The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 148 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 14 (part 1)
p.
289 CHAPTER XIV.
DEATH AND ETERNAL LIFE.
"The mystic death is the beginning of eternal life." Man is a product of three worlds His spirit is of God, his soul from the constellation of the astral elements, his body from the elements of the terrestrial plane.
In each of these aspects he partakes of the attributes of the principle from which he has originated.
As a spirit he is, and has been, and will always be, immortal; and is even now in heaven, from which he has never departed.
As a product of the astral plane, he is subject to the conditions existing therein, while his physical form must dissolve again into the elements to which it belongs.
With whatever of these three states man identifies himself, that state will be his own.
"God willed to become manifest in all three principles, but the order did not remain as it was originally instituted.
The middle went into the exterior, and the exterior into the middle.
This is not the order of eternity, and therefore the external and the inner principles must become separated." ( Threefold Life , xviii.
3.) "The life which we receive in the body of our mother is merely from the power of the sun, the stars, and the elements, which not only organise the body of the child and endow it with life, but which also bring it to light and nourish and nurse it during the whole term of its life.
They likewise distribute to it fortune and misfortune, and finally they cause it to die and to decompose." ( Three Principles , xiv.
4.) p.
290 "Behold what you are.
Dust of the earth; a corpse.
Your life is subject to the stars and elements.
It is they who rule you according to their qualities, and they endow you with talents and arts; but when their period and constellation under which you have been conceived and born is ended, then they will forsake you." ( Menschwerdung , xi.
6.) "The corporeal essences return to the earth; the elemental spirit, the air, returns to the air; the water and blood are received by the terrestrial water and earth, and there remains nothing of the external man.
He has then ceased to exist.
He had a beginning and he had an end." ( Threefold Life , xviii.
8.) "At death the four elements separate from the one element.
Then the tincture, together with the shadow of that which constituted the man, goes into the ether and remains within the root of that element from which the four elements were born, and from which they emanated." ( Three Principles , xix.
14.) After the death of the physical form man remains still a being of twofold aspect; namely, as a celestial spirit, according to the divine principle in him (of which he may or may not be conscious); and secondly, as a supersensual, but nevertheless material being, according to his astral body.
Each of these essences now gravitates to the plane to which it belongs according to its qualities.
From this double but opposite tendency results the rupture or division of the soul and the judgment.
"When a person in this world dies, he then comes before the angel who in his sword carries death and life, the love and the wrath of God.
There his soul has to pass through the judgment at the portals of Paradise.
If she has been captured by the wrath of God she will not be able to pass through the door, but if she is a child of the virgin and born of the seed of the (celestial) woman, she will then pass through.
Then will the angel cut away p.
291 from her nature that which has been generated by the serpent, and the soul will then serve God in His holy temple in Paradise, waiting there for the resurrection of her (celestial) body." 1 ( Mysterium , xxv.
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.
Man's threefold structure (spirit, soul, body) mirrors the three cosmic principles (divine, astral, terrestrial), with each aspect partaking of the attributes of its originating 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.
It is stated that the stars and elements rule man according to their qualities, distributing fortune and misfortune.
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.
[auto] Humanity is depicted as a product of three descending worlds: divine spirit, astral soul, and terrestrial body.
A non-physical dimension of reality, interpenetrating the physical world, populated by forces, beings, and forms ordinarily imperceptible to physical senses and instruments, that can affect embodied life without being seen — Dion Fortune's 'mind-side of nature,' the astral plane of Western esotericism broadly construed. Distinct from astral_light (a specific transmitting medium or fluid operating within this realm, not the realm itself), pleroma (the divine fullness at the summit of a cosmic hierarchy, not a parallel plane coextensive with ordinary life), and animism (particular indwelling spirits bound to specific natural objects, not the general unseen dimension itself).
The astral plane is described as a non-physical dimension with its own conditions and forces, where the supersensual but material astral body persists after physical death and gravitates to its own plane.
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.
God's will to become manifest in all three principles describes a directional descent from the unconditioned divine through spirit and astral into material form, with the disorder of the middle going into the exterior.
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.
[auto] The text states man partakes of the attributes of the principles from which he originated, reflecting the structure of the three worlds within himself.
The rule of the stars and planetary powers over mortal destiny — the astrological governors whose spheres bind souls to birth, error, and death; in Sethian gnosis the 'error of the stars' that the savior exposes, and from which the incorruptible generation alone is free. Distinct from cosmic_sympathy (a doctrine of universal affinity) in being a bondage-to-powers claim, and from archons (the rulers as personal beings) in concerning the astral machinery itself.
The passage explicitly states that human life is subject to the stars and elements, which rule according to their qualities, endow talents, distribute fortune and misfortune, and cause death when the natal constellation's period ends.