The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 30 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 4 (part 1)
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89 CHAPTER IV.
CREATION.
Everything we see in nature is manifested truth; only we are not able to recognise it as such, unless the truth is manifest within ourselves.
God is the supreme, fundamental, universal, self-existent eternal cause; absolute and unimaginable glory, perfection, goodness, beauty, magnificence, and splendour.
He created everything out of His own self, as there was nothing but Himself to create from.
It is, therefore, logical to suppose that the first powers which He created and which were nearest to Him must have been divine and spiritual, all lower existences being more remote from His supreme state, belonging to a more " material " condition of creation.
The same may be observed in man.
His thoughts are nearer to his divine centre and self than his muscles and bones, and the realm of his soul is nearer to his spirit than his material body, and the more holy his thoughts the more will they be capable to communicate with the God in him.
Boehme says:— "God has created the holy angels, not by means of any substance foreign to His own self, but out of His own self, out of His power and eternal wisdom." ( Aurora , iv.
26.) Truly, if there was or is nothing but God, it follows that God is the All, and that there is nothing which is not God.
Nevertheless, those creations of God which are in a certain sense remote from the divine centre are not divine, and therefore not God.
"It is said that God is everything, that He is in heaven and earth, and also the external world, and such an assertion is true in a certain sense; because everything p.
90 originates in and from God.
But of what use is such a doctrine, which is not a religion?
Such a doctrine was accepted by the devil, who wanted to be manifest and powerful in everything." ( Tilk ., ii.
140.) Such a system of Pantheism may satisfy the rationalistic reasoner, who has no power of spiritual perception, but true divine knowledge has nothing to do with such a Pantheism nor with rationalistic Theism.
It does not admit of a confounding of the terms "God" and the "world." The universe is not identical with God, neither is the spirit of man identical with his body.
Not even the Christ is identical with God, in so far as He has become human.
"The external world is not God, and will not be God in all eternity.
The world is merely a state of existence wherein God is manifesting Himself." ( Stief ., ii.
316.) God is not man.
"There will always a distinction have to be made between the Godhead and humanity, between the human will and the will of God." ( Stief ., ii.
95.) The moon has no light of her own; she merely reflects the light of the sun.
Nevertheless the light coming from the moon is not equal to sunlight.
Likewise man's will and consciousness is derived from God; but for all that it is only human, and not divine.
"If a man says of himself, 'I, the living word of God in this my holy flesh and bone, say and do this or that,' he then dishonours the sacred name of God.
This is also against the doctrines of the Bible; for whenever the intellect of a man was selected for the purpose of prophecy, the prophet did not say, 'I, Mr.
So-and-So, say this or that,' but he said, 'Thus speaks the Lord!' This means that the Lord speaks in and through such a man, and the latter is His medium and instrument." ( Stief ., i.
84.) A man can never be God; not even Christ in His human aspect made ever any such claims.
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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.
The text explicitly draws a parallel between the divine creation hierarchy and the structure of man (thoughts/soul vs body).
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The passage is fundamentally a doctrine of cosmic origin: God as 'the supreme, fundamental, universal, self-existent eternal cause' who 'created everything out of His own self, as there was nothing but Himself to create from.'
The doctrine that the divine is present within all things and the universe itself, pervading creation rather than remaining solely transcendent above it. Distinct from unity_of_being (the general claim that all existence is one substance, agnostic about whether that substance indwells its parts) and from kingdom_within (the divine present specifically IN THE INDIVIDUAL human, accessible without mediation) — divine_immanence is the general pervading-presence claim applied to all of creation, not a human-specific indwelling.
The passage affirms that 'everything originates in and from God' and that the world is 'a state of existence wherein God is manifesting Himself,' while explicitly denying pantheistic identity — the divine pervades creation without being identical to it.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
God is identified as the supreme cause who created everything out of His own self.
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 doctrine that the cosmos unfolds as a structured descent of spirit into matter — a directional process traced stage by stage from an unconditioned principle down through successive planes to full materialization — complemented by its own eventual return ('evolution'). Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (the static structure of the resulting levels of the cascade) and cosmogony (a single originating event rather than an ongoing staged process) in naming the directional cosmic PROCESS of descent itself, paired with its own complementary ascent.
The passage describes a structured directional descent from divine spirit to material existence: 'the first powers which He created and which were nearest to Him must have been divine and spiritual, all lower existences being more remote from His supreme state, belonging to a more material condition of creation.'
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
The human being is presented as a small-scale image of the cosmos, with soul and spirit mirroring divine proximity.