Celestial Realms

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

Celestial Realms comprehensively explores the meanings, history, ideas, and experiences of Heaven throughout the world’s exoteric and esoteric traditions. It delves into the heavens of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, the Abrahamic traditions, Far Eastern mythologies, and Indigenous nations. Additionally, the book 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 behaviour, the home of the gods, or a state of being? As Tobias Churton reveals, such questions and beliefs about the nature of Heaven date 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 analyses 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.