A very short introduction to Böhmian doctrines

 

Der Schuster Jakob Böhme war ein großer Philosoph. Manche Philosophen von Ruf sind nur große Schuster

 

Karl Marx

 

 

As is well known Böhme starts his ‘theogonic’ vision with the Ungrund, the divine ‘Abyss’, which is the mysterium magnum in which all things in heaven and in earth, visible and invisible are eternally contained (analogous to the ‘One’ of the platonici or the Ein Sof of the Kabbalists).

In this divine Abyss there is from all eternity a bottomless, unoriginated Will, which is the beginningless beginning of all. This (as of yet ‘subjectless’) Will is as unfathomable as the groundless Ungrund itself and any attempts to investigate it “would merely produce confusions in our mind”, as Böhme warns us (De Incarn. XXI.1). Blindly stirring in the luminous darkness of the Ungrund, it conceives within itself the desire for its own self-revelation (“it willeth to be something, that it might manifest itself to itself”, Mys. Mag. I.2) and “this love or desire conceived by the Will or Father within itself is the Son” (ibid.), the primordial Centre or ‘Subjectivity’ (Gemüth), the ‘Heart’ and Grund (‘ground’ or ‘foundation’) of the Father, in whom the whole pleroma of the Ungrund is gathered into one undifferentiated whole, the ‘Concept’ or ‘Comprehension’ (Fassung), in which the abyssal and incomprehensible Will ‘grasps’ (fassen) or ‘grounds’ (begründen) itself into a comprehensible, ‘byssal Will (the Begründung, in which the abyssal Ungrund ‘grounds itself’ in the Grund or Byss, marking the passage from Non-being to Being).

However the Will is yet ‘blind’; we might compare it to a ‘gaze’, starring out into an undefined Infinity, meeting no ‘object’. Thus it goes out again from the Centre and “fashions a mirror for itself”, in which to behold itself and its eternal wonders. This mirror is not to be understood as ‘created’ in the literal sense, but could more accurately be considered the ‘feminine’ (passive or ‘mirroring’) aspect of the eternal Ungrund itself, its receptivity (or ‘reflectivity’). It is the ‘Mirror of Wisdom’ or the ‘Eye of Eternity’ in which the whole abyssal pleroma has appeared from time everlasting.  

 

Wisdom is the true Divine Chaos, wherein all things lie, viz., a Divine Imagination, in which the Ideas of Angels and Souls have been seen from Eternity in a divine type and resemblance, yet not then as creatures, but in resemblance, as when a man beholdeth his face in a glass (Clavis, V).

 

Although eternal, her treasures had been hidden as if under an more-than-luminous ‘glare’ (Glast) only to be ‘opened’ or ‘revealed’ (eröffnet) by the ‘imagination’ of the ‘Will-spirit’ emanating from the divine ‘Subjectivity-Centre’ (Gemüth), in which she appears as its ‘Object’. Indeed since there is no subjectivity without an object, it could be said that the mirror is ‘fashioned’ by the very act of mirroring (or ‘imagining’), or that “the Will by seeing itself, thereby creates within itself a mirror” (Vera Psych. I.13). The one reveals the other and vice versa, so that we dare even say that the Son gives birth to His Mother, just as He has been born (or ‘revealed’) by her (Pater in filio, filio in matre), for it is by entering into the Magia (matrix) of Divine Wisdom that the paternal Will (Magus) conceives or ‘finds’ Himself (finden & erfinden) as the Son and it is from (the Father and) the Son that proceeds the Spirit by whom the Mirror of Wisdom is ‘revealed’ as the ‘Objectivity’ or ‘Visibility’ (Beschaulichkeit) of God. And in it the Spirit ‘plays’ with the powers diffused from the Son and makes ‘formings’ therein as an image (Fürmodelung) of the whole Trinity in which the three ‘Persons eternally behold and ‘discover’ themselves and find to their self-understanding (Verstand). Here Wisdom (the Idea) appears as a ‘maiden’ or ‘virgin’ (Jungfrau), “who stands, in the dawn of eternity, before the God who gives Himself up to Self-manifestation, and who, so to speak, allures Him to manifest Himself, by showing Him the exceeding riches of His glory”

 

The Maiden stands before God as if in a vision, a morning-dream of Eternity, which prophetically reveals to Him what He can become, what He can make Himself (Martensen, Jacob Boehme, I.1).

 

Thus in the ‘still joy’ (stille Lust) of the Eternal Freedom, the Godhead contemplates itself “as when a man beholdeth his face in glass” and this divine Face reflected back to Him in the morning-dawn of eternity is what Baader calls the “the Ternary in Ein-Sof” or the “esoteric God” and what Böhme refers to as the ‘clear Deity’ (die klare Gottheit) or JEHOVA.

This Deity is like “an eternal band, which cannot perish and which generates itself from eternity to eternity, and the first therein is always the last, and the last the first” (Tribus Prin. VII.14), i.e. the band which binds “the eternal Will in its aspect as Father” to the Son, “the eternal Will in its aspect as divine Love, the Centre or Heart of the Father … by means of the Spirit, the power issuing from the Will and the Love” (Mys. Magn. I.2.4).

This band is the beginning and end of all things, the ‘string’ on which the whole symphony of the divine Life is performed and the thread from which is woven the fabric of universal existence. We might also conceive of it as an ellipsis or as a triangle (“the archetype of all existent things”, according to the Zohar) inscribed into the infinite sphere of the ‘Eye of Eternity’, in which the ‘Will-Spirit’ emanating from the 1) Father goes forth into the 2) Son (the centre of the sphere as well as the apex of the triangle), from which it proceeds again (ex Patre per Filium) as an ‘out-breathing’ or expiration (the Holy Spirit properly so called), the life and movement of Father and Son, flowing towards the terminal point or the ‘product’ of this processio, i.e. 3) the Mirror of Wisdom (which Böhme also calls the ‘fourth effect’) as the communal ‘utterance’ or ‘emission’ of the Three, the ‘expired’ or ‘outspoken Word’ (logos ekthetos) .

 

It is the outspoken, which the Father speaketh forth out of the Center of the Heart with or by the Holy Spirit, and standeth in the divine Formings and Images, in the Sight of the Eye of the Holy Trinity of God; yet as a Virgin without generating (Sex puncta, I.26).

 

This elliptical of procession (Father – Son) and return (Son – Sophia), proôdos – epistrophé, is the very ‘heartbeat’ of the abyssal Deity, the ‘respiration’ of the One, and all that ever was, is, and will be is but a variation on this simple theme and, as we shall see, the whole process of the eternal Birth, in love and in strive, in discord and harmony, unfolds but in numerous instantiations of this same pattern.

However in the Eternal Freedom of the tranquil Deity this harmonious movement doesn’t yet give off any ‘sound’, but here everything is yet plunged into the silence of the One, for and “where all is the Self, what should one hear and through what, and what should one speak and to whom?” (Brih. Upan. II.4.14).

“If there is to be a light, there must be a fire” (Mys. X.1.2), says Böhme and “all things exist in Yes and No”, but in the abyssal Freedom there is only the ‘Yes’ of the still joy. Thus the Idea appears here as spirit without ‘body’ (Leib) or substantial ‘corporeity’ (Wesen) and as such it is a mere ‘spectre’ or ‘phantom’. We might liken it to the mere ‘thought’ of a fire, which is not yet ‘burning’ or fully ‘expressing’ itself externally by manifesting heat and light, for it finds no ‘resistance’ on which to spark off of its flame. 

“The One breathed, windless, by its own will / Other than that there was nothing” (Rg-Veda, X.129). Yet the ‘clear Deity’ does not merely passively contemplate or ‘admire itself, but actively ‘imagines’ (forms images) into the Mirror and the more it imagines the more its desire grows, for “where all powers are but one power, they yearn for their understanding: because understanding originates in differentiation and multiplicity” (Quaes. Theos. III.4).

Thus there is a desirous ‘grasping’ for its manifestation, a continual emanating of ‘volitional movements’ or ‘sensors’ (which Böhme also, analogously, calls ‘senses’) and which flow out from the divine ‘Subjectivity-Centre’ (Gemüth) in an desire to ‘taste’, ‘feel’, and ‘hear’ themselves by fashioning objects in which to ‘sense’ themselves.

 

The sensuous emanation from the Gemüth makes it desirous, that it may introduce the senses into something, as a centre or subjectivity (Ichheit), wherein it may act with the senses, and reveal and behold itself through this acting (Theoscopia, 1.18)

 

The senses imagine into vague thoughts and the thoughts beget other thoughts, making centre from centre, evolving (i.e. ‘expanding’) into a primordial blueprint (or ‘possibility’) of multiplicity; and with growing desire the thoughts become ‘compacted’ into ever more concrete images and impressions.

 

The whole of the divine Being is in a state of continual and eternal generation comparable to the mind (Gemüth) of a man, but immutable. There are continually thoughts born from the mind of man, and from them arises desire and will. From desire and will originates action, and the hands do their work, so as to render it substantial. Thus it is with eternal evolution (Tribus Prin. IX.35).

 

Through this desirous imagination, the Divine Mind, rapt in the contemplation of its possibilities, becomes seduced by the Maiden until it finally becomes fully dominated by its desire and the ‘eternal Nature’ in God is aroused (which is not to be understood as in any way ‘material’ but, as Baader says, more of a “spirituous potency”), which posits itself as a contrarium to the Freedom.

We might say that a dialectical reversal has taken place, for was it previously the Gemüth as the divine Subjectivity which had ‘fashioned’ the Mirror (as its intentional Object) by its joyous ‘speculations’, it is now the divine Will which becomes ‘subjected’ to its own imaginings; it is overpowered and ‘obscured’ by its own desire, which draws it into it as by an ‘magnetic pull’, whereby it becomes  ‘contracted’ or ‘coagulated’ into the ‘harsh matrix’, which marks the first Quality of eternal Nature.

 

The first Quality is the Desire (Begierde). It is comparable to magnetic attraction, and therefore the comprehensibility of the Will. The Will conceives of itself as something. By this act of impressing or contracting it overshadows itself and causes itself to become darkness (Clavis, VIII.38.)

 

There are thus two opposite ‘wills’ (which are really only one, but bifurcated into two ‘principles’ or centra), the ‘Nature-will’ of the centrum naturae (which is a selfish contraction and a darkness; the eternal No) and the ‘Spirit-will’ (the eternal Yes; expansive and out-flowing, a yearning for the eternal Freedom), which become entangled in a hostile struggle. And thus the ‘still joy’ (Lust) of contemplation has become the ‘cunning’ (List) of the Will by which it makes itself its own prisoner and sets the Nature-wheel of the eternal Birth into motion, “for there must be opposition; the will desires not to be dark, and this very desire causes the darkness” (Vera Psych. I.23).

This wheel has seven ‘spires’, the seven Qualities of eternal Nature, which Böhme also links to the ‘seven spirits’ of the Apocalypse (Rev. 1:4), with each containing and generating all the other like ‘wheels within wheels’ (and what the Sefer Yetzira says about the sefirot is likewise true for Böhme’s seven qualities, namely that “their beginning is in their end and their end is in their beginning, like a flame in burning coal”).

 

Do not imagine these seven spirits to be standing one by the side of the other, comparable to the stars, which are seen side by side in the sky; they are all seven like only one spirit … All the seven spirits of God are born one in another. One gives birth to the other; there is neither first nor last. The last generates the first, as well as the first the second, the third the fourth, up to the last. They are all seven equally eternal (Aurora, X.40, 2).

 

The ‘compaction’ of the harsh, desirous Nature (what Böhme also calls the ‘dark Impression’ or Fiat) is counter-acted by the Spirit-will which longs to escape from the darkness back into the light of Freedom thus giving rise to the ‘bitter sting’ (the second Quality), which manifests as a centrifugal ‘flight’ and a violent ‘pulling’ which starts to ‘break up’ the egoic contraction (‘self-centering’) of the coagulated ‘Harshness’ (Herbigkeit).

Entering into a fierce struggle (a veritable ‘tug-o-war’), the ‘contractive’ (1.) and the ‘tractive’ (2.) dynameis become entangled in an agonizing ‘rotation’ (the 3. Quality), i.e. the ‘anguish wheel’ (Angstrad), in which each only starts cleaving more strongly to its own desire, thereby amplifying their opposite tendencies.

 

The sting strives upwards and the Nature-will strives downwards, for the harshness indraws and makes itself heavy so that the one strives to rise upwards, and the other to sink downwards, while neither of them can accomplish its object, and thus eternal Nature becomes like a revolving wheel (De Incarn. II.4).

 

We see here already how the second Quality originates in the first (and the third from the two preceding two), for the centrifugal movement out of Nature which characterizes the ‘sting’ is already prefigured in the attractive (centripetal) movement into Nature (the magnetic pull) which gave rise to the hardening of the dark Fiat and wherein initial Yes (the original yearning for manifestation) ‘flips’ into the harsh No. The desirous Nature-will (or ‘Salt’) originates in the Father (proôdos) and the ‘retractive’ bitterness (or ‘Mercury’) in the Son (epistrophé), which are then propelled into motion by the ‘anguish-wheel’ of the third Quality (the ‘Sulphur’) rooted in the Spirit (and thus we see how the ‘eternal band’ is manifesting in the dark ternary of the first Principle, albeit in a quite ‘dissonant’ manner).

Further we see once more how motion or ‘expansion’ (the ‘pull’, i.e. Ziehen) is the principle of understanding or Scientia (hence why Böhme also speaks of the Scienz); for just like the movement of the Hl. Spirit in the ‘still mystery’ opened up the divine understanding (Verstand), so is the ‘anxious’ struggle (Ringen) of the harsh and bitter Quality the first awakening of the ‘sensuous life’ (as a ‘disgust’ and ‘sharpness’), as well as the principle of differentiation; for in the ‘repulsiveness’ and adversity of the primordial polarity, a first multiplicity of ‘essences’ (Essentien) is generated in the ‘dark matrix’, so that here it is truly “Strife that is the father of all things” (Heraclitus).

Böhme also describes this process also series of ‘cross-births’ (Kreuzgeburten), wherein the two poles of the principal ‘axis’ – the (centripetal, descending) harshness and the (centrifugal, ascending) bitter-sting, originating in the centrum naturae – ‘explode’ into an horizontal evolution, generating new ‘crosses’ on each end, which unfold in an  indefinite expansion like the trunk of tree  (or a lightning) fanning out into innumerable branches (cf. Tribus Prin. II.13; Trip. Vita, IV.16).

 

Each form (Gestalt) or birth takes its own form, virtue, working and springing up from all the others; and the whole birth now retains chiefly but these four forms in its generating or bringing forth; viz. the rising up and the falling down, and then, through the turning of the Wheel in the harsh essence, the putting forth on this side, and on that side, on both sides like a cross; or, as I may so say, the going forth from the point (or centre) towards the East, the West, the North and the South (Tribus Prin. II.13).

 

We might also use the image of giant, irrational ‘clockwork’, which “turns as a wheel and always breaks up the harsh contraction, bringing a plurality into the essences with the sting” (Sex puncta, I.18) and in which all gears are spinning in a universal discord, unendingly fulgurating new fractal copies of themselves. Nowadays we are even tempted to use the analogy of an ‘algorithm’ generating an indefinite plurality of individual ‘codes’ (the essences) from the basic duality of 1’s and 0’s.

Finally, the frenzy of this ever-turning ‘wheel of Ixion’ reaches its culminating point in the fourth Quality, wherein the maddening ‘tension’ of the two is discharged in a great, fiery ‘lightning’ (Blitz), the frightful Schrack (‘shock’ or ‘flash’), which is “comparable to a spark produced by the friction of flint and steel” (Clavis, IX.49), and which strikes down the hardness of the ‘dark matrix’ and, “sinking down as a slain being (Wesen)”, it becomes “thin and soft”.  Fatally struck by the ‘fire-shock’ which makes “makes the darkness substantial (materialisch)”, it is dissolved (or ‘melted’) into a ‘sharp Water-spirit’ (or Mercurius) wherein the Fire-spirit takes root as its foundation or ‘fuel’, the dark, material ‘coal’ on which it feeds.

Here originates the most primitive Body – Spirit duality (Wesen and Geist, which is likewise that of Female and Male, Body/Soul, Nature/Spirit, 1. and 2. Quality etc. and which are of course ultimately all but manifestations of the exitus-reditus of the ‘eternal band’), and as such it is also the lightning that maketh Life (“im Blitze urständet das Leben”). Because for Böhme (and here he once more agrees with the Vedic sages) the life-force (prâna, which also linked to Agni) in all things is a ‘heat’ or a fire, such that he even calls the soul (psyche as vital power) a ‘fire-worm’ (“the worm that dieth not”) that stirs in the gloomy depths of all living beings. For all life is a devouring fire that hungers for its ‘nourishment’ (Nahrung) so as to keep the life-spark on burning.

Already the Nothing has eternally “hungered for Something” (a primordial hunger also vividly described in Brahd. Upanishad I.2) and now, with the enkindling of the Fire-spirit, this hunger is given its first substantial (or ‘corporeal’) food, namely the ‘corps’ of the desirous matrix (what Böhme now also calls the ‘watery matrix’) and here we also see how all life is born out of death, for it is from this ‘darkness-become-substantial’ from which ‘sprouts forth’ (ausgrünen) the light-life of the Deity “like a beautiful flower sprouting from the earth” (or like the ‘new Man’ rising from the corpse of the old one).

 

Behold ye then the creatures of this outer world, how all life, namely the essential fire-life, draws substance (Wesen) to itself, viz. its food (Speise), and how the life-fire then devours the substance and gives off the spirit of (vital) power, which is the life of all creatures. There you will be made to see how life originates from death. For no life comes into being unless it break through that out of which life must arise; everything must enter into Anguish (die Angst) and attain to the fire-lightning, otherwise there is no kindling (De Incarn. II.5.10).

 

However as of yet the dark ‘fire-hunger’ finds no fulfillment in the sharpness of the Water-spirit, for Fire and Water, Spirit and Nature, still stand in their adversity so that the anguish wheel becomes an infernal Ouroborus devouring itself in a painful wrath (Grimmigkeit), a constant fleeing and chasing, “as a man gasping for air” (from which we also see how the eating and being-eaten, the eternal generating and devouring of itself, is but a further manifestation of the ‘windless breathing’ of the One); a circulus diabolus which seems nigh inescapable and which is only redeemed by a sudden break-through of the abyssal Freedom in a veritable eucatastrophe.

    For once the ‘sting’ of the Spirit-will reaches the maximum of its ‘up-rising’ (from which it ‘discharges’ into the dreadful Flash, thereby enkindling the grim Fire-spirit) it too ‘sinks down’ as if in death, not violently subdued, but ‘freed’ from the bitterness of the sting mercilessly driving it upwards. And thus there is a gentle ‘letting go’, a will-less surrendering and yielding back into the Freedom from which is born the mild Light-spirit.

   Because we have to remember that the Spirit-will, which is the very principle of movement, did not originally desire to be moved at all but rather yearned for the eternal tranquility of the Deity. It only enters into motion (as the tractive ‘bitter-sting’) to counter-act the contractive desire of the Nature-will which draws it out of this tranquility into the darkness of the ‘birth-wheel’ (ho trochos tês geneseôs), which, ironically, it sets into motion itself precisely by its very traction!, the centrifugal movement away from the centrum naturae (which is a veritable ‘self-renouncement’, a ‘throwing-itself-out-of-itself’),  such that the ‘actionless action’ of its not-desiring becomes the prime motor of the harsh desire contracting itself ever harder (“It desireth rest but maketh unrest”).

    But now that the ‘old dragon’ of the harsh Nature is slain, its desire being arrested in the frightful ‘shock’, and that the bitter sting has literally gone up in flames, the Spirit-will (or Light-spirit) performs a complete reversal and lets itself fall back into the Centre in its perfect ‘yieldedness’ (Gelassenheit) and through it enters back into-itself, escaping into the Light of the ‘still mystery. And from this sinking into the eternal Freedom of the divine Heart flows forth the ‘Meekness’ (Sanftmut) like tears of joy or a sigh of relief, which makes the Water-spirit mild and calm.

And here we see that the ‘lightning’ (Blitz) is also a ‘leer’ (Blick), for with the opening of the divine Centre there flashes through the ‘gaze’ of the Eternal Freedom, shattering the darkness and this ‘flash’ (Blitz – Blick) marks the decisive middle point (Scheidepunkt) of the eternal birth-wheel, its central axis; for (upon reaching the centre of the ‘cross’, which is also the divine ‘Heart’) the hungering will of the Fire-spirit, flickering upwards from the watery matrix, finds itself confronted by the meekness and is as stunned (or ‘shocked’) by its tranquility. It now finds itself at a crossroads, either to imagine into the meekness by feasting on the mild Water-spirit or to repel backwards in a terror lucis and to enter back into the harshness of Nature.

Thus the divine ‘gaze’ opens itself to two ‘eyes’ (famously depicted by Böhme himself in his Philosophical Sphere), a dark, fiery one and a light one, which are two eternal Principles (“the Fire is a Principle, and also the Light which is born from the Fire”, Tabulae, I.46) and thus we see how with the death of (dark) Nature (the Finsterwelt) in the ‘flashing open’ (auf-blitzen) of the abyssal Freedom the end curves back into the beginning where it makes itself a new Beginning (or Principle). For in a radical ‘leap of freedom’ the Fire-spirit plunges itself into the waters of meekness (the mild Mercurius) wherein its burning wrath is extinguished transforming itself into a mild flame of love (the ‘Light-fire’) which enkindles the ‘Love-desire’ (Liebebegierde), marking the fifth Quality of eternal Nature. And here starts the light ternary, the ‘birth of the Son’ (Lux vera) properly so called, who shines into the darkness of the Father.

 

When the Fire-flash enters into its mother, the harshness, and finds her now overcome and mild, it is enormously startled (erschrocken) and in the overcome harshness immediately becomes white and bright and trembles and rejoices in its Mother. And now that this bright white light shines into the harshness it too is startled that it sinks down as if it were dead and overcome and expands and becomes very soft and thin so that her dark and hard wellspring appears now as a light and meek Water-spirit. And in this Joy, in the water-spring, the pleasant source of the bottomless love rises up, and all that rises up there is the second Principle (Tribus Prin. IV.50)

 

This is the eternal victory of light over darkness, the divine Sun rising over the primordial waters, Christ eternal conquering the night of death. And in the splendor of divine majesty the dark ternary (1-3 Quality) is transfigured into a ‘wheel of triumph’, a victorious breakthrough of light and love.  

 

When the fourth enters into the first, all the spirits intermingle their light, triumph, and rejoice. They then arise all one within the other, and evolve each other as if moving in circular motion; and the light in the midst of them begins to shine and renders them luminous (Aurora, XIII.80)

 

The whole of the light ternary can thus be seen as ‘transfigured’ repetition of the dark one and.as such we are told that “the first and the seventh Quality must be regarded as one, likewise the second and sixth, and also the third and the fifth; whereas the fourth is the principle of division” (Clavis, IX.75).

However, given what we’ve said so far, it is also obvious that the fifth Quality (Liebe-begierde) likewise mirrors the first (Begierde), which manifests as a desire for substantiality that moves the ‘yielded’ Light-spirit back out of its tranquility, thus giving rise to the Tincture, which marks beginning of this ‘light-corporeity’ (Lichtwesenheit).  

 

And hereby we give you earnestly to understand, that the source or property in the center – out of which the Fire-spirit goes forth upwards in the essentiality [i.e. the watery matrix], and where the death [of the ‘sting’] sinks downwards, and the [‘cross-births’ of the] essences sideways – generates another will, which has a desire to put the death, as also the fire in the sharpness, with the essences of the will, into the Freedom: and the will attains the Freedom, in the fire; and makes the fire shine bright, and makes the joy; and this second or comprehended will is called the Tincture. For it is a glance or splendor in the darkness, and has the power of life, and sprouts through the death of the essentiality; and quiets the anguish (Trip. Vita, IV.17).

 

The Tincture can be seen as a transfiguration of the Angst which characterizes the third Quality; for whereas in the turning of the anguish-wheel harshness and bitterness ‘tasted’ each other in a sharp and repulsive ‘disgust’ (Ekel), it is the Tincture that transforms harshness and bitterness into a ‘sweet’ attraction and which joins the Fire- and (Water- or) Light-spirit in a loving union.

 

The whole begetting or generating falls into a glorious Love; for the harshness now loves the light dearly, because it is so refreshing, cheerly, and beautiful; for from this pleasant refreshing it becomes thus sweet, courteous, and humble (or lowly), and the bitterness now loves the harshness, because it is no more dark, nor so strongly (or fiercely) attractive to itself, but is sweet, mild, pure, and light (Tribus Prin. IV.51).

 

By ‘tincturing’ the meek Water-spirit it is changed into a ‘Light-water’ with which the ‘Oil’ of Tincture envelops itself so as not to be immediately devoured by the Fire and, feasting on this heavenly manna, the hunger of the Fire-will is finally quenched, so that Fire and Water (also bitterness and harshness, or even more fundamentally: Spirit and Nature) now enter into a hierogamy (Böhme also speaks of “kiss of Love” and of a “sweet embracing of Bride and Bridegroom”) which produces the ‘androgynous Mercurius’ (also referred to as ‘ignited Light-water’ or ‘luminous Fire-water’) as their ‘golden child’ (filius philosophorum), which is the ‘divine element’ (das heilige Element) from which the Body of God is to be woven, and in which everything stands in a perfect harmony or ‘temperature’.

Thus the infernal strive, the pushing and pulling, rising and falling, is transfromed into the joyful play of a loving giving and taking – “The light giveth and the fire taketh”. For both Spirit and Nature have eternally desired their corporeity; the Fire-spirit needs a body on which to feed itself and the substance of the (Light-)Water needs a spirit to ‘breath’ life into it and enkindle in it the ‘life-spark’. And now Nature has been fully subdued by Spirit, not as a violent suppression, but as a loving submission, for “the desire of Freedom (5. Quality) tinctures the desire of Nature (1. Quality), so that the grim Nature lets go of her own desire and surrenders the desire of Freedom” (Sign. Re. V.2). The Light willingly offers itself to the Fire as a sweet nourishment (dulce refrigerium) and the Fire feasts on the Light, thereby generating it (a nourishment that is thus never spent, for it is the “water of eternal Life” that wells up out of the infinite Ground of the Ungrund itself): “And thus there is an eternal generating and devouring and a giving and taking and there is neither beginning nor end” (Mys. Mag. VII.4).

Finally we might say that in the ‘love-desire’ of the fifth Quality what was dispersed in the ‘repulsive’ third Quality (multiplicity from unity) is now gathered back into harmonious unity of the divine Heart (unity-in-multiplicity) and in the eternal dawn of the Son, the ‘irrational clock-work’ of the anguish-wheel is changed into a great symphony in which all parts yield to the others in a loving inclination (hence why Böhme also now speaks of the ‘love-essences’).

 

As the sun in the terrestrial plane transforms harshness into harmony, so acts the light of God in the forms of eternal Nature; This light shines into them and out of them; it ignites them so that they obtain its will and surrender themselves to it entirely. They then give up their own will and become as if they had no power at all of themselves, and are desirous only for the power of the light (Sex puncta, V.3.)

 

This light shineth into the darkness – but yet the darkness comprendeth it not. For whereas the first Principle could be described as a fiery hungering for form and substance, the second Principle merely yields form (the pure light of the divine Sun) and it is only in the third Principle that they fully attain to substantiality and their ‘comprehensive’ union.

    And thus the ingathered unity is once more diffused from the divine Heart, not as a silent ‘expiration’ but as intelligible sound, a great cry of joy or a Music (as Böhme says), in which the harmonia praestabilita resounds as great ‘reverberation’ (Schall & Hall).

 

The sixth form of eternal nature is intelligent life or sound. The qualities being all in a state of equilibrium in the light [the fifth Quality], they now rejoice and acquire audibility. Thereby the desire of the unity enters into a state of willing and acting, perceiving and feeling (Tabulae, I.48.)

 

In this harmony all the unique essences, vibrating as individual strings,  are first apprehended in their ‘differentiation’ (Schiedlichkeit); and in the polyphony of this ‘audible life’ all powers find and grasp to themselves in the ‘love-play’ (Liebespiel) of this ‘world of Joy’ (Freudereich), reflecting each other like ‘gleaming mirrors of Divinity’, thereby attaining to their mutual comprehension (Verständnis).

Here now (in the seventh Quality) is made manifest what was seen in the abyssal Mirror from eternity (and by circular nature of the Birth we might say that the images appear in the esoteric mirror precisely as a  reflection of their exoteric manifestation). The Word that had been spoken (or ‘expired’) in the still mystery is finally heard and “standeth as a Maiden in Ternario Sancto” (i.e. the Trinity manifested in Nature).

 

The seventh quality is the corporeal comprehension of the other qualities. It is called ‘substantial Wisdom’ (wesenhafte Weisheit) or the ‘Body of God’. The third Principle appears in the seven forms of nature in so far as they have been brought into comprehensibility (Fasslichkeit) in the seventh. This principle or state of being is holy, pure, and good. It is called the eternal uncreated Heaven or the Kingdom of God, and it is outspoken from the first Principle, of the dark fire-world and from the holy light-flaming love-world (De Electione, IV.10).

 

This is thus Wisdom-made-manifest, the ‘Kingdom’ of God, His ‘Glory’ (doxa) and His ‘Corporality’ (Leiblichkeit ist das Ende der Werke Gottes, as Oetinger famously said), “the House of the Holy Trinity, and the Ornament of the Divine and Angelical Worlds”.

 

Wisdom is the substantiality of the Spirit. The Spirit wears it as a garment, and becomes revealed thereby. Without it the form of the spirit would not be knowable; it is Spirit’s corporeity (Trip. Vita, V.50.)

 

And here is revealed the third Principle, final product (or ‘effect’) of the theogonic process (similar to Erigena’s natura creans et non creata), the ‘divine World’ as the original, paradisiacal creation.

The Father, ruling in the Fire of the first Principle, eternally generates the Son by means of the seven Qualities of eternal Nature and the Son, who is revealed in the second Principle as the Light, forever glorifies the Father and makes off His Wrath a fount of Love. The third Principle then is ruled by the Holy Spirit, who goes forth as the ‘Air’ of the Fire and the Light and who ‘discloses’ the Father (1. Principle) to the Son (2. Principle) in the Mirror of Wisdom. For He “works as a Formator in the powers”, He is the divine Pianist who moves as a great Will through the strings of the essences and the Weaver who weaves the luminous garments of the Deity (der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid) – “Radiance sowing seed for its own Glory, like the seed of fine purple silk wrapping itself within, weaving itself a Palace” (Zohar I.15). He is the Spirit of Life, who “proceeds through the Word, in the divine World, and forms everything that grows and lives”, and by His breath the essences become ‘living being’ (the angels), springing forth like sparks from the divine Light.

 

The Holy Spirit reveals the Godhead in Nature. He extends the splendor of the majesty, so that it may be recognized in the wonders of Nature. He is not that splendor itself, but its power, and He introduces the splendor of the majesty into the substantiality wherein the Godhead is revealed (Trip. Vita, IV. 82, V.39).

 

 

 

And thus is revealed the eternal Heaven; that we may attain to it so help us God. Amen.

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

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