The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 33 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 4 (part 4)
We may say that the world, as we know it, is constituted entirely of forms of heat, or of motion, or of electric conditions, or light, &c., &c.
All this is true in so far as it refers to the relations which it bears towards ourselves.
All these powers are only modes of manifestation of one primordial and originally divine power, namely, the will of God acting in His own eternal wisdom.
"The eternal Triune God created all things by and through the eternal Word out of His own self, namely, out of His two aspects or qualities; out of eternal nature, the fury or wrath , and out of His love; by means of which the wrath or "nature" was pacified.
Thus He created them, and caused them to enter into existence." ( Stief ., ii.
33.) p.
95 "The Father, being primordial Will, speaks out all things by means of the Word, out of the centre of freedom; but the issue from the Father by means of the Word is the spirit of the power, and this spirit gives form to that which has been outspoken, so that it appears as a spirit." ( Threefold Life , ii.
63).
This magic power, or "Word," has been in God from all eternity, and as such it is God and the "Christ" in its purely divine aspect.
There is not any time during which "God goes to sleep" or loses His self-consciousness; neither does the idea to create come to Him from some outside influence; but God beholds the universe from all eternity in His wisdom as a mirror, and by the act of creation He projects into objectivity (so to say) the image existing subjectively in Him.
It is, therefore, Nature and not God that goes to rest during the "nights of creation," in the same sense as the body of a man goes to sleep, while his spirit remains self-conscious in its own sphere.
"Wisdom is a divine imagination, wherein the ideas of the angels and souls have been seen from eternity; not as substantial, actual creatures, but non-essential, like the images in a mirror." ( Clavis , x.
5.) "The likeness of God, having been seen in the wisdom of God from all eternity, and in which God created Man, was without life and substantiality before the beginning of the time of this world.
It was merely a reflection of the image wherein God saw how He would be in an image." ( Stief ., ii.
123).
"Man has not been from eternity; but only like a shadow stood the image, wherein God in His wisdom knew all things from eternity, in the mirror of His own wisdom." ( Stief ., ii.
143.) The will of God is only one; but by its action within eternal nature a great many divine powers are produced.
p.
96 [paragraph continues] The ideas existing in the universal mind are innumerable, and therefore there is the possibility of innumerable different forms coming into existence by the action of the divine will.
There is, however, nothing fully perfect besides the Godhead, and consequently there exist on all planes beings of different states of perfection, and capable to become more perfect by means of the will of God, which is the law of evolution.
"The kinds of creatures are as varied as are the eternal thoughts in the wisdom of God." ( Three Principles , ix, 37.) "As the divine powers are manifold, even innumerable, so there is a differentiation of ideas and a difference among the angels; in consequence of which some appear like kings or rulers and others as servants." ( Theosophic Question s, v.
9–12.) "There being nothing perfect except the divine Three, consequently all things differ from one another, and likewise the angels have different qualities." ( Threefold Life , v.
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 uses mirror imagery to describe how subjective divine ideas are projected into objective existence.
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 narrates the origin of the cosmos: God creates all things through the Word out of His two aspects (eternal nature/wrath and love), projecting the image existing subjectively in His wisdom into objective existence.
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.
All physical phenomena (heat, motion, light) are described as 'only modes of manifestation of one primordial and originally divine power,' the will of God acting in His eternal wisdom — the divine pervading all of creation.
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.
The will of God is identified as the law of evolution that orders the unfolding of existence.
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.
Creation is described as God 'projecting into objectivity the image existing subjectively in Him,' a directional descent of spirit into form, complemented by the 'law of evolution' whereby beings become more perfect.
The Hermetic doctrine that THE ALL is Mind, and the Universe is mental in nature — a created thought held in the mind of THE ALL. Distinct from unity_of_being in specifying WHAT the underlying oneness is (mind, not an unspecified single substance), and from logos (a mediating ordering word BETWEEN a transcendent God and a separate material world) in collapsing that mediation entirely — under mentalism there is no world outside mind to mediate to.
The passage describes the universe as existing first as ideas in the 'universal mind' or 'wisdom of God,' with creation being the projection of a subjective mental image into objectivity — the cosmos as a thought held in the divine mind.
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.
Man is described as created in the likeness of God, reflecting the image wherein God saw how He would be.
The Hermetic doctrine that apparent opposites are identical in nature but differ in degree — two extremes of the same scale (hot/cold, love/hate) — such that one pole can be shifted toward its opposite by a change of degree ('mental transmutation'). Distinct from opposites_transcended (a completion-state marking the path's end, not this doctrine's active technique) and magical_equilibrium (balance held BETWEEN two forces, not identity-by-degree of what looks like two forces).
God's two aspects — 'eternal nature, the fury or wrath' and 'His love' — are presented as two poles of one divine power, with the wrath pacified by love, illustrating that apparent opposites are manifestations of a single principle.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
Beings are described as capable of becoming more perfect through the will of God, implying progressive transformation.
The doctrine that the one Godhead or first principle subsists as three co-equal aspects or persons rather than a bare unity — the Christian Father/Son/Holy Ghost invoked in the recurring liturgical formula 'In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,' but structurally the same pattern as the Egyptian Amen/Ptah/Osiris, the Hindu Brahma/Vishnu/Siva, and the Kabbalistic Chochmah/Binah/Kether triads that esoteric writers explicitly map onto it as instances of one universal law. Distinct from unity_of_being (the general claim that all existence is one substance, agnostic about internal plurality) and divine_simplicity (God as having no parts or divisions at all) in asserting a definite three-aspected differentiation within a single divine essence.
The passage explicitly invokes 'the eternal Triune God' with Father as primordial Will, the Word as the speaking/creative principle, and the spirit of power that gives form — a three-aspected divine structure.
The doctrine and practice that spoken or sung word carries causal-magical force — that uttering names, formulas, songs, or incantations alters reality directly rather than merely communicating about it. Vainamoinen's runo-songs that move mountains and command iron, Norse galdr, Vedic mantra, Shinto kotodama, the magician's barbarous names in the Greek Magical Papyri, Iamblichean arcane signatures and inexplicable symbols, biblical creation-by-word. Distinct from sacred_names (the ontological power of names themselves) and prayer (address to the divine); word_power_incantation is the magical-causal efficacy of the spoken word as such.
The Word is described as 'magic power' through which the Father 'speaks out all things,' giving the spoken/uttered word direct creative causal force over reality.