The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 52 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 6 (part 5)
But when this took place the love in the light of God broke through that heaven of division and ignited the heat." ( Aurora , xxv.
68.) "God, the eternal light and the eternal will, shines within the darkness, and the darkness has captured the will (received its activity).
In this will arises now the anxiety, and in this is the fire, and in the fire the light.
Thus from the fire the stars have been produced, and from the power of the heavens the sun." ( Three Principles , viii.
22.) All this takes place in a corresponding manner during the spiritual regeneration of man.
Thereby divine Wisdom has manifested itself, not in an entirely pure, and therefore not permanent and immutable manner, but nevertheless as in a clear mirror, and it thereby drove the devil backward deep into his darkness.
"On the fourth day God, out of His eternal wisdom, created the lord of the third principle (the visible world), the sun and the stars.
Herein is now truly seen the Godhead and the eternal wisdom of God, as in a clear mirror.
This being, visible before our eyes, is not God Himself, but a God in the third principle, which will ultimately return to his ether and take an end." ( Three Principles , viii.
13.) "God has made a solid foundation (firmament) called 'heaven,' between the most external and the most internal generation, between the clear Godhead and corrupted nature, through which one must break if one wants to go to God.
Of this foundation it is said ( Hiob .
xiv.
15) that p.
131 even the heavens are not pure before God, but on the day of judgment the wrath shall be swept therefrom." 1 ( Aurora , xx.
41.) "At the time of creation another light, the sun, was awakened in this world, it having been corrupted by Lucifer, and thereby the splendour of the devil was taken away.
Thus he has been shut in like a prisoner into the darkness between the realm of God and the realm of this world, so that he has no longer anything to rule over in this world, except in the Turba, wherein is awakened the wrath and anger of God." ( Menschwerdung , i.
2.) The sun has been revealed by means of the soul of the world, and is made of the influences of all the stars.
He is also the life of all the stars.
Thus the sun of divine Wisdom in man is representing the collective knowledge which man has gathered from his experiences, having as a basis his own divine self-consciousness.
Without that self-consciousness in God all his intellectual acquisitions are merely vapoury, and will pass away.
"In the soul of the external world, and by means of it, God has awakened a king, or, as I would wish to call it symbolically, a natural deity, together with six councillors, to be his assistants, namely, the sun and the six other planets, which were spoken out of the seven qualities from the locus (seat or centre) of the sun.
The sun receives his splendour from the tincture of the fire-world and the world of light, and is manifested as a revealed point in relation to the world of fire." ( Mysterium , xiii.
16.) "In the death in the centre—that is to say, in the body or the corporeal substance of the earth, God has awakened the tincture , its lustre, splendour, and light, wherein is contained the life of the earth; but to the depth above p.
132 the centre He has given the sun, which is a tincture of the fire, and which, with its power, reaches into the freedom outside and beyond nature, and from which nature receives its splendour.
He is the life of the whole circle of stars, and all these stars are His children.
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.
Terms like 'tincture', 'fire-world', and transformation of substance are central.
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 passage explicitly states that cosmic creation takes place in a 'corresponding manner' during spiritual regeneration.
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 creates, awakens, and orders the cosmos and human regeneration.
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 describes a flow from the eternal Godhead through principles (fire-world, light-world) to the visible world and man.
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 references the day of judgment where wrath is swept from the heavens.
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.
Darkness is described as capturing the will or being a realm where the devil is shut in.
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 sun of divine wisdom in man represents collective knowledge, mirroring the cosmic sun.
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.
A foundation called heaven separates the clear Godhead from corrupted nature, which one must break.
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.
Spiritual regeneration of man involves manifesting divine Wisdom within.