The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 28 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 3 (part 8)
Without it the form of the spirit would not be knowable; it is the corporeity of the spirit.
To be sure, it is not a bodily, tangible substance, like the bodies of men, but has nevertheless substantial and visible qualities which the spirit per se does not possess." ( Threefold Life , v.
50.) There is no language to describe the beauty and splendour of divine wisdom.
Whatever there is of magnificence perceptible in this terrestrial world exists in the celestial world in a far superior state, in eternal spiritual perfection.
"Earthly language is entirely insufficient to describe what there is of joy, happiness, and loveliness contained in the inner wonders of God.
Even if the eternal Virgin pictures them to our minds, man's constitution is too cold and dark to be able to express even a spark of it in his language." ( Three Principles , xiv.
90.) Neither are these superterrestrial pictures mere shadows or creations of fancy.
"Just as the earth continually produces plants and flowers, trees and metals, and beings of various kinds, one always more glorious, stronger, and more beautiful than the rest; and as on our terrestrial plane one form appears while others perish, there being a continual working and evolving of forms, likewise the eternal generation within the holy mystery continually takes place in great power; so that, in consequence of this perpetual wrestling of spiritual powers, one after another divine fruits appear by the side of each other, all and each of them in the radiance of beautiful colours.
All that whereof the terrestrial world by which we are surrounded is merely an earthly symbol, exists in the celestial p.
86 realm in exquisite perfection in a spiritual state.
It does not exist there merely as a spirit, a will, or a thought, but in corporeal substantiality, in essence and power, and appears inconceivable merely in comparison with the external material world." ( Signature , xvi.
18.) This beauty the divine and essential wisdom, the eternal Virgin, does not produce by her own power; but by the power of God that acts within her.
She herself is without any will of her own.
"Not wisdom, but the Spirit of God, is the centre, or the discloser.
As the soul is manifesting herself in the body by means of the flesh, and as the latter would have no power if it were not inhabited by a living spirit, likewise the wisdom of God is the corporeity of the Holy Spirit, by means of which He assumes substantiality, so as to manifest Himself to Himself.
Wisdom gives birth, but she would not do so if the Spirit were not acting within her.
She brings forth without the power of the fire-life; she has no ardent desire, but her joy finds its perfection in the manifestation of the Godhead, and therefore she is called a virgin in chastity and purity before God." ( Tilk ., ii.
64.) Divine wisdom exists only by means of the Trinity, and the latter can be revealed only by forming eternal nature within its own body.
"The light and the power of the sun disclose the mysteries of the external world by the production and growth of various beings.
Likewise God, representing the eternal Sun, or the one eternal and only Good, would not reveal Himself without the presence of His eternal spiritual nature, wherein alone He can manifest His power.
Only when the power of God becomes differentiated and relatively conscious, so that there are individual powers to wrestle with each other during their love-play, will be opened in Him the great and immeasurable fire of p.
87 love by means of the forthcoming of the Holy Trinity." ( Grace , ii.
28.) The Father, ruling the first principle, the fire, generates eternally the Son, the light, by means of the seven forms of eternal nature; and the Son, revealing Himself in the second principle as the light, for ever glorifies the Father.
Eckhart's signature doctrine that the Father eternally begets the Son in the ground of the soul; the human interior as the actual site of the divine generative act, distinct from inner_light's static indwelling.
Wisdom gives birth through the Spirit acting within her, mirroring divine generation.
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 passage explicitly states that the terrestrial world is merely an earthly symbol of what exists in the celestial realm in exquisite perfection.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The passage describes the Father generating the Son eternally and the perpetual wrestling of spiritual powers within the holy mystery.