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Boehme was born in 1575. He received little if any formal education
and was apprenticed to a shoemaker at Goerlitz in Saxony. From an
early age he seems to have been devoted to the study of the Bible
as well as having a growing, inner, sense of the reality of God.
Walking one day in the fields, when he was twenty-five years old,
the mystery of creation was suddenly opened to him, and 'in a
quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many
years at the university ... and thereupon I turned my heart to
praise God for it.' He puzzled as to why such revelations should be
given to him, who sought only the love of God. Ten years later he
began to record what he received, and thus was born The Aurora, his
first book, finished in 1612. At once his work found both friends
and enemies. To the struggles of the former to understand him, we
owe the gradual development of his capacity to convey and express
more and more of that which he had received. Persecution by the
Primate of Goerlitz made him leave home and settle in Dresden,
where he died in 1624. Written in 1623, when his powers of
expression had developed to their full, Mysterium Magnum is central
to his work. Taking the form of an interpretation of Genesis, it
outstrips its apparent confines, explaining the popularity of his
work among followers as varied as Hegel, Law, Blake and Berdyaev.
From the first sentence it leads to the heart of the experience of
all mystics: 'When we consider the visible world with its essence,
and consider the life of the creatures, then we find therein the
likeness of the invisible spiritual world, which is hidden in the
visible world as the soul in the body; and we see thereby that the
hidden God is nigh unto all and, through all, and yet wholly bidden
to the visible essence.'
Boehme was born in 1575. He received little if any formal education
and was apprenticed to a shoemaker at Goerlitz in Saxony. From an
early age he seems to have been devoted to the study of the Bible
as well as having a growing, inner, sense of the reality of God.
Walking one day in the fields, when he was twenty-five years old,
the mystery of creation was suddenly opened to him, and 'in a
quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many
years at the university ... and thereupon I turned my heart to
praise God for it.' He puzzled as to why such revelations should be
given to him, who sought only the love of God. Ten years later he
began to record what he received, and thus was born The Aurora, his
first book, finished in 1612. At once his work found both friends
and enemies. To the struggles of the former to understand him, we
owe the gradual development of his capacity to convey and express
more and more of that which he had received. Persecution by the
Primate of Goerlitz made him leave home and settle in Dresden,
where he died in 1624. Written in 1623, when his powers of
expression had developed to their full, Mysterium Magnum is central
to his work. Taking the form of an interpretation of Genesis, it
outstrips its apparent confines, explaining the popularity of his
work among followers as varied as Hegel, Law, Blake and Berdyaev.
From the first sentence it leads to the heart of the experience of
all mystics: 'When we consider the visible world with its essence,
and consider the life of the creatures, then we find therein the
likeness of the invisible spiritual world, which is hidden in the
visible world as the soul in the body; and we see thereby that the
hidden God is nigh unto all and, through all, and yet wholly bidden
to the visible essence.'
'It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in
misery and lost as if in sorrow. There is no sorrowing. For
sorrowing is a thing swallowed up in death, and death and dying are
the very life of the darkness.' Jacob Boehme's mystical pantheism
and dialectical conception of God - in which good and evil are
rooted in one and the same being - soon brought him into conflict
with Lutheran orthodoxy. It is in 'The Signature of all Things'
(Signatura Rerum) that the tenets of Boehme's theosophy are related
in their greatest detail. Casting the reader into the vortex of his
cosmological universe, Boehme's endeavour to express a new sense of
the human, divine and natural realms attains its apotheosis in his
conception of the Ungrund, the uncertainty that precedes the divine
will's arousing itself to self-awareness. Challenging and rewarding
in equal measure, this is a profound text, deeply influential upon
devotional writers such as William Law, visionaries such as William
Blake (informing The Marriage of Heaven and Hell) and, more
recently, upon cultural production as diverse as the psychology of
Carl Jung and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.
Showing the Sign and Signification of the Several Forms and Shapes
in the Creation; and what the Beginning, Ruin, and Cure of
Everything is. It proceeds out of Eternity into Time, and again out
of Time into Eternity, and Comprises all Mysteries. And other
Writings Of the Supersensual Life or the Life which is Above Sense;
The Way from Darkness to True Illumination; Discourse Between Two
Souls. Contents: How that all whatever is spoken of God without the
Knowledge of the Signature is dumb and without Understanding, and
that in the Mind of Man the Signature lies very exactly composed,
according to the Being of all Beings, Of the Opposition and Combat
in the Essence of all Essences, whereby the Ground of the Sympathy
and Antipathy in Nature may be seen, and also the Corruption and
Cure of each Thing, Of the great Mystery of all Beings, Of the
Birth of the four Elements and Stars, Of the Sulphurean Death, and
how the dead Body is revived and replaced into its first Glory or
Holiness, How a Water and Oil is generated, How Adam (while he was
in Paradise) and also Lucifer were glorious Angels, Of the
Sulphurean Sude, or Seething of the Earth, Of the Signature,
showing how the inward signs the outward, Of the inward and outward
Cure of Man, Of the Process of Christ in his Suffering, Dying, and
Rising again, Of the Seventh Form in the Kingdom of the Mother, Of
the Enmity of the Spirit and Body, and of their Cure and
Restoration, Of the Wheel of Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt; of the
Generation of Good and Evil: how the one is changed into the other,
Of the Will of the great Mystery in Good and Evil; how a good and
evil Will originally arises, and how the one introduces itself into
the other, Of theEternal Signature and Heavenly Joy; Things were
brought into Evil and Good; Of the Supersensual Life: Two Dialogues
between a Scholar or Disciple and his Master; The Way from Darkness
to True Illumination: A Discourse between a Soul Hungry and Thirsty
and a Soul Enlightened.
This Is A New Release Of The Original 1850 Edition.
This Is A New Release Of The Original 1850 Edition.
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