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.
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 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 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.