The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 51 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 6 (part 4)
Then in the spirit of external nature there originated a male and a female kind—namely, in the fiery Mercury the male, and in the watery the female one." ( Clavis , 86.) "On the third day the fiery and the watery Mercury have again entered in conjunction and mixture, and then the sal-nitre gave birth to grasses and herbs and trees." ( Clavis , 88.) "After God had put heaven between the love and the wrath, for the purpose of discernment, there on the third day love penetrated through heaven into the wrath.
Then the old and deadened body began to stir and to feel the anguish of generation; for love is ardent, and it ignited the fountain of fire, and the latter caused a friction in the acrid and cold quality of stiffened death, until on the third day the acrid quality became heated, and thus the acrid earth became moveable.
( Aurora , xxv.
29).
"When the light contained in the sweet water penetrated through the acrid spirit, the lightning flash, having become ignited in the water, in the acrid, hard, and dead quality, it caused motion in everything, and thus came movability (life) into existence, not only in the heaven above the earth, but also at the same time within the earth.
Then there began life to be generated in all things, and from the earth were produced grass, herbs, and trees, and within the earth there were formed silver, gold, and metals of various kinds." ( Aurora , xxi, 132; xx.
6.) p.
129 As the light could be active only in the corrupted essence, there being none other, the products formed thereby were of a mixed kind, half good and half evil.
"When the light appeared again within the external conceivableness, the Word brought forth life out of death, and the corrupted sal-nitre produced fruits again; but this had to take place in a certain relation to the depraved state existing in the wrath, and as the external forthcoming of those fruits took place from the earth, they had to become evil and good." ( Aurora , xxi.
19.) Before the ignition of the sun and the stars took place nature was resting as in a state of death, and the formations proceeding from her were devoid of the living, growth-producing power.
"Until the third day after the ignition of the wrath of God in this world, nature remained in anxiety, and was a dark valley in death; but on the third day, when the light of the stars became ignited in the water of life, the life broke through death, and the new generation began." ( Aurora , xxiv.
41.) "In the earth there is above all the acrid quality.
This contracts the sal-nitre and solidifies the earth, causing it to become a corporeal being, forming therein also bodies of various kinds, such as rocks, metals, and manifold roots.
When this is formed it has nevertheless no life to enable it to grow and expand.
But when the heat of the sun acts upon the soil, various formations prosper and grow in the earth." ( Aurora , viii.
41.) Likewise the material and earthly elements in man have no power themselves to rise superior to their own nature.
This they can do in no other way than by the power of the Divine Spirit.
Now the eternal light of God shone into the darkness of this world and ignited the heat in the firmament or p.
130 heaven, and thus out of the fire arose the light—that is to say, the sun and the starry sky.
"After the heaven had been made, for the sake of distinction between the light of God and the corrupted body of this world, the latter was a dark valley and without light, and all the powers were captured, as if in death, and very uneasy until they became kindled in the midst of the whole body.
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.
[auto] The passage extensively uses alchemical terminology such as Mercury, sal-nitre, fiery/watery qualities, and ignition to describe cosmic generation.
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 structural parallel between the cosmic ignition of light and the human spiritual awakening ('Likewise the material and earthly elements in man...') embodies the 'as above, so below' principle making each level a legible map of the other.
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 entire passage is a cosmogonic narrative describing the successive stages of the world's origin: the emergence of male/female principles, the third-day conjunction, the ignition of light in water, the birth of plants and metals, and the kindling of the sun and stars.
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.
There is an implied flow from God through heaven into the qualities of nature (love, wrath, earth) that structure creation.
The Hermetic doctrine that a masculine-feminine generative principle operates on every plane of being, not only the biological — present at all times as a structural feature of creation itself. Distinct from divine_marriage (a specific reunification event or symbol) and aeons (paired divine beings arranged in syzygies, not a universal structural claim).
The passage explicitly establishes a masculine-feminine generative principle at the cosmic level: 'a male and a female kind—namely, in the fiery Mercury the male, and in the watery the female one,' presenting gender as a structural feature of creation itself.
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 traces a directional descent from God's light through successive stages—into the firmament, into water, into the acrid earth, into corporeal matter—depicting spirit unfolding into matter as a staged process.
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 text explicitly parallels earthly elements with human elements, stating 'Likewise the material and earthly elements in man have no power themselves'.
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).
Opposing principles (fire/water, love/wrath, light/darkness, life/death, hot/cold) are presented as interacting extremes whose friction and tension produce motion and generation, consistent with the Hermetic doctrine of identity-by-degree.