"But when this had given me many a hard blow, doubtless from the Spirit that had a desire for me, I finally fell into great sadness and melancholy, when I viewed the great depth of this world, the sun and the stars and the clouds, rain and snow, and contemplated in my mind the whole creation of this world...So then I found in all things good and evil, love and wrath, in creatures of reason as well as in wood, in stone, in earth, in the elements, in men and animals. Withal, I considered the little spark 'man' and what it might be esteemed to be by God in comparison with this great work of heaven and earth...In consequence I grew very melancholy, and what is written, though I knew it well, could not console me."
 
 
 
 

Biography

Boehme, the German mystic, was born in the East German town of Goerlitz in 1575. He had little in the way of an education and made his living as a shoemaker; he married and had four children. His thought drew on interests including Paracelsus, the Kabbala, alchemy and the Hermetic tradition. His first written work, Aurora, went unfinished, but drew to him a small circle of followers. Like Eckhart and others, Boehme's thought drew fire from the church authorities, who silenced Boehme for five years before he continued writing in secrecy. He again raised the cockles of church authorities, and he was banished from his home. He died soon thereafter, in 1624, after returning home from Dresden. His last words spoken, as he was surrounded by his family, were reported to be, "Now I go hence into Paradise." His thought has since influenced major figures in philosophy, especially German Romantics such as Hegel, Baader, and Schelling. Indirectly, his influence can be traced to the work of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hartmann, Bergson, and Heidegger. Paul Tillich and Martin Buber drew heavily from his work -- as did the psychologist, Carl Jung, who made numerous references to Boehme in his writings.

Thought

Martin Buber has written that the "summation of (Boehme's) thoughts, is the problem of the relation of the individual to the world." For Boehme, as a precursor to existentialist thought, the Godhead, as the Undgrund or Abyss, is unknowable to human beings. God as such appears with the appearance of the world -- creation emerging such that it allows God to emerge from primordial oneness so that He may come to know Himself. The world as such yearns to re-merge with the Undgrund. Submission to the will of Christ, for Boehme, leads to true freedom, as opposed to the fallen will, since Adam, of the individual human being. The world as becoming, in Boehme's cosmology, is the self-revelation of God in the sensible, emerging out of a desire to reveal Himself to Himself. As Boehme writes: "Creation was an act of the free will of God; God unfolded his eternal nature, and through his active love, or desire, he caused that which heretofore had been in him merely as spirit (as an image contained in a piece of wood before the artist has cut it out), to become substantial, corporeal." Thus, it follows, God reveals Himself from within creation when the individual submits his will to the will of God. Of his own divine revelation, Boehme wrote: "I did not climb up into the Godhead, neither can so mean a man as I am do it; but the Godhead climbed up in me, and revealed such to me out of his Love..."

Links

Jacob Boehme (9th Edition of The Encyclopedia Britannica - Vol. III, 1878)
Jacob Boehme Resources
Jacob Boehme Quotations, Quoted by Robert Bly in The Light Around the Body
Complete List of Jacob Boehme Works
The Ecole Intitiative: Jacob Boehme
Jakob Boehme by Donivan Bessinger
Jacob Boehme by Glenn Everett
Jacob Boehme, Gnostic Mystic
Boehme Bibiography in Mysticism, 12th edition: Evelyn Underhill
The 'Key' of Jacob Boehme
Treasures from the Writings of Jacob Boehme: Introduction to Boehme
The Supersensual Life by Jacob Boehme
The Supersensual Life: Bibliographical Information
The Way to Christ by Jakob Boehme
The Way to Christ by Jakob Boehme
Mysterium Pansophicum by Jacob Boehme
Signatura Rerum, The Signature of All Things, from the "William Law" translation, by Jacob Boehme
The Throne of God and of the Lamb, from Jacob Boehmen's Works
Index of Citations of Jakob Boehme in the Collected Works of C. G. Jung
Concerning Jacob Boehme by Martin Buber
Esoterica: Overlooked and Undervalued by Jay Kinney
Frank Van Lamoen's Spreading the Word: The Earliest Editions of Jacob Boehme
Newton's Heifer: From Metaphor to Mechanism by George J. Mpitsos
Jakon Bohme, The Teutonic Theosopher, from William Law's translation of The Works of Jakob Bohme
The Tetragrammaton in the Human Heart from Boehme's Libri Apologetici
The Uroboros Symbol
The Mystical Heart Diagrams of Paul Kaym
The Divine Tree in Man (Reverse) from Law's Figures of Jakob Boehme

Recommended Books for Purchase

6 Theosophic Points
by Jacob Boehme
$19.95
Aurora
by Jacob Boehme
$39.95
Clavis or Key
$7.95 + $1.35 special surcharge
Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence
by Jacob Boehme
$45.00
Confessions of Jacob Boehme
by Jacob Boehme
$19.95
Dialogues on the Supersensual Life
by Jacob Boehme
$17.95
A Discourse Between a Soul Hungry and Thirsty After the Fountain of Life, the Sweet Love of Jesus, and a Soul Enlightened
by Jacob Boehme
$4.95 + $2.35 special surcharge
Epistles of Jacob Boehme : The Life of Christ
by Jacob Boehme
$17.95
Forty Questions of the Soul
by Jacob Boehme
$24.95
A Fundamental Statement Concerning the Earthly and Heavenly Mystery
by Jacob Boehme
$3.95 + $2.35 special surcharge
How a Man May Find Himself and So Finding Come to All Mysteries, Even to the Ninth Number, Yet No Higher
by Jacob Boehme
$5.95 + $1.85 special surcharge
The Image of the Soul and of the Turba Which Is the Destroyer of the Image
by Jacob Boehme
$3.95 + $2.35 special surcharge
The Incarnation of Jesus Christ
by Jacob Boehme
$19.95
The Key of Jacob Boehme
by Jacob Boehme
$27.00
Mysterium Magnum
by Jacob Boehme
$50.00
Of Heaven and Hell : A Dialogue Between Junius, a Scholar and Theophorus, His Master
by Jacob Boehme
$4.95 + $2.35 special surcharge
On the Election of Grace and Theosophic Questions
by Jacob Boehme
$27.00
Short Explanation of Six Mystical Points
by Jacob Boehme
$5.95 + $1.85 special surcharge
Theoscopia, or the Highly Precious Gate of the Divine Intuition
by Jacob Boehme
$7.95 + $1.35 special surcharge
Thoughts on the Spiritual Life
by Jacob Boehme
$14.95
Threefold Life of Man : The High and Deep Searching Out of the Three Principles
by Jacob Boehme
$33.00
The Tree of the Christian Faith
by Jacob Boehme
$8.95 + $0.85 special surcharge
True Resignation
by Jacob Boehme
$12.00
The Way to Christ : Of True Repentance, of True Resignation : Of Regeneration, of the Supersensual Life
by Jacob Boehme
$12.95
The Wellspring of Light
by Jacob Boehme
$6.95
Jacob Boehme : Life and Doctrines
by Franz Hartmann
$15.95
The Mystic Will : Based upon a Study of the Philosophy of Jacob Boehme
by Howard H. Brinton
$19.95
Pre-Requisites for a Study of Jacob Boehme
by C.J. Barker
$6.95
Jacob Boehme: A Cloud Wrapped Immortal
by Alvin Coburn
$3.95
Science, Meaning, & Evolution : The Cosmology of Jacob Boehme
by Basarab Nicolescu
$17.95
Studies in Jacob Boehme
by A. J. Penny
$30.00
 

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