The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 102 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 10 (part 9)
"All sacrificing without faith and divine desire is an p.
219 abomination before God, and does not reach the gate of divine glory; but if man enters therein with the power of faith, he surrenders to it his free will, and desires by that means, and through its instrumentality, to enter into the eternal free will of God." ( Mysterium , xxvii.
13.) "Why did the two brothers (Cain and Abel) wish to sacrifice to God, while atonement is only to be found within the earnest desire for the mercy of God, in prayer and in man's persuading himself to depart from his own evil will, to change and to repent, and by bringing his faith and hope into the mercy of God?
The free will of the soul is as thin as a nothing, and although within its (material) body it is surrounded by something (substantial), nevertheless its own conceived essence is in a state of false desire on account of the sin.
If, then, this free will, with its (accompanying) desire, is to proceed towards God, it will have first to issue from its own illusive something, and whenever it issues from thence it is then naked and impotent, and again within the original nothing.
If the will desires to go with or to enter into God, it must die to its own selfhood and leave that (illusive) self; and whenever the will leaves that self it is then like a nothing, and can therefore not act, strive for, or accomplish anything.
If it wants to show its power, it must be within something wherein it may conceive and form itself, as is the case with Faith; for if there is to be an active faith, then that faith must conceive of something (have some object) wherein it may act.
Even the free will of God conceived itself within (has for its object) the internal spiritual world, and acts through the latter.
Thus the free will of the soul of man, having its origin from the abyss (the primordial, unfathomable will), must conceive itself into something, so as to become manifest and to move before God." ( Mysterium , xxvii.
1, 4–6).
The earthly and impure substance of the victim was to p.
220 be destroyed by the fire, but this fire was not of a terrestrial but of a celestial kind.
1 "The spirit of man has issued from God, and has gone from God (the Eternal) into time, and within the temporal it has become impure.
Now it will have to leave its impurity, and by means of the sacrifice enter again into God." ( Mysterium , xxvii.
34.) "Adam's body has been created out of the Limus of the earth, and also out of the Limus of the heaven of holiness; but the Limus of heaven, wherein the free will could conceive itself into a celestial form and move, act, think, and pray before God, was weakened in Adam, and therefore the two brothers ignited (sacrificed) the fruits of the earth.
Cain brought of the fruits of the earth (matter), but Abel of the first-born of his flocks (of the spirit), and these they ignited by means of fire ." ( Mysterium , xxvii.
7.) "An animal medium, namely, the flesh of animals, was to come within the holy (will-)fire of Moses, because man had become of an animal nature, so that the animal nature, by means of the wrath-fire of the Father, may become consumed, and that the love-fire might ignite the fire of the human soul by means of the desire introduced within the victim.
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 text describes the destruction of impure substance by celestial fire to transform the spirit.
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.
Adam is created out of Limus of earth and Limus of heaven, reflecting dual origins.
John of the Cross's stage of contemplative purgation: a felt absence and aridity of God that strips the soul of attachments to its own consolations en route to deeper union.
The will must become naked and impotent like a nothing before entering God.
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
Man must surrender his free will and die to selfhood to enter God's will.
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.
Sin is described as a state of false desire and illusive something rather than positive being.
Sufi self-effacement in God — the via by which the lover is unmade as a separate ego and recovered as God's act; specifies the practice/event rather than mystical_union's resulting state.
The will must die to its own selfhood and become like a nothing to enter God.
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.
Man's free will originates from the abyss and mirrors God's free will in the spiritual world.
Eckhart's radical reading of Matthew 5:3 — the saint as one who wants nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing, having emptied even the will and the self with which to receive God; distinct from renunciation_of_wealth (material poverty).
The will must become naked, impotent, and like a nothing to proceed towards God.
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 spirit is described as having gone from God into time and become impure within the temporal.
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 soul is to conceive itself into a celestial form and move before God.