, the Correspondence and Influxus, which mirrors the Hermelin focus regarding Swedenborg. The study shows that Swedenborg is central to Hermelin in helping him finding strength for his massive work. Hermelin knows Influxus by experience and he seems well aware of the mystic and esoteric context in which Swedenborg belongs where the Persian poets also plays an important part. In a way Hermelin relate Swedenborg to the Persian poets using the teachings of Swedenborg as an instrument to point out the similarities of content.

1734 var Emanuel Swedenborg en hårt arbetande, rationalistisk vetenskapsman i tidens anda. Detta år utgav han ett av sina mest ambitiösa vetenskapliga och naturfilosofiska verk, Principia Rerum Naturalium. Han försökte här skapa en cosmologia generalis – enallomfattande kosmologisk beskrivning från elementarpartiklarnas uppkomst och konstruktionupp till stjärnornas och planeternas formande. Denna uppsats utreder den ontologiska grundenför Swedenborgs naturfilosofi och lyfter fram tidigare ofta förbisedda aspekter, som hansspekulationer om multiversum. Swedenborgs kosmologi visar sig vara starkt påverkad av ennaturfilosofisk tradition från Gottfried Leibniz.