The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 79 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 8 (part 7)
The outbreathed desire—that is to say, the love of the divine power for nature, wherefrom nature and self-will have originated—is longing to get rid of the natural perverted self-will, and is destined, at the end of time, to be free of the illusion thus acquired, and to be brought into a clear, crystalline nature." ( Contemplations , i.
30.) "Behold a tree.
Outwardly it has a hard and rough shell, appearing dead and encrusted; but the body of the tree has a living power, which breaks through the hard and dry bark and generates many young bodies, branches, and leaves, which, however, all are rooted in the body of the tree.
Thus it is with the whole house of this world, wherein also the holy light of God appears to have died out, because it has withdrawn into its principle, and therefore it seems dead, although it still exists in God.
But love ever again and again breaks p.
178 through this very house of death and generates holy and celestial branches in this great tree, and which root in the light." ( Aurora , xxiv.
7.) All these external formations proceed from the fire-life by means of the tincture and the oily, spiritual quality, which manifests its power and activity in contrast with the elements.
1 "Each thing is like a fire.
However, the torture of the fire is not a true life, but the tincture that originates from the fire." ( Threefold Life , viii.
18.) "As the spirit is in a thing, so is the tincture , for the tincture issues from the spirit and is its delight." ( Three Principles , xiii.
45.) "Where a desire exists there is a fire, for the fire desires substantiality, so that it may have something to consume.
It cannot make for itself any substantiality, but it makes a tincture , and that tincture produces the substantiality." ( Threefold Life , viii.
33.) "The tincture produces all colours, because it introduces the quality of fire and light into the water.
Thus it also transforms water into blood." ( Six Mystical Points , i.
5.) "The oily quality is in stones, metals, herbs, trees, animals, and men.
The deadly quality is in the earth, in water, fire, and air.
Those four qualities are, in fact, like a dead body; but the oil therein is a light or a life, wherefrom results the desire or the growth, the outblooming from this deadly quality.
The oily quality could not, however, be a life if it were not in the anxiety of death.
The latter arouses the former, and renders it movable, because the oily quality desires to fly from the anxiety, and to issue from thence, and thereby the growth p.
179 is caused.
Thus death itself has to be a cause of life and motion." ( Signature , viii.
5.) The external appearance or signature of things is a symbol of what they actually are in their inner essence, or of what principle is preponderating in their character, and therein is the basis of the language of nature.
"All the external visible world, in all its states, is a symbol or figure of the internal spiritual world.
That which a thing actually is in its interior is reflected in its external character." ( Signature , ix.
1.) "That principle which in the spirit of its action is superior to the rest, engraves its character principally upon the corporeal being, and the other qualities are only secondary additions to it, as may be seen in all living creatures." ( Signature , ix.
4.) "The inner form characterises man, also in his face.
The same may be said of animals, herbs, and trees.
Each thing is marked externally with that which it is internally and essentially.
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 utilizes alchemical terminology such as tincture, fire-life, oily quality, and the transformation of water into blood to describe spiritual processes.
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.
[auto] The passage explicitly states that the external visible world is a symbol of the internal spiritual world and that interior essence is reflected in external character.
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.
The deadly quality is described as a dead body lacking the oily life, suggesting evil or death is an absence of divine vitality.
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 holy light appears to have died out because it has withdrawn into its principle, creating a state of apparent separation or 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.
The process involves generating holy and celestial branches from the house of death, transforming the natural into a divine state.