The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 48 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 6 (part 1)
p.
122 CHAPTER VI.
THE RESTORATION OF NATURE AND THE GENERATION OF MAN.
" If we speak about heaven and the birth of the elements, we are then not telling of things that are far away or foreign to us, but of that which is taking place within our own self, and there is nothing nearer to us than this birth, for we are therein as in our own mother.
If we speak of heaven, we then speak of our home, of our own country, wherein the illumined soul can see, even if that country is hidden before the eyes of the body." ( Principles , vii.
7.) The Mosaic account of creation was never intended to be a history of the creation of the world from the beginning, but it is a history of the renewal or the restoration of the natural world that was formerly ruled by Lucifer, and which was thrown into disorder and convulsion by his desertion from God.
"Before the times of the wrath there were in the locality of this world the six sourcive spirits generating the seventh in a sweet and lovely manner, as is even now done in heaven, and there was growing therein not even a spark of wrath.
All that was contained therein was light and clear, needing no other light, for the fountain of love within the heart of God was illumining all.
Nature was then very ethereal, and everything therein stood in great power.
But as soon as in nature the war with the proud devils began, everything took another shape and mode of action.
The light became extinguished in the external generation, and therefore the heat became imprisoned in corporeity and could no p.
123 longer generate its own life.
From this cause death then entered into nature, and nature degenerated.
Consequently another creation of light had to be inaugurated, and without that the earth would have had to remain in eternal death." 1 ( Aurora , xvii.
2; iv.
15.) Everything in nature was to bloom out and become newly-born, as may be seen by beholding minerals and stones, trees, grass, and herbs, and animals of various kinds, and although all these formations were perishable and not pure in the sight of God, nevertheless God intended to extract from them at the end of this time their heart and kernel, and to separate them from the wrath and death, and then that which had thus been regenerated was to bloom eternally, and to bear again celestial fruits outside of and beyond the locality of this world." 2 ( Aurora , xxiv.
2 5.) "The same sal-nitre " (the material basis or foundation), "which at the time of the ignition of the wrath perished in death, has at the time of regeneration been raised in the flash of fire.
It has not become anything new, but merely another form of corporeity, which is now in a state of death" (existing relatively to us as gross matter).
3 ( Aurora , xxii.
80.) The outcast spirits, having produced in nature a state of ignition, God gathered together the essence of that nature, and thereby He withdrew it from the reach of those powers, putting a stop to their insolence by means of water.
4 p.
124 "The outcast spirits were still in the quality of the Father, and therefore they ignited the quality of nature by means of their imagination, so that the celestial substance became earth and stones, and the sweet spirit of the water a burning sky.
After this the creation of this world took place." ( Menschwerdung , i.
2–8.) Creation could not take place as long as all the elements were in a state of revolution; only after the "Spirit of God moved upon the waters of the deep" could the divine Word take form.
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.
The passage uses specific alchemical terminology such as 'sal-nitre,' 'ignition,' 'corporeity,' and 'flash of fire' to describe spiritual transformation.
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 actively gathers the essence of nature and withdraws it from the reach of outcast powers.
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 text mentions 'six sourcive spirits generating the seventh,' implying a generative chain of divine principles.
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 text speaks of the 'end of this time' where God separates the regenerated from wrath and death.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
Evil and death entered nature when 'the light became extinguished,' framing evil as an absence of divine light.
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 text explicitly states that heaven and creation are taking place 'within our own self,' mirroring the cosmic structure in the human.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
The fall is described as Lucifer's 'desertion from God,' causing nature to degenerate and enter death.
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.
Regenerated nature is to 'bloom eternally' and bear celestial fruits, indicating transformation into a divine state.
The 1 Enoch narrative in which a class of originally-good angelic beings (the Watchers) descends, mates with women, and teaches forbidden arts — the substrate that Gnostic archons inherits and inverts: archons are born malevolent, the Watchers fall through transgression.
The narrative of 'outcast spirits' deserting God and igniting nature parallels the descent of fallen angelic powers.