Key of Jacob Boehme

Now if any one would search the divine ground, that is, the divine revelation, he must first consider with himself for what end he desires to know such things.

For there are many that seek Mysteries and hidden knowledge, merely that they might be respected and highly esteemed by the world, and for their own gain and profit.

It must be a totally resigned and yielded will, in which God himself searches and works, and which continually pierces into God, in yielding and resigned humility, seeking nothing but his eternal native country, and to do his neighbor service with it.

The Lord our God is but one only God. Of him, through him, and in him are all things: in another, Am not I he that fills all things? Through his Word are all things made, that are made. He is the original of all things: He is the eternal unmeasurable Unity.

When I think what would be in the place of this world, if the four elements and the starry firmament, and also nature itself, should perish and cease to be, so that no nature or creature were to be found any more; I find there would remain this eternal Unity, from which nature and creature have received their original.

When I think with myself what is many hundredthousand miles above the starry firmament, or what is in that place where no creature is, I find the eternal unchangeable Unity is there, which is that only Good, which has nothing either before or after it, that can add anything to it, or take anything away from it, or from which this Unity could have its original: There is neither ground, time, nor place, but there is the only eternal God, or that only Good, which a man cannot express.

If there were not such a desiring perceptibility, and outgoing operation of the Trinity in the eternal Unity, the Unity were but an eternal stillness, a Nothing; and there would be no nature, nor any color, shape, or figure; likewise there would be nothing in this world; without this threefold working there could be no world at all.

The eternal Unity is the cause and ground of the eternal Trinity, which manifests itself from the Unity, and brings forth itself, First, in desire, or will; Secondly, pleasure, or delight; Thirdly, proceeding, or outgoing.

The desire, or will is the Father; that is, the stirring or manifestation of the Unity, whereby the Unity wills or desires itself. The pleasure, or delight is the Son; and is that which the will wills and desires, his love and pleasure.

The will is the Father, that is, the stirring desire; and the delight is the Son, that is, the virtue and the working in the will, with which the will works; and the Holy Ghost is the proceeding will, through the delight of the virtue, that is, a life of the will and of the virtue and delight.

Thus there are three sorts of workings in the eternal Unity. The Unity is the will and desire of itself: the delight is the working substance of the will, and an eternal joy of perceptibility in the will; and the Holy Ghost is the proceeding of the power.

The magnet, the essential desire of nature, that is, the will of the desire of nature, compresses itself into a substance, to become a plant, and in this compression of the desire becomes feeling, that is, working; and in that working the power and virtue arises, wherein the magnetical desire of nature, the outflown will of God, works in a natural way.

In this working perceptibility the magnetical desiring will is elevated and made joyful, and goes forth from the working power and virtue; and hence comes the growing and smell of the plant: and thus we see a representation of the Trinity of God in all growing and living things.

For in one only substance, wherein there is no variation or division, but is only one, there can be no knowledge; and if there were knowledge, it could know but one thing, itself: but if it parts itself, then the dividing will goes into multiplicity and variety; and each parting works in itself.

The ancient Rabbins among the Jews have partly understood it; for they have said that this name is the highest, and most holy name of God by which they understand the working Deity in sense.

I is the effluence of the eternal, indivisible Unity, or the sweet gracefulness of the ground of the divine power of becoming somethingness.

E is a threefold I, where the Trinity shuts itself up in the Unity; for the I goes into E, and joins IE, which is an outbreathing of the Unity in itself.

The wisdom is the outflown Word of the divine power, virtue, knowledge, and holiness; a subject and resemblance of the infinite and unsearchable Unity; a substance wherein the Holy Ghost works, forms, and models; I mean, he forms and models the divine understanding in the wisdom; for the wisdom is the passive, and the spirit of God is the active, or life in her, as the soul in the body.

The wisdom is the great Mystery of the divine nature; for in her the powers, colors, and virtues are made manifest.

She is the true divine chaos, wherein all things lie, a divine imagination, in which the ideas of angels and souls have been seen from eternity, in a divine type and resemblance; yet not then as creatures, but in resemblance, as when a man beholds his face in a glass.

The Mysterium Magnum is that chaos, out of which light and darkness, that is, the foundation of heaven and hell is flown, from eternity, and made manifest; for that foundation which we now call hell (being a Principle of itself), is the ground and cause of the fire in the eternal nature; which fire, in God, is only a burning love; and where God is not manifested in a thing, according to the Unity, there is an anguishing, painful, burning fire.

This ground is called Mysterium magnum, or a chaos, because good and evil arise out of it, light and darkness, life and death, joy and grief, salvation and damnation.

Yet we cannot say that the spiritual world has had any beginning, but has been manifested from eternity out of that chaos; for the light has shone from eternity in the darkness, and the darkness has not comprehended it; as day and night are in one another, and are two, though in one.

By the word center, we understand the first beginning to nature, the most inward ground, wherein the self-raised will brings itself, by a reception, into a something.

And therefore the eternal Unity brings itself by its effluence and separation into nature, that it may have an object, in which it may manifest itself, and that it may love something, and be again be loved by something, that so there may be a perceiving, or sensible working and will.

Nature, in its first ground, consists in seven properties; and these seven divide themselves into infinite.

The Second property is the stirring or attraction of the desire; it makes stinging, breaking, and dividing of the hardness.

The Fourth property is the fire, in which the Unity appears, and is seen in the light, that is, in a burning love.

For that which the desire compresses and makes to be something, the motion cuts asunder and divides, so that it comes into forms and images; between these two properties arises the bitter woe, that is, the sting of perception and feeling.

In that flash the Unity feels the sensibility, and the will receives the soft tranquil Unity; and so the Unity becomes a shining glance of fire, and the fire becomes a burning love, for it receives the ens and power from the soft Unity : in this kindling the darkness of the magnetical compressure is pierced through [permeated] with the light, so that it is no more known or discerned, although it remains in itself eternally in the compressure.

Now two eternal Principles arise here, viz. the darkness, harshness, sharpness, and pain dwelling in itself; and the feeling, power and virtue of the Unity in the light; upon which the scripture says, that God (that is, the eternal Unity) dwells in a light to which none can come.

For the spirit of this fire receives ens [or virtue] to shine, from the Unity, or else this fiery ground would be but a painful, horrible hunger, and pricking desire; and it is so indeed, when the will breaks itself off from the Unity, and will live after its own desire, as the devils have done, and the false soul still does.

And thus you may here perceive two Principles: the first is the ground of the burning of the fire, viz. the sharp, moving, perceivable, painful darkness in itself; and the second is the light of the fire, wherein the Unity comes into mobility and joy; for the fire is an object of the great love of God's Unity.

For so the eternal delight becomes perceivable, and this perceiving of the Unity is called love, and is a burning or life in the Unity of God; and according to this burning of love, God calls himself a merciful loving God; for the Unity of God loves and pierces through the painful will of the fire (which at the beginning arose in the breathing of the word, or outgoing of the divine delight), and changes it into great joy.

And in this fiery will of the eternal nature stands the soul of man, and also the angels; this is their ground and center; therefore, if any soul breaks itself off from the light and love of God, and enters into its own natural desire, then the ground of this darkness and painful property will be manifest in it; and this is the hellish fire, and the anger of God, when it is made manifest, as may be seen in Lucifer; and whatsoever can be thought to have a being anywhere in the creature, the same is likewise without the creature everywhere; for the creature is nothing else but an image and figure of the separable and various power and virtue of the universal Being.

Therefore in fire and light consists the life of all things, viz. in the will thereof, let them be insensible, vegetable, or rational things; everything, as the fire, has its ground, either from the eternal, as the soul, or from the temporary, as astral elementary things; for the eternal is one fire, and the temporary is another, as shall be shown hereafter.

Now the Fifth property is the fire of love, or the world of power and light; which in the darkness dwells in itself, and the darkness comprehends it not, as it is written, John 1. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not: Also, the Word is in the light, and in the Word is the true understanding life of man, the true spirit which God breathed into man for a creaturely life.

You must understand, in the spiritual fire of the will, the true desirous soul out of the eternal ground; and in the power and virtue of the light, the true understanding spirit, in which the Unity of God dwells and is manifest, as our Lord Christ says, The kingdom of God is within you; and Paul says, You are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who dwells in you; this is the place of the divine inhabiting and revelation.

Also the soul comes to be damned thus: when the fiery will breaks itself off from the love and Unity of God, and enters into its own natural propriety, that is, into its evil properties.

The second Principle (the angelical world and the thrones) is meant by the fifth property: for it is the motion of the Unity, wherein all the properties of the fiery nature burn in love.

For when there is a motion in the sharpness, then the property is the aching, and this is also the cause of sensibility and pain; for if there were no sharpness and motion, there would be no sensibility: this motion is also a ground of the air in the visible world, which is manifested by the fire, as shall be mentioned hereafter.

And so likewise it must be conceived to be in the eternal ground; for the temporary substance is flown forth from the eternal , therefore they are both of the same quality; but with this difference, that one is eternal and the other transitory, one spiritual and the other corporeal.

When the spiritual fire and light shall be kindled, which has indeed burned from eternity in itself, then shall also the Mystery of the divine power and knowledge be always made manifest therein; for all the properties of the eternal nature becomes spiritual in the fire, and yet nature remains as it is, inwardly in itself; and the going forth of the will becomes spiritual.

The first is the going upwards of the fiery will; the second is the going downwards, or sinking of the watery spirit, viz. the meekness; and the third is the going out forwards of the oily spirit, in the midst, in the center of the fiery spirit of the will ; which oily spirit is the ens of the Unity of God, which is become a substance in the desire of nature; yet all is but spirit and power: but so it appears in the figure of the manifestation, not as if there were any severing or division, but it appears so in the manifestation.

This threefold manifestation is according to the Trinity; for the center wherein it is, is the only God according to his manifestation: the fiery flaming spirit of love is that which goes upwards, and the meekness which proceeds from the love is that which goes downwards, and in the midst there is the center of the circumference, which is the Father, or whole God, according to his manifestation.

This fifth property is the true spiritual angelical world of the divine joy, which is hidden in this visible world.

The Sixth property of the eternal nature is the sound, noise, voice, or understanding; for when the fire flashes, all the properties together sound: the fire is the mouth of the essence, the light is the spirit, and the sound is the understanding wherein all the properties understand one another.

In the second property the power and virtue is painful; but in the sixth property it is joyful and pleasant; and the difference between the second and sixth property is in light and darkness, which are in one another, as fire and light; there is no other difference between them.

For every property makes unto itself a subject, or object, by its own effluence; and in the seventh all the properties are in a temperature, as in one only substance: and as they all did proceed from the Unity, so they all return again into one ground.

And though they work in different kinds and manners, yet here there is but one only substance, whose power and virtue is called tincture; that is, a holy penetrating, growing or springing bud (essence or being).

Thus we understand that the desire is the ground of somethingness, so that something may come out of nothing; and thus we may also conceive that the desire has been the beginning of this world, by which God has brought all things into substance and being; for the desire is that by which God said, Let there be. The desire is that Be it, which has made something where nothing was, but only a spirit; it has made the Mysterium Magnum (which is spiritual) visible and substantial, as we may see by the elements, stars, and other creatures.

Now these are the seven properties in one only ground; and all seven are equally eternal without beginning; none of them can be accounted the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, or last; for they are equally eternal without beginning, and have also one eternal beginning from the Unity of God.

The visible world is only an effluence of the seven properties, for it proceeded out of the six working properties; but in the seventh (that is, in paradise) it is in rest: and that is the eternal Sabbath of rest, wherein the divine power and virtue rests.

Moses says, God created heaven and earth, and all creatures, in six days, and rested on the seventh day, and also commanded it to be kept for a rest.

The Second property, that is, the motion, was in the beginning of this world the separator or divider in the powers and virtues, by which the Creator, viz. the will of God, brought all things out of the Mysterium Magnum into form; for it is the outward movable world, by which the supernatural God made all things, and brought them into form, figure, and shape.

And this feelingness is the cause of the fire, and also of the mind and senses; for the own natural will is made volatile by it, and seeks rest; and thus the separation of the will goes out from itself, and pierces through the properties, from whence the taste arises, so that one property tastes and feels the other.

This motion is in itself like a turning wheel ; not that there is such a turning and winding, but it is so in the properties; for the desire attracts into itself, and the motion thrusts forwards out of itself, and so the will , being in this anguish, can neither get inwards nor outwards, and yet is drawn both out of itself and into itself; and so it remains in such a posture as would go into itself and out of itself, that is, over itself and under itself, and yet can go no whither, but is an anguish, and the true foundation of hell, and of God's anger; for this anguish stands in the dark sharp motion.

Thus, by the Third property of nature, which is the anguish, we mean the sharpness and painfulness of the fire, viz. the burning and consuming; for when the will is put into such a sharpness it will always consume the cause of that sharpness; for it always strives to get to the Unity of God again, which is the rest; and the Unity thrusts itself with its effluence to this motion and sharpness; and so there is a continual conjoining for the manifestation of the divine will , as we always find in these three, viz. in salt, brimstone, and oil, a heavenly in the earthly.

For the soul of a thing lies in the sharpness, and the true life of the sensual nature and property lies in the motion, and the powerful spirit which arises from the tincture lies in the oil of the Sulphur: Thus a heavenly always lies hidden in the earthly, for the invisible spiritual world came forth with and in the creation.

The eternal Unity (which I also in some of my writings call the liberty) is the soft and still tranquillity, being amiable, and as a soft comfortable ease, and it cannot be expressed how soft a tranquillity there is without nature in the Unity of God; but the three properties (in order) to nature are sharp, painful, and horrible.

In the FIRST [1] motion, the magnetical desire compressed and compacted the fiery and watery Mercury with the other properties; and then the grossness separated itself from the spiritual nature: and the fiery became metals and stones, and partly salnitre, that is, earth: and the watery became water.

The tincture pierced through the earth, and through all elements, and tinctured all; and then paradise was on earth, and in man; for evil was hidden: as the night is hidden in the day, so the wrath of nature was also hidden in the first Principle, till the fall of man; and then the divine working, with the tincture, fled into their own Principle, into the inward ground of the light-world.

God created him in his likeness, out of all the three Principles, and made him an image, and breathed into him the understanding fiery Mercury, according to both the inward and outward ground, that is, according to time and eternity, and so he became a living understanding soul.

Now when the strife of the elements ceases, by the death of the gross body, then the spiritual man will be made manifest, whether he be born in and to light, or darkness; which of these [two] bears the sway, and has the dominion in him, the spiritual man has his being in it eternally, whether it be in the foundation of God's anger, or in his love.

We may very well observe and consider the hidden spiritual world by the visible world: for we see that fire, light, and air, are continually begotten in the deep of this world; and that there is no rest or cessation from this begetting; and that it has been so from the beginning of the world; and yet men can find no cause of it in the outward world, or tell what the ground of it should be: but reason says, God has so created it, and therefore it continues so.

For this body of the flesh and of the will of man is not it, but that which is wrought by the heavenly Archaeus in this gross body, unto which this gross body is a house, tool, and instrument.

And thus human reason is but a house of the true understanding of the divine knowledge: none should trust so much in his reason and sharp wit, for it is but the constellation of the outward stars, and dos rather seduce him, than lead him to the Unity of God.

God is the eternal, immense, incomprehensible Unity, which manifests itself in itself, from eternity in eternity, by the Trinity; and is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in a threefold working, as is before mentioned.

Out of this fiery property, and the property of the light, the angels and souls have their origin; which is a divine manifestation.

The visible world is the third Principle, that is, the third ground and beginning: this is outbreathed out of the inward ground, out of both the first Principles, and brought into the nature and form of a creature.

The inward eternal working is hidden in the visible world; and it is in everything, and through everything, yet not to be comprehended by anything in the thing's own power; the outward powers and virtues are but passive, and the house in which the inward work.

The eternal manifestation of the divine light is called the kingdom of heaven, and the habitation of the holy angels and souls.

The fiery darkness is called hell, or God's anger, wherein the devils dwell, together with the damned souls.

In the place of this world, heaven and hell are present everywhere, but according to the inward ground. Inwardly, the divine working is manifest in God's children; but in the wicked, the working of the painful darkness.

For what the invisible world is, in a spiritual working, where light and darkness are in one another, and yet the one not comprehending the other.

There shall perish of this world only the four elements, together with the starry heaven, and the earthly creatures, the outward gross life of all things.

The inward power and virtue of every substance remains eternally.

God has manifested the Mysterium Magnum out of the power and virtue of his Word; in which Mysterium Magnum the whole creation has lain essentially without forming, in temperamento; and by which he has outspoken the spiritual formings in separability [or variety]: in which formings, the sciences of the powers and virtues in the desire, that is, in the Fiat, have stood, wherein every science, in the desire to manifestation, has brought itself into a corporeal substance.

And as the inward divine world has in it an understanding life from the effluence of the divine knowledge, whereby the angels and souls are meant; so likewise the outward world has a rational life in it, consisting in the outflown powers and virtues of the inward world.

The spiritus mundus is hidden in the four elements, as the soul is in the body, and is nothing else but an effluence and working power proceeding from the sun and stars.

The earth is the grossest effluence from this subtle spirit; after the earth the water is the second; after the water the air is the third; and after the air the fire is the fourth: all these proceed from one only ground, from the spiritus mundi, which has its root in the inward world.

But reason will say, "To what end has the Creator made this manifestation"? I answer, there is no other cause, but that the spiritual world might thereby bring itself into a visible form or image, that the inward powers and virtues might have a form and image.

The whole visible world is a mere spermatical working ground; every thing has an inclination and longing towards another, the uppermost towards the undermost, and the undermost towards the uppermost, for they are separated one from the other; and in this hunger they embrace one another in the desire.

As we may know by the earth, which is so very hungry after the influence and virtue of the stars, and the spiritus mundi, after the spirit from whence it proceeded in the beginning, that it has no rest, for hunger; and this hunger of the earth consumes bodies, that the spirit may be parted again from the gross elementary condition, and return into its Archaeus again. For the Archaeus of the earth becomes thereby exceeding joyful, because it tastes and feels its first ground in itself again, and in this joy all things spring out of the earth, and therein also the growing of animals consists.

Therefore man, who is so noble an image, having his ground in time and eternity, should well consider himself, and not run headlong in such blindness, seeking his native country afar off from himself, when it is within himself, though covered with the grossness of the elements by their strife.

Such a Mysterium Magnum lies also in man, in the image of God, and is the essential Word of the power of God, according to time and eternity, by which the living Word of God out-speaks, or expresses itself, either in love or anger, or infancy, all as the Mysterium stands in a movable desire to evil or good; according to that saying, Such as the people is, such a God they also have.

For in whatsoever properties the Mysterium in man is awakened, such a word also utters itself from his powers: as we plainly see that nothing else but vanity is uttered by the wicked. Praise the Lord, all ye his works. Hallelujah.

From this essence the word expresses itself in the second separation, that is, of nature, and in that expression, the separation out of the fiery Science is understood; for thence comes the soul and all angelical spirits.