The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 129 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 12 (part 9)
8.) "When the earth received the blood of Christ she trembled and shook, for the wrath of God was now conquered in her, and there entered into her the living blood which had come from heaven out of the substantiality of God." ( Menschwerdung , i.
10.) "The wrath of the Father had to consume in death the life of Christ; but when the wrath had swallowed up the life in death, then the holy life of the deepest love of God moved in the death and wrath and swallowed up the wrath.
Then the earth began to tremble, and the rocks burst and the tombs of the holy ones opened." ( Mysterium , xxviii.
123.) "After the Father had brought again the soul of the Redeemer, that had entered into His wrath, into love— p.
260 that is to say, into the image from Paradise, which had disappeared—then the world trembled in the terror of death as with a terror of joy, and that joy entered into the dead bodies of those that had hoped for the coining of the Messiah, and awakened them to life.
It was this very terror that tore the curtain in the Temple, namely, the veil of Moses, which hung before the clear face of God, so that man could not see God." ( Signature , xi.
71.) The body in which Christ Himself arose from the dead was paradisiacal and divine, and could not be apprehended by anything of an earthly nature; but as the terrestrial body was absorbed therein, therefore the Lord could make Himself visible to His disciples.
1 "The body in which Christ became raised from the dead could not be stopped or arrested by rocks or stones.
It passes through all things without breaking anything; it takes hold of this world, but this world cannot lay hold of it.
Nothing can make it suffer, for in it is all the fulness of the Godhead." ( Three Principles , xxv.
87.) "There was no necessity for the removal of a stone to liberate the body of the Lord from the tomb.
This took place merely to show to the Jews the folly of their imagining that they could withstand God, and also for the sake of the weak faith of the disciples, so that they might see that Christ had in truth been raised up." ( Three Principles , xxv.
85.) "Although Christ not always walked visibly among His disciples, nevertheless He showed Himself often visibly, tangibly, and substantially to them in the shape of the body which He had occupied while upon this earth, and which the new body had absorbed, but which p.
261 it had the power to represent again." ( Three Principles , xxiv.
97.) The heaven wherein the Redeemer has entered after His resurrection is the fulness of divine power, by means of which He is Lord over the terrestrial world and over the world of hell.
1 "The internal foundation of this world, whereof the four elements have originated, is heaven, and in this internal power Christ rules as true God and Man in the external world.
When He says, 'To Me has been given all power in heaven and upon the earth,' and also, 'I am with you every day unto the end of the world;' and furthermore, if it is said of Him, 'He shall rule over His enemies until they are all made to be a footstool under His feet,' all this refers to His internal kingdom, because He rules within the internal and over and above the external and terrestrial, and likewise over the hellish world." ( Baptism , ii.
i, 29.) Thus the Bible history of the life of Christ and the miracles which He performed, is a description of the processes taking place within the inner life of the regenerated.
In Jesus Christ we behold the antitype of the one and only Redeemer of the world, as a whole, and of every separate individual.
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 terrestrial body is absorbed into the divine body, describing a transmutation of substance.
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 text explicitly states that Bible history describes processes taking place within the inner life of the regenerated, reflecting the 'as above, so below' principle.
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
The earth trembled and rocks burst in reaction to the divine event of Christ's death.
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.
Jesus is presented as the antitype of the Redeemer for both the world as a whole and every separate individual.
Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.
[auto] The passage presents paradoxical states such as the terror of death being a terror of joy and wrath swallowing life before being swallowed itself.
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 text references the image from Paradise which had disappeared prior to redemption.
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 resurrected body contains 'all the fulness of the Godhead,' indicating transformation into divine nature.