The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 35 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 4 (part 6)
"The created world was before the mysterium magnum, for all things were then in a spiritual condition in wisdom, as in a continual play or wrestle of love.
The one only Will conceived this spiritual form into the Word, and permitted the intelligence (the separate consciousness— i.e.
, the acrid and astringent quality), to act without restraint, so that each power could enter or build itself a form according to its own specific quality." ( Grace , iv.
12.) "The eternal Mind is always desirous for the power, and the power is the astringency, and the astringency is the contraction, attraction, or the eternal fiat , which creates and renders corporeal that which the eternal Will desires in its own benevolence.
The Will desires by means of the keen fiat to bring into substantiality (render objective) that which it beholds in eternal Wisdom." ( Three Principles , xiv.
74.) Thus the divine spirit in man, by means of the thoughts of the latter, brings the powers which exist in his microcosm into shapes which are objective to him, and which form the soul world wherein he resides.
p.
99 Creation could, however, become actually complete only by means of the activity of all the seven divine spirits.
It is therefore true that in one sense it was not God, the primordial Cause, that directly created the world, but the elohims or "powers" that created it by means of the power received from the fundamental causation.
"The universe with all its beings has been created out of eternal nature, out of the seven spirits of eternal nature." ( Threefold Life , iii.
40.) "Whenever anything is born out of the divine Essence, it is brought into form, not merely by one spirit, but by all the seven." ( Aurora , x.
4.) "When the Godhead stirred for the purpose of creating a world, it softly moved within the acrid quality and contracted the latter within the divine sal-nitre ." ( Aurora , xiii.
94.) In the formation of beings, their own spirit co-operates with the universal Spirit.
The universal Life could not produce a tree out of the four elements if there were not a seed containing the qualities necessary to grow into a tree.
Nevertheless, by the expression "their own spirit," it is not to be understood as if these spirits were anything essentially different from God.
They are merely individual centres, receiving their power from the universal Fountain of love.
"Originally the spirit is a magic gush or outburst of fire and desires for substantiality—that is to say, 'form.' This is then caused by that desire, and constitutes the corporeity of the spirit, and the spirit is then called a created being." ( Tilk .
i.
186.) Every human being has within himself the capacity to create, but not every one has that power developed.
Everybody can imagine, but not every one is artist enough to bring the objects of his imagination into an external objective form by painting or sculpture.
Likewise every p.
100 one has good and evil powers within himself, but not every one has his spiritual strength sufficiently developed to create of them living and conscious forms.
"The centre of each thing is spirit, co-existing with the Word.
The separation (differentiation) of a thing (by which it distinguishes itself from other things) is in the quality of its will, by means of which it assumes a form or state of being according to its own essential (predominating) desire." ( Letters , xlvii.
5.) "Even to-day the act of creation still continues, and it will not end until the judgment of God arrives.
Then will that which has grown in the holy tree of life become separated from the unholy thistles and thorns." ( Three Principles , xxiii.
The transformation of base substance — outer matter or the inner soul — into a purified, perfected, or 'gold' state; the magnum opus as both laboratory practice and spiritual allegory.
References to sal-nitre, fire, and the transformation of spirit into substantiality reflect alchemical processes.
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.
The divine Will conceives form into the Word within man's thoughts, bringing powers into objective shapes.
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 structure of the human microcosm reflects and co-operates with the universal Spirit and macrocosm.
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.
Final, collective cosmic judgment as an event in which the wicked are sentenced and the cosmos restored; distinct from psychopomp_journey (individual passage at death) and emphasising verdict where Zoroastrian frashokereti emphasises restoration.
The passage mentions that creation continues until the judgment of God arrives to separate the holy from the unholy.
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.
[auto] The passage explicitly states that the divine spirit in man brings powers from his microcosm into shapes, mirroring the universal Spirit's creation.
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.
Humans are described as having the capacity to create living forms like God, participating in divine power.
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.
The text describes contraction and attraction as the mechanism that renders the divine desire corporeal.