The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 23 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 3 (part 3)
The seven spirits are in the centre of the Father—that is to say, in the power of the Word.
The Word changes the wrathfulness into sweet joy and shapes it into a crystalline ocean; therein the seven spirits appear in a burning form, like seven luminous torches." ( Threefold Life , iii.
46.) A variety of colours is necessary to make up a picture, to represent an idea, and although the idea represented by the various colours is only one, nevertheless each colour retains its essential qualities.
The various organs of the human body manifest various powers, nevertheless they all go to make up one manifestation of life.
The various planets have each one its own special qualities, nevertheless they go to make up one world.
Likewise each of the seven forms remains what it is, but their manifestations differ widely according to the planes and conditions under which they are manifesting themselves.
The First Quality begins when God, for the purpose of revealing His majesty, allows His eternal nature to contract within herself, whereby a state of darkness and corporeity is created.
"The first quality is the desire.
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.) "In this state there is no active life or intelligence; it is merely the first principle of substantiality, or the first beginning of the becoming." ( Three Principles , vii.
11.) p.
76 "In eternity beyond nature there can be no darkness, because there is nothing that could produce it.
The will by desiring contracts and becomes substantial.
Thus darkness is created within the will, while without that desire there would be nothing but eternal stillness without substantiality." ( Forty Questions .) "Desire is an acrid, astringent, attracting (contracting) quality.
It is an active power, and without it there would be nothing but tranquillity.
It contracts and fills itself with itself; but that which it attracts constitutes nothing but darkness, a state which is more compact than the original will, the latter being thin as nothing, but it then becomes full and substantial." ( Threefold Life , ii.
12.) The fact of this contractive power of desire, by which the will is rendered substantial, corporeal, and heavy, is experienced by every one who feels the weight of sorrow caused by some unfulfilled desire weighing upon his soul, while freedom from desire, and consequently from care, renders the heart (the will) light and ethereal.
Simultaneously with the appearance of the first enters the Second Form , namely, motion.
Matter and motion are co-eternal, and neither of them can exist without the other.
There could be no contraction without motion, neither would there be any expansion if there were no desire to contract.
With the beginning of action reaction begins.
There is then a duality of manifestation of the eternal One.
From this duality of action, having its source in the One, results the manifestation of relative life.
"Motion divides the attracted desire and causes differentiation, thereby awakening the true life." ( Clavis , viii.
30.) "From this results sensitiveness in nature, and herein is the cause of differentiation.
Hardness (solidity) and the motion of life are opposed to each other.
Motion p.
77 breaks up the solidity (expands), and by means of attraction it also causes hardness (contracts)." ( Tabulæ Princip ., i.
34.) "Desire, being a strong attraction, causes the ethereal freedom, which is comparable to a nothing, to contract and enter into a state of darkness.
The primitive will desires to be free of that darkness, for it desires the light.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
[auto] The text uses analogies between colors/pictures, body organs/life, and planets/world to illustrate how divine qualities manifest across different scales.
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
Freedom from desire is described as rendering the heart light and ethereal, contrasting with the weight of contraction.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
Darkness is described not as a separate substance but as a state created within the will through contraction and desire.
Luria's doctrine of the divine self-contraction by which Ein Sof withdraws to make ontological room for a created world; creation as divine self-limitation rather than emanation outward.
[auto] The passage explicitly describes God allowing His eternal nature to contract within herself to create darkness and corporeity, matching the definition of divine self-contraction.