Celestial Realms

A History of Heaven since before the Dawn of Time

Tobias Churton (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

384 Seiten

2026
Inner Traditions Bear and Company (Verlag)
9798888502112 (ISBN)

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An investigation into ideas and experiences of Heaven across religious and cultural traditions throughout history

• Comprehensively explores the meanings, history, ideas, and experience of Heaven throughout the world’s exoteric and esoteric traditions

• Explores the heavens of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, the Abrahamic traditions, Far Eastern mythologies, and Indigenous nations

• Considers questions about our “need” for Heaven, further informed by popular culture, folklore, and personal experience

Across all ages people have wondered about the afterlife. Is Heaven a reward for good behavior, the home of the gods, or a state of being? As Tobias Churton reveals, such questions and beliefs about the nature of Heaven go back to humanity’s earliest days. Beginning with mythology in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Far East, we find sophisticated conceptions within early philosophy and the Abrahamic religions, many of which persist unchanged.

Churton examines the complexities of Jesus’s teaching that “the Kingdom of God is within you” and Islamic ideas about paradise. He analyzes the beliefs of Eastern mystics and Maori, Australian Aboriginal, and Polynesian traditions as well as heavenly conceptions among Indigenous cultures of the Americas. He presents Renaissance-era understandings of Heaven’s connection to the body in the alchemical spiritual medicine of Paracelsus and the mysticism of Jacob Böhme and reveals that Emmanuel Swedenborg, followed by William Blake, controversially associated Heaven with sexuality. Churton then delves into the contemporary era, exploring Heaven from perspectives of spiritualism, psychedelic experience, communist materialism, and the arts, including John Lennon’s lyrical suggestion that we imagine that there is no heaven.

Whether Heaven is considered a specific place or a deeply felt state of being, this in-depth investigation emphasizes its resonance and significance for all of humanity.

Tobias Churton is Britain’s leading scholar of Western Esotericism and a world authority on Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and Rosicrucianism. Holding a master’s degree in theology from Brasenose College, Oxford, he was appointed honorary fellow of Exeter University in 2005. Author of many books, including Gnostic Philosophy, The Invisible History of the Rosicrucians, The Books of Enoch Revealed, and Aleister Crowley in America, he lives in England.

Acknowledgments

Foreword by Reverend Canon Paul Greenwell

INTRODUCTION
Innocent Experience:
Or Heaven and Me

ONE
As Below, So Above
Ancient Mesopotamia

TWO
Heaven as Moral Reward: Ancient Egypt
The Weighing of Souls

THREE
Across the East
Persia
India
Buddhism
China
Japan

FOUR
Israel
The Essene View According to Josephus

FIVE
Greece
Plato and the Bliss of Ideas
The Myth of Er

SIX
A New Heaven: The Books of Enoch
Holy Guardian Angels—Whose Idea?
The Parables of Enoch
2 Enoch and Ten Heavens
3 Enoch

SEVEN
Jesus and the Kingdom of Heaven
Heaven on Earth
The Kingdom of the Heavens
The Child
The Kingdom of Heaven Is Nigh and Within Us
Natural Beauty, a Mirror of Heaven

EIGHT
Heaven among the Gnostics
Valentinian Sex and Heaven
Heaven in the Gospel of Judas
The Hermetic Ascent

NINE
Romans, Celts, and
Some Unconquered Peoples
The Celts
Teutonic and Other Peoples
Slavonic Heaven
Finno-Ugric Heaven

TEN
Heaven in the Qur’an

ELEVEN
After the Diaspora: Jewish Ideas of Heaven
Rabbinic Traditions
Heaven in Early Kabbalah

TWELVE
Heaven in the Americas
North America

THIRTEEN
Heaven and Health: Ficino and Paracelsus
Paracelsus (1493/94–1541)
Paracelsus and the Heavens

FOURTEEN
Jacob Böhme, Paracelsus, and Heaven
What Heaven Is

FIFTEEN
Oceania

SIXTEEN
Swedenborg and Blake
Other Swedenborgian Doctrines on Heaven

SEVENTEEN
Africa

EIGHTEEN
Allan Kardec and Spiritism

NINETEEN
Communist Heaven versus Catholic Heaven

TWENTY
Psychedelia

TWENTY-ONE
Heaven at the Movies

TWENTY-TWO
Do We Need Heaven?

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	7.5.2026
Zusatzinfo	Full-color throughout
Verlagsort	Rochester
Sprache	englisch
Maße	168 x 241 mm
Gewicht	425 g
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Esoterik / Spiritualität
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Religionsgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Weitere Religionen
ISBN-13	9798888502112 / 9798888502112
Zustand	Neuware