Jakob Boehme

Jakob Boehme , 1575-1624, German religious mystic, a cobbler of Görlitz, in England also called Behmen. He was a student of the Bible and was influenced by Paracelsus. In his major works, De signatura rerum (tr. The Signature of all Things, 1912) and Mysterium magnum, Boehme describes God as the abyss, the nothing and the all, the primordial depths from which the creative will struggles forth to find manifestation and self-consciousness. Evil is a result of the striving of single elements of Deity to become the whole; conflict ensues as man and nature strive to achieve God who, in himself, contains all antithetical principles. Boehme exerted a profound influence on the philosophies of Baader, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer. Boehme claimed divine revelation and had many followers in Germany and Holland. Societies of Behmenites were formed in England; many of them were later absorbed by the Quakers.

Bibliography: See The Confessions of Jacob Boehme, ed. by W. S. Palmer (1954); study by D. Walsh (1983); biography by F. Hartmann (1985).

Boehme, Jakob (1575–1624). German Lutheran theosophical writer. Son of a farmer, from 1599 to 1613 he lived as a cobbler in Görlitz in Silesia. He claimed to be a mystic, writing under direct divine inspiration. From the publication of his first work, Aurora (1612), he provoked official opposition. Most of his works were published posthumously, including the famous Signatura Rerum and Magnum Mysterium. Boehme is obscure and difficult, using much abstruse terminology. Boehme was enormously influential, especially on German idealism, and also in England.

Boehme, Jakob (1575–1624), German Lutheran theosophical writer. He claimed in his writings to describe only what he had learnt by Divine illumination.

According to Boehme God the Father is the ‘Ungrund’, the indefinable matter of the universe, neither good nor evil, but containing the germ of either, unconscious and impenetrable. This ‘abyss’ tends to know itself in the Son, who is light and wisdom, and to expand and express itself in the Holy Spirit. The Godhead has two wills, one good and one evil, which drive Him to create nature, which unfolds itself in the seven nature spirits, of which the last is man. The unfolding of creation is revelation, or the birth of God. Man accepts this revelation through faith in Christ and experiences the birth of God in his soul. He will then be a conqueror on earth and will ultimately replace Lucifer, the fallen angel, in the heavenly city. Boehme's writings, which are obscure, had a wide influence.