Jakob Böhme

German philosopher and mystic

• Born: 1575
• Died: November 1, 1624

Böhme developed a profound metaphysical system, rich in myth and symbol, which attempted to explain the nature of God, the origin of the universe and of humans, and the fall of humanity and the way of regeneration. His complex and difficult thought influenced many German, French, and English philosophers and poets.

Early Life

Jakob Böhme (YAW-kohp BOH-meh) was born in the village of Altseidenberg in what is now Germany. He was the fourth child of Jakob Böhme, a prosperous farmer, and his wife, Ursula. The family had been well established in the community for several generations, and Jakob’s father was a Lutheran church elder and local magistrate.

Information about Böhme’s early life is scanty. He received an elementary education at the local school, and in 1589 he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, probably for a period of three years. He then traveled as a journeyman, and in 1594 or 1595 he settled in Görlitz. In 1599, he became a citizen of that town and probably at the same time became a master shoemaker. In May, 1599, he married Catharine Kuntzschmann, the daughter of a local butcher, and they had four children.

The following year, 1600, was a highly significant one for Böhme. It marked the arrival in Görlitz of a new Lutheran pastor, Martin Moller. Moller was well read in the German medieval mystical tradition, and he espoused a Christianity of pure and inward spirituality. Böhme was attracted to Moller’s teaching and joined his Conventicle of God’s Real Servants. Moller’s influence was a lasting one. In that same year came an experience that dramatically changed Böhme’s life. As he happened to glance at a pewter dish that was reflecting bright sunlight, he experienced a moment of suddenly heightened awareness. This feeling stayed with him as he went outside to the fields; he felt that he could see into the innermost essence of nature, and he later said that the experience was like being resurrected from the dead. More experiences of illumination followed over the next ten years, and these clarified and amplified what he had seen and understood in his initial experience. These experiences were the foundation of his life’s work.

In 1612, he felt compelled to write, and the result was a long, rambling, but thrilling book, Aurora: Oder, Die Morgenröthe im Aufgang (1634; The Aurora, 1656). This work marked Böhme’s first step on the road to becoming one of the most original and profound thinkers in the history of the Western religious tradition.

Life’s Work

Böhme had originally written Aurora for his own use only, but a nobleman, Carl von Ender, found the manuscript at Böhme’s house, borrowed it, and had some copies made. Unfortunately for Böhme, news of his book came to the attention of the pastor of Görlitz, Gregorius Richter, a strict defender of religious orthodoxy, who had succeeded Moller in 1606. Richter was enraged at Böhme’s bold assertions and assailed him from the pulpit in virulent terms, while Böhme himself sat quietly in the congregation. The next day the town council told Böhme to hand over the manuscript of Aurora and to stop writing. Böhme agreed to keep silent, and for seven years he kept his promise. He became prosperous, and as a member of his trade guild he was active in the day-to-day commercial life of the town. In 1613, he sold his business and entered the linen and wool trade, which involved him in yearly journeys to Prague and possibly to the Leipzig Fair.

During this period of silence he was making some learned and influential friends, including Tobias Kober, physician of Görlitz, and Balthasar Walther, who was director of the chemical laboratory in Dresden. Böhme learned about the work of Paracelsus from Kober, and Walther introduced him to the Jewish mystical tradition embodied in the Kabbala. Both became major influences on his work, and Böhme also learned from his educated friends some Latin terms that he would later incorporate into his works. One of his friends, Abraham von Franckenberg, gave the following picture of Böhme’s physical appearance: “His person was little and leane, with browes somewhat inbowed; high temples, somewhat hauk-nosed; his eyes were gray and somewhat heaven blew, and otherwise as the windows of Solomon’s Temple: He had a thin beard, a small low voice. His speech was lovely.”

In January, 1619, prompted by the urgings of his friends, Böhme decided that he could no longer keep silent. Taking up his pen once more, he produced a constant stream of lengthy books over a period of nearly six years until his death. The first of these was Von den drei Principien göttlichen Wesens (1619; Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence, 1648), which was quickly followed by Vom dreyfachen Leben des Menschen (1620; The High and Deep Searching Out of the Threefold Life of Man, 1650) and Viertzig Fragen von der Seele (1620; Forty Questions of the Soul, 1647). In all of these works Böhme labored to give expression to his central insights: that all life, even that of God, is composed of a dynamic interplay of opposing forces: fire and light, wrath and love. Only as a result of interaction with its opposite could anything in the universe gain self-knowledge; the clash of opposites is what drives the universe on, at every level. Within God, all opposing energies are held in a dynamic and joyful state of creative tension, a unified state that Böhme described as “eternal nature.” Only in the human world (“temporal nature”) does the equilibrium between the opposites of darkness and light become disturbed, and this brings with it the possibility of evil and suffering.

As Böhme’s fame spread, he cultivated a large correspondence with noblemen, physicians, and others in positions of authority, who encouraged him to continue with his work. To keep up with the demand for Böhme’s writings, his friend Carl von Ender employed several copyists, and because Böhme was still officially banned from writing, some of his manuscripts had to be smuggled out in grain sacks. Still they kept coming: In addition to a number of short, devotional treatises, he produced Von der Gerburt und Bezeichnung aller Wesen (1622; Signatura Rerum: Or, The Signature of All Things, 1651), a difficult but profound book full of alchemical terminology; Von der Gnadenwahl (1623; Concerning the Election of Grace, 1655), which he considered to be his greatest work; and Erklärung über das erste Buch Mosis (1623; Mysterium Magnum, 1654), a lengthy exegesis of the book of Genesis.

In 1624, Böhme once more encountered persecution. Some of his devotional works had been printed by his friends under the title of Der Weg zu Christo (1622; The Way to Christ, 1648). The book came to the notice of Gregorius Richter, and Richter again denounced Böhme from the pulpit. Incited by the preacher, a mob stoned Böhme’s house. Richter then wrote a pamphlet against Böhme, accusing him of blasphemy, heresy, and drunkenness, and of poisoning the whole city with his false doctrines. He requested that the Görlitz council imprison him. This time, however, Böhme replied to his accuser, refuting Richter point by point in writing. The town magistrates, under pressure from Richter, ordered Böhme to be banished, but the next day they rescinded their decision.

Later in the year, Böhme traveled to Dresden, where he had been called to appear before the Electoral Court. He was well received in the city by eminent men, and the several prominent Lutheran theologians who questioned him at length about his beliefs refused to condemn him. He returned to Görlitz, where he began work on Von 177 theosophischen Fragen (1624; Theosophic Questions, 1661). This work, in which Böhme’s thought reached a new level of profundity, was left unfinished at his death on November 17, 1624.

Significance

Böhme’s achievements were many. Drawing on his own experience of enlightened states of consciousness, he took many disparate strands of thought, including Lutheranism, the German mystical tradition, Renaissance Neoplatonism, the ideas of Paracelsus and the alchemical tradition, and the Kabbala, and forged them into a new synthesis.

His work constitutes a profound exploration of the nature of existence, both human and divine; it is at once a philosophical system, a mystical vision, and a mythological drama. Perhaps its most significant aspect is Böhme’s attempts to unify life without destroying its essential polarity—it is a metaphysics that includes a compelling explanation of the origin and nature of evil. His description of the process by which God comes to self-consciousness is powerful and original; his emphasis on intuitive rather than rational means of knowing is challenging, as is his insistence that humans can know, on the level of direct experience, the totality of the universe. His theory of language, which centers on a universal, paradisal “language of nature,” is worth more serious consideration than some have been prepared to give it.

Böhme has had an enormous influence on the history of ideas. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel called him the father of German philosophy, and Hegel’s contemporary, Friedrich Schelling, described him as “a miraculous phenomenon in the history of mankind.” Arthur Schopenhauer and the twentieth century Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev also felt his influence. In seventeenth century England, where Böhme’s thought was readily received, there was a sect known as the Behmenists, and there was even a proposal that Parliament should set up two colleges specifically for the study of Böhme. In the nineteenth century, the English Romantic poets William Blake and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were directly inspired by Böhme’s work, and Coleridge’s comment that Böhme was “a stupendous human being” is not an exaggeration: The self-taught shoemaker from Görlitz made a lasting contribution to the Western philosophical and religious tradition.

Bibliography

Boehme, Jacob. The Way to Christ. Translated with an introduction by Peter Erb. New York: Paulist Press, 1978. The most accurate and reliable translation of nine of Böhme’s treatises, with an informative introduction placing Böhme’s work in the context of Lutheran theology.

Brinton, H. H. The Mystic Will: Based on a Study of the Philosophy of Jacob Boehme. New York: Macmillan, 1930. The most reliable and perceptive study in English of Böhme’s thought, particularly useful for its analysis of Böhme’s concepts of the silent unmanifest Being (Ungrund) and the figure of Wisdom. Includes a chapter on the reception of Böhme’s works in seventeenth century England.

Hartmann, Franz. Jacob Boehme: Life and Doctrines. Reprint. Blauvelt, N.Y.: Steinerbooks, 1977. An account of Böhme’s life and work, including extracts and analysis of Böhme’s writings, organized thematically.

Hvolbek, Russell. Mysticism and Experience. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1998. Explains how Böhme’s ideas about the individual’s understanding of nature, God, and the self through feeling and connection is similar to mystical experience.

Martensen, Hans L. Jacob Boehme (1575-1624): Studies in His Life and Teachings. Notes and appendices by Stephen Hobhouse. Rev. ed. London: Rockcliff, 1949. Danish bishop Martensen is basically sympathetic to Böhme in this work, but he objects to some of Böhme’s doctrines from the standpoint of a strongly biblical Protestant theology.

O’Regan, Cyril. Gnostic Apocalypse: Jacob Boehme’s Haunted Narrative. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. O’Regan describes how Böhme’s thought represents a return to medieval Gnosticism within the confines of post-Lutheran Protestantism.

Stoudt, John Joseph. Sunrise to Eternity: A Study in Jacob Boehme’s Life and Thought. Preface by Paul Tillich. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1957. Still the fullest account in English of Böhme’s life. Carefully researched, accurate, and lively, it takes into account the findings of modern German scholarship that was not available to earlier biographers.

Walsh, David. The Mysticism of Innerworldly Fulfillment: A Study of Jacob Boehme. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1983. Walsh argues that Böhme’s conception of history as a dialectical process is the basis of political reality.