BOEHME, JACOB (1575–1624)

BOEHME, JACOB (1575–1624), German mystic. Born in Alt Seidenberg, Lusatia, in eastern Germany in 1575, Jacob Boehme (or Böhme) was the fourth child of a successful farmer. The Boehme legend (established by friend and biographer Abraham von Franckenberg) emphasized his humble beginnings and his lack of education. It is clear, though, that his chosen trade of shoemaking was a success, and in Görlitz (where he moved around 1594 after his apprenticeship was finished), the young Jacob absorbed a rich and eclectic, if not particularly formal, education. In 1600, after severe depression over existential issues such as the place of God in an evil and fragmented world, he had a vision triggered by "the glint from a pewter dish." In fifteen minutes, von Franckenberg claims, Boehme learned more about the relationship between God and nature than all the universities could teach. This vision inspired him to write, and in 1612 he produced a partially finished manuscript called Aurora, oder die Morgenröte im Aufgang (1656; Aurora: that is, the day-spring or dawning of the day).

The work was passed around among Boehme's friends, and eventually reached the hands of the local Lutheran pastor, Gregor Richter. Incensed at Boehme's seeming unorthodoxy, Richter influenced the town council of Görlitz to silence him. Boehme observed the ruling for six years, although clearly his mystical development continued unabated. He continued his contact with the followers of Paracelsus (1493–1541), Valentin Weigel (1533–1588), and Kaspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig (1489–1561), and by 1618 his enthusiastic friends convinced him to begin writing again. Between 1619 and his death on 15 November 1624 he wrote constantly, producing works that ranged from mystical (Forty Questions concerning the Soul [Vierzig Fragen von der Seele ], Six Theosophical Points [Von sechs Punchten ]) to alchemical (Signature Rerum or Von der Geburt und Bezeichnung aller Wesen) to devotional (short writings collected as The Way to Christ [Der Weg zu Christo ]) to theological (Mysterium Magnum or Erklärung über das Erste Buch Mosis) to polemical (Apology to Balthasar Tylcken [Erst Schutzschrift gegen Balthasar Tilke ]).

DIALECTIC AND WILL

Boehme holds that there is a fundamental dialectic in the emergence of both God and nature. In the Ungrund, or primordial chaotic nothingness, forces or wills strive to manifestation. There are two kinds of wills: Begierde (craving or desire), an infinite multiplicity of unrealized wills, and Lust (free will), which flows through Begierde to bring them to order and manifestation. Begierde and Lust are nothing prior to their dialectical, cooperative emergence.

This emergence takes the form of "Yes and No," an internal dialectical conflict that allows God to be the source and significance of everything natural, but not to be reducible to it. The two original principles, the No (dark, wrathful, or fire world) and Yes (light or love world), are joined by a third principle, that of movement and creation. These three are mutually causing, interpenetrating, and supporting. They emerge through seven "spirits" into what Boehme sometimes calls "eternal nature," and this threefold dialectic exists at every level for him.

The natural world is the flowing through of the emerged God into the multifarious forces of Begierde. Here too there is a seven-stage development—the seven forms of nature. All nature partakes of the three worlds, which emerge from God, and to the extent they are manifest, they are good. This process has sometimes been seen as evolutionary, but Boehme was clear that the dialectical emergence from chaos to full manifestation is present at once within everything. Boehme believes that every existing thing made a choice to align itself with one principle. Only humanity still has the choice of which world to live in.

Boehme calls the result of manifestation Weisheit, or the Virgin Wisdom, which is within all the processes of life and creation, and is a mirror to God. The entire process of creation is folded into every existing thing, and is available to those who have eyes to see. The dialectical emergence of Lust and Begierde results in containers, or husks, which both reveal and conceal the will within. Boehme's mysticism explicates the deep spiritual structure of nature, unavailable to the common person using Vernunft, or discursive reason. If one has Verstand (intuitive reason), one can recognize the common life concealed within the husks, which all of nature shares. "Signatures" are the external evidence of this commonality—they make Weisheit visible to the human mind. Boehme uses the image of creation as an instrument, which was broken by the Fall, but repaired by the incarnation of Christ. The instrument is still out of tune, but when one knows how to listen, one will hear sympathetic vibrations through everything. All of nature resonates because it all has the same root. But some of the wills in Begierde do not cooperate with Lust. They still strive for manifestation and can only achieve this with the destruction of the manifest world. This is Boehme's account of evil—a kind of uncreating.

Some look to Boehme as the inventor of modern dialectic. Some look to him as a theorist of freedom, others as one who introduced the idea of the objectification of the will, others as one who laid the ontological foundations for individuality, and still others as one who solved the problem of evil. Boehme is an heir to diverse intellectual traditions, ranging from Renaissance alchemy, hermeticism, and theosophy (via Paracelsus) to German mysticism (in the Rhineland tradition of writers such as Johannes Eckhart, c. 1260–?1327) to crypto-Calvinism to Lutheran theology. He is sometimes seen as part of a group of eastern German mystics that includes Schwenckfeld, Weigel, and Angelus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler, 1624–1677). But his influence surpassed all of them; Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) says of Boehme that it was "through him that philosophy first appeared in Germany with a character peculiar to itself."

Boehme's writings were particularly influential in England, where his followers were known as "Behmenists," and in Holland, where many editions of his work were produced. He was also important for seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century movements such as the Philadelphian Society (Jane Leade, John Pordage), the Quakers (George Fox), Pietism (through Philipp Jacob Spener), and Methodism (through William Law). His influence extended into France (Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, 1743–1803) and Russia (Vladimir Soloviev, 1853–1900). And he was read closely by later idealists and postidealists (Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling, Paul Johann von Feuerbach), Romantics (Franz von Baader, Novalis, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge), and existentialists (Martin Buber, Paul Johannes Tillich, Nikolay Berdyayev).

See also Catholic Spirituality and Mysticism ; Methodism ; Paracelsus ; Pietism ; Quakers ; Romanticism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berdyaev, Nicolas. "Ungrund and Freedom." In Boehme, Six Theosophic Points and Other Writings. Translated by John Rolleston Earle. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1958.

Stoudt, John. Sunrise to Eternity: A Study in Jacob Boehme's Life and Thought. Philadelphia, 1957. Reissued 1995.

Weeks, Andrew. Boehme: An Intellectual Biography of the Seventeenth-Century Philosopher and Mystic. Albany, N.Y., 1991.

Bruce B. Janz