The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 122 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 12 (part 2)
1 "It was the will of God to transmute humanity, after it had become earthly, again into the celestial quality, to turn the human earth (material element) into heaven, to make out of the four elements only one, and to transform the wrath of God in human quality into love.
But the wrath of God, having become ignited in man, was a power of fire and fury, to resist which, and to transform it into love, it was necessary that love itself should enter into the wrath and surrender itself wholly to it.
It was not enough for that purpose that God should remain in heaven (in His own divine self-consciousness), and look lovingly down upon humanity.
This would not have subdued the power of the fury and wrath, neither would they have entered into a state of love." ( Signature , xi.
7.) "In the holiness of God the human essence could not have been conceived without the presence of an appropriate medium; the will was separated from it.
Therefore God became man, so that He might endow or bless humanity with His divinity, and that He may become conceivable to us." ( Baptism , ii.
36.) p.
245 "Before the incarnation took place, the Word could redeem the soul, so that she could stand the test before the Father in the fire; but not (the test) in the love and delight before the light of the Holy Trinity.
A rising from the tomb was not thus to be accomplished.
If man was to be raised from the tomb, the Word had first to become man." 1 ( Three Principles , xvi.
35.) "The pious have clothed themselves in Christ before His incarnation in the covenant of promise, not in substance, but merely in power; not in the flesh, but merely in the spirit." ( Stiefel , ii.
442.) In consequence of sin the power of death had become a ruler, and therefore the Redeemer entered Himself into death for the purpose of conquering it, and to obtain for us again the fulness of divine life.
2 "In consequence of the sin there was no salvation for man; if the eternal Word and heart of God had not become human and entered into the third principle, into the human flesh and blood, taking upon itself (the state of) a human soul, and entering into the death of the destitute soul, whereby it could take away from death its power and from hell its terrible sting, and thus conduct the soul out of death and redeem her from hell." ( Threefold Life , viii.
39.) "Adam's soul had turned from God and died relatively to the essentiality of tile light.
Thus the second Adam brought the soul again into the fire, i.e.
, into the fountain of wrath, and ignited again the light in death.
Then shone the light again into the darkness, and death died itself, and for the wrath or hell there was created a plague." ( Tilk .
i.
513.) p.
246 "As we had gone out from the freedom of the angelic world and entered into the dark torture, therefore the power and the word of the light became man, and led us out of the darkness and through death in the fire into the freedom of divine life, into the divine essentiality.
Therefore Christ had to die and to enter into the divine essentiality through hell and through the wrath of eternal nature, and to open a road for our soul through death and through the wrath, on which we may enter with Him by means of death into divine life." ( Menschwerdung , i.
3, 7.) "When the two kingdoms, the wrath of God and the love of God, were battling with each other, then appeared Christ as the hero.
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 uses strong alchemical language such as 'transmute humanity' and turning 'human earth into heaven'.
In Western Hermetic Qabalah, the specific harmonizing cosmic force symbolised by Tiphareth, the central Sephira of the Tree of Life — the equilibriating, compensating, healing, redeeming, and purifying factor of the universe, recognised by the occultist as one power among the hierarchy of supreme cosmic forces rather than assigned the exclusive position it holds for the Christian mystic. Distinct from logos (the ordering principle through which the universe was created, not this specific mediating/healing Sephirotic force) and trinity (a claim about the Godhead's internal three-personed structure, not a single emanation's function within a tenfold system).
Christ is presented as the harmonizing hero who mediates between the two battling kingdoms of wrath and love, entering death to conquer it and opening the road to divine life — the equilibriating, healing, redeeming cosmic force.
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.
The will of God is described as actively ordering the transmutation of humanity.
Bruno's eroici furori — a passionate, ennobling spiritual ardor that drives the soul toward divine wisdom; distinguished from base or animal passions by its orientation to infinite truth.
Christ is explicitly referred to as the hero in the battle of kingdoms.
The doctrine that the divine or a spiritual principle takes on a specific, bounded material or bodily form — descending from an unconditioned state into individual, corporeal existence — as a discrete act rather than a diffuse pervading presence. The Christian Word made flesh, the Hindu avatara, the Egyptian pharaoh as living Horus, the Vajrayana tulku. Distinct from divine_immanence (the general claim that the divine pervades all of creation diffusely, not a specific embodiment-event) and separation_from_source (the felt exile FROM origin, the opposite motion) in describing a specific, individuated descent INTO a particular body or form.
The entire passage is structured around the necessity of the Word becoming man — 'God became man,' 'the Word had first to become man,' 'the power and the word of the light became man' — as the discrete act through which redemption is accomplished.
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 (the Word becoming man, entering the third principle, entering death) complemented by its ascent (raising from the tomb, leading out of darkness through death into divine essentiality).
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 earth is to be turned into heaven, implying the human reflects cosmic elements.
The merging of the individual soul or self with the divine, transcending personal identity.
[auto] The passage explicitly states that without incarnation a 'real union of God and man' would not have been possible, making this the central theme.
The dissolution of binary oppositions (male/female, inner/outer, above/below) as a mark of spiritual completion.
[auto] The text describes transforming wrath into love and making the four elements into one, highlighting the dissolution of binary oppositions as spiritual completion.
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).
The passage is structured around the transformation of wrath into love, earth into heaven, darkness into light, death into life — apparent opposites that are identical in nature and shifted by a change of degree through Christ's mediating act.
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.
It describes Adam's soul turning from God and entering into dark torture as the state of exile.
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.
[auto] It describes God endowing humanity with His divinity and transforming human quality into celestial quality.