The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 73 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 8 (part 1)
p.
164 CHAPTER VIII.
NATURE, OR THE THIRD PRINCIPLE.
"The godless seeks for God outside of his own self, and the Christless sectarians seek for a personal Christ in history; but the man of God and the true Christian know God and Christ within their own soul." "We surely believe in a personal and historical Christ; but only after Christ has become personal in a man will he realise the true nature and vocation of Jesus the son of Jehovah."— Johannes .
The image of everything that ever existed was in the light at the time when God began to create a new world.
The external world, to which Adam had become subjected in consequence of his degradation, has its origin in God's eternal nature and its prototype in His wisdom, wherein it was spiritually contained from the beginning.
We may compare the external world to the imagery seen upon a screen, upon which it has been projected by the light of a magic-lantern.
The images represent the world, the pictures on the slide the ether, and the light itself is the Spirit of God.
"The third principle, the spirit and torment of this world, has been hidden from eternity in eternal nature, and was discovered by the light-flaming spirit in God's wisdom and the divine tincture.
Then the Godhead moved according to the nature of the producing mother, and the great Mysterium was born, wherein was contained everything that is within the power of eternal nature.
This, however, was only a Mysterium, and had no resemblance to any created being.
There everything was as if (mixed) together, like a cloud of dust." 1 ( Menschwerdung , i.
1, 10.) p.
165 "If we rightly consider the creation of this world and the spirit of the third principle, or the spirit of the great world with its stars and elements, we find therein the qualities of the eternal world as if in a state of mixture; wherein Deity willed to manifest the eternal wonders that were hidden, and to bring them into objective existence." ( Six Theosophical Points , ii.
6.) "The external world, in being born (coming into objectivity), makes for itself a new principium or beginning.
The generatrix of the temporal is a reproduction of the eternal generatrix, time originates in eternity, and even here eternity, with its wonderful production, appears, in its powers and capabilities, in an especially temporal form and shape." 1 ( Mysterium , vi.
10.) In this external world, called the third principle, there are manifest two powers—the holy divine power and the power of the darkness.
The latter is even preponderating.
"The third principle, or the visible elemental world, is an issue of the first and second principles, which is produced by the motion and outbreathing of divine power and divine will.
In it is figured the spiritual world according to light and darkness, and brought into a created (objective) condition." ( Tabulæ Principiæ , 5.) "The external world has been outbreathed from the holy and from the dark world.
It is, therefore, evil and good, and in love and wrath; but, compared with the spiritual world, it is only like a smoke or a fog." ( Mysterium , iii.
10.) "The word moved the Fiat in all forms of eternal nature, in harmony with the world of light and the world p.
166 of darkness; so that the desire after the quality of both worlds entered into being.
This caused good and evil to originate in the essentiality, and thereby was created the external visible world, with stars and elements as a particular life." ( Stiefel , i.
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 'divine tincture', 'Mysterium', and 'mixed together' reflect alchemical transformation language.
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 concept that Christ becomes personal in a man aligns with the divine generative act occurring within the human interior.
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 external world is compared to imagery projected from the light of God's wisdom, reflecting an 'as above, so below' structure.
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.
Deity willed to manifest eternal wonders and bring them into objective 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 passage suggests a flow from God's eternal nature through wisdom to the external world.
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 human soul is presented as the site where Christ becomes personal, mirroring the divine structure.
A spiritual elite who possess the divine spark and are predestined for salvation, contrasted with psychic (faithful) and hylic (material) persons.
[auto] A distinction is drawn between the 'man of God and true Christian' who knows internally versus the 'godless' and 'sectarians' who seek externally.
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.
Adam's degradation and the godless seeking God outside indicate a state of separation from the divine origin.
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.
The realization of Christ within a man suggests the transformation of the human into a partaker of divine nature.