The Rudolf Steiner Archive

22. Jakob Böhme

[ 1 ] Jakob Böhme is arguably one of the most remarkable figures of the past few centuries. At the dawn of a completely new era, at the turn of the 16th to the 17th century, he stands out with a knowledge and wisdom, and a worldview that seem to mark the culmination of many centuries. He stands out as a figure who, in the years that followed and up to the present day, has actually been quite poorly understood, even though he has been described as a *Philosophus teutonicus* and there have been societies in Holland, England, and Germany that sought to popularize Jakob Böhme’s views. There have always been people who have studied Jakob Böhme.

[ 2 ] In the year that Giordano Bruno died a martyr’s death, 1600, Jakob Böhme’s grand, powerful ideas also first began to take root in his soul. Anyone who begins to study Jakob Böhme while relying on the perspectives of our own time will find it difficult to make sense of him. That is why modern books on Jakob Böhme state that he expressed his views through images that are incomprehensible and obscure. When one reads what has been said about Jakob Böhme in recent handbooks, it is entirely understandable that one would find Jakob Böhme incomprehensible. What is written about him in handbooks on the history of philosophy is, indeed, the most incomprehensible stuff in the world. This is the peculiar phenomenon one encounters with Jakob Böhme.

[ 3 ] If one is thoroughly familiar with the intellectual life of the 19th century—particularly the German intellectual life influenced by specific philosophical circles—then one can understand why Jakob Böhme was so poorly understood. There are hardly any greater contrasts than those between Jakob Böhme and Immanuel Kant. Whatever else 19th-century culture produced lies quite far from the spirit of this remarkable man. All who attempt to approach Jakob Böhme from the standpoint of the theosophical worldview will be surprised that, given the kind of people Jakob Böhme had around him, a deeper theosophical understanding was still needed. To understand theosophy, one need only know Paracelsus and Jakob Böhme. Everything they wrote springs from a deep source, with immense profundity and magical power. Jakob Böhme was one of the greatest magicians of all time, with a greatness that has not yet been equaled.

[ 4 ] Jakob Böhme was born in 1575 to a poor family. He began his life as a shepherd and could barely read or write. While tending the livestock, he often experienced strange flashes of insight. It sometimes seemed to him as if every leaf on the trees, as if the animals of the forest, had something to say to him—as if all the beings of nature were speaking to him. He then became an apprentice to a shoemaker. During his apprenticeship, a strange experience occurred, the true nature of which cannot be discussed in public. Jakob Böhme was once asked by his master and mistress to mind the shop while they were out. However, he was not supposed to sell anything. Then a man walked in whose eyes made a very special impression on him. Apparently, this man wanted to buy something. Jakob told him he wasn’t allowed to sell anything. The stranger’s gaze was something quite extraordinary to him. The stranger then walked out. After a few minutes, Jakob heard his name being called. The stranger said to him: “Jakob, you are still young, but you are called to something great!” — Jakob Böhme knew that something, something lasting, had been imparted to him through these words. Then Jakob Böhme recounts another experience, this time on a mountain. There, he once looked into a cave where something glinted at him like gold. Again, it seemed to him like a revelation, like something that had a message for him about the hidden forces of nature. If one were to grasp all of this, it would lose that magic which one is only able to understand through occult means.

[ 5 ] Like all young craftsmen of that time, Jakob Böhme set out on a journey after completing his apprenticeship and then settled in his hometown of Görlitz as a master shoemaker. He soon began to write down what lived within his soul. It is important here to shed some light on the feelings that characterized this individual. Whenever he took up his pen to write down what had been revealed to him, he felt elevated above himself. There was something within him akin to a higher nature. This was so strong within him that, when he returned to everyday life and wanted to read what he had written, he could not understand it. He was then unable to follow that spirit. From the very beginning, what he wrote were words drawn solely from the center of wisdom. *Aurora, or the Dawn Rising* was the first book he wrote. For mystics, Aurora, or the dawn, has always been a symbol of the birth of the higher self, of the soul rising above the lower existence. The spiritualization of the human being has always been symbolized as the dawn. At that time, Jakob Böhme wrote words that, because they bear the stamp, the seal of truth, sound perfectly natural coming from him. He once said that he knew “the sophist would rebuke him” when he spoke of the beginning of the world and its creation, “since I was not there and did not see it myself. To that I say: in the essence of my soul and body, when I was not yet the “I,” but was rather the essence of Adam, I was indeed present and forfeited my glory in Adam himself.”

[ 6 ] This simple man, who had probably never practiced what is called “reading” with any writer other than Paracelsus, was aware that the eternal soul that lives within human beings is not bound by space and time, and that there is an expansion of this soul’s consciousness through which human beings are able to rise above space and time. Thus, the unity that lives in all things—and that dwells within every human soul—was clear to him, so that one need only cast off the narrow boundaries to receive an image, a face that reveals to us everything that goes back to the beginning of human creation. All of this is grounded in Jakob Böhme’s profound piety. He says the following about his state of mind: “As I struggled and wrestled for God’s assistance, a wondrous light dawned upon my soul—one entirely foreign to the wildness of nature—in which I first recognized what God and humanity are, and what God’s purpose is with regard to humanity.”

[ 7 ] For Jakob Böhme, the resurrection of the divine soul within the ordinary human soul was a direct experience. It was this experience that gave rise to his enthusiasm, which welled up from his soul in a very fundamental way. Thus we see him grasping human nature—the historical development of all humanity—in a way that, unless one can penetrate to the very sources themselves, makes it quite difficult to comprehend this spirit.

[ 8 ] What we find in Paracelsus is presented to us in a spiritualized and transfigured form in Jakob Böhme. We encounter it as early as his first work, the *Aurora*. This work was not initially printed but circulated among his friends only as a manuscript. Then it fell into the hands of a zealous preacher. He preached against it and succeeded in getting the magistrate of the city of Görlitz to forbid Jakob Böhme from writing anything in the future. That is how dangerous he was already considered at the time. Jakob Böhme, however, did not write anything for years afterward. All his other writings date from the last five to six years of his life—a life that had been made increasingly difficult for him because people understood nothing of what lived within this man, and because the fanatical clergy was filled with a zealous hatred for everything they had not written themselves. Before they were printed in Germany, his works were translated into English, Dutch, and other languages. The fate of Jakob Böhme and his works is an example of how the paths of true spiritual life depend little on official education and how difficult it is to overcome the obstacles that all manner of powers place in the way of spiritual life.

[ 9 ] Even in *Aurora*, we encounter what lived within Jakob Böhme. Jakob Böhme first spoke of the fact that something lives within human beings that can transcend itself—a divine spark of life. For him, this was not an abstract concept, but took shape in his thoughts and in his world of feeling as a vast structure encompassing the world and humanity. Anyone who wishes to understand Jakob Böhme must recognize that only a profound education in spiritual science can penetrate what lived within him. He knew that the physical human being is founded upon another, more spiritual, and finer essence. Between the physical human being and the soul there is something that Jakob Böhme called the “tinctura.” This is a word that is often misunderstood. Even in his time, there were great minds—such as Newton—who spent years trying to understand what Jakob Böhme meant when he spoke of the “tinctura.”

[ 10 ] If we look back to earlier times in the distant past, we will find that the world was then quite different from what it is now. Jakob Böhme was thoroughly imbued with a powerful theory of evolution. No scientific perspective has ever presented a theory of the world’s evolution as comprehensive, as magnificent, and as applicable to both the spiritual and the sensory realms as Jakob Böhme’s conception of it. He looks back to periods far behind us, when the Earth still looked quite different from what it does now. What some natural scientists have said in a rather amateurish way about the Earth’s primordial state, Jakob Böhme understood in a remarkable way. When we go back to the dawn of time, today’s natural scientist traces living beings back to increasingly imperfect forms. At best, they might then say: Everything on Earth has emerged from a cosmic nebula. There, the forms emerged through the laws inherent in the cosmic nebula. — In Jakob Böhme, we see this evolution conceived on a much grander scale. His gaze extends to all spiritual beings, to all animal beings, to all plant beings, and to all mineral beings. There he is able to discern the earlier states, the forms that human beings had in earlier times, when these beings did not yet exist as they are today, but were contained back then in a kind of primordial matter from which the later world first emerged. He sees the world of phenomena and the beings as they existed back then, as they were present in their embryonic form. He sees an Earth that is neither solid nor air, nor water, nor fire; an Earth on which there were neither animals nor plants, but which contains everything that later came into being. Jakob Böhme is not speaking of a fanciful primordial nebula, but rather of the Tinctura, which once truly existed, formed our globe as such, and which today rests hidden at the foundation of all beings. This Tinctura is present in human beings as a spiritual-soul organism behind the physical being. It is also present in all other things. From the Tinctura, Jakob Böhme derives the formation of all living beings, in which he distinguishes seven fundamental qualities. This leads us, in his view, to a very profound foundation of worldview. Equipped with this, one can find a thread running through the world that is capable of solving countless mysteries of the universe. Jakob Böhme’s language in this regard is marvelous; in comparison, our modern language, with its concepts, appears dull and lifeless.

[ 11 ] We must imagine that the Tinctura exists in the world like primordial matter, that everything within it rests as in a mother’s womb, and that forms then emerge from it. He calls one type of these forms “bitterness.” The human ancestor was a being with a cartilaginous skeleton, just as cartilaginous fish have today. Then the bony skeleton crystallized out of the original Tinctura; with “herbiness,” the bony skeleton of the Earth crystallized out of the original Tinctura. Jakob Böhme calls this all that is salty in the world. One need not imagine that the original “herbiness” necessarily had to take the form of a skeletal framework. But everything that crystallized out of the original spiritual matter with the potential to become solid and earthy—that, for Jakob Böhme, was this “herbiness,” this “saltiness.”

[ 12 ] The second aspect of nature is that which preserves inner mobility, so that the parts can enter into constant interaction with one another. Jakob Böhme calls this the Mercurial.

[ 13 ] The third is sulfur, which, like a hidden force, contains within itself the power of fire.

[ 14 ] In German folklore, Jakob Böhme combines deeply primordial ideas with a wonderfully wise language. It is precisely here that we can recognize Jakob Böhme’s connection to the original German folk soul. In mid-June, there is the St. John’s Fire festival. This presupposes something significant in nature. Scholarly speculation refers to the summer solstice and astronomical connections. But that is not what we are dealing with here. In the original folk belief of the Germans, the fire that could be kindled from nature signified something very special. The St. John’s Fire had to be kindled by rubbing pieces of wood together. People believed that if such a St. John’s Fire had been kindled and a plague was on the horizon, this fire possessed a healing power. Underlying all profound folk beliefs is the idea of the kinship between fire and what we call human drives and instincts. This was not conceived as a symbol, for the people never devised such symbols. Something else lies at the root of it. This becomes evident in the legends of the St. John’s Fire and also in the writings of Jakob Böhme. What we see today as fire emanating from matter is one thing, and human and animal passions are another. Now they are as far apart as the North and South Poles. Now, popular intuition—as did Jakob Böhme—looked back to a time of earliest development. There was something there that was neither material fire nor passion, but from which, on the one hand, fire and, on the other, passion emerged. Back then, these shared a common foundation. Jakob Böhme finds the same spiritual foundation in material fire as in human passion. For him, there is a kinship between what lies dormant in matter—what can be drawn out of matter—and human passion. In this there is something related to the spiritual aspect of fire.

[ 15 ] Sulfur contains fire hidden within it, just as the body contains animal passion. Thus, Jakob Böhme first distinguishes these four: Tinctura, salt, sulfur, and fire.

[ 16 ] Just as the ancient German folk intuition looked back to a time when there was neither fire nor passion, so Jakob Böhme looks back to such a state—to something that, when spiritualized, becomes the fifth primordial form of nature, which he calls “water.” It is water in the sense that we find water in the Bible, as an outward sign of the soul. The Spirit of God hovered over the water—over the soul forces slumbering within matter—so that they might be awakened.

[ 17 ] The sixth form of nature arises when the inner world manifests itself outwardly, when inner life becomes so vivid that it can be perceived. Jakob Böhme calls this “resonance” or “sound.” This is any spiritual expression that carries the inner essence within itself, just as a bell carries its own sound. The resonance or sound can also emerge in such a way that it gives expression to the unified nature of God. Then the seventh power arises: wisdom, the divine power contained within the world. Jakob Böhme sees the whole of nature encompassed within these seven forms.

[ 18 ] The lowest aspect of human nature is related to a salty, bitter quality; from there, it ascends ever higher toward wisdom. Furthermore, the forces of nature and human beings are related to the solar system. The kinship of all beings is expressed everywhere. Jakob Böhme also calls that which flows through all beings like the spiritual lifeblood the “Tinctura.” It lies between the World-Idea and all matter. Jakob Böhme envisions the great Architect of the world as an artist who has shaped the world in a sensory-physical way. He calls the link between the sensory-physical realm and the Creator of the world the “Tinctura.” He seeks it out in every individual being. This is what makes his writings challenging: we must work our way into his concepts. People are usually content once they have pinned down a few concepts. Jakob Böhme does not construct individual abstract concepts that stand side by side like soldiers. He, as it were, delves into all entities. He regards all entities as related, as interconnected. To understand Jakob Böhme, one must make the mind itself flexible, just as nature itself is flexible, so that concepts can transform just as things in nature transform. Even theosophists often put forward narrow concepts. But the point is not to have a concept, but rather to be able to dissolve the concept immediately. Once one has a concept, one must be able to transform it, just as things transform. Nothing is more obstructive than abstract, rigidly defined concepts. That is why those who read Jakob Böhme cannot understand him, because they first form fixed concepts; he, however, follows the living reality of things. Concepts, too, must change, just as things themselves change. But then people feel, as it were, as if they were floating in the air. One has indeed lost one’s footing when one seeks to understand the world. One must simply maintain one’s center within oneself.

[ 19 ] Jakob Böhme’s “Portrait of the Soul” is a representation of nature itself. In the human mind, Jakob Böhme finds that which is akin to the *tinctura*: imagination. Imagination is a power of the soul that stands midway between the power of thought and the power of will. Whoever first knows how to make his concepts pictorial and then visualizes them in the mind—so that what stands before him is not an abstract image of the plant, but a plant with sensory visibility—will find such a visible concept as if imbued with real life from within. Whoever can do this possesses imagination. This can be heightened to such an extent that a person acts creatively and gains influence over what lives in things as the “tinctura.”

[ 20 ] For Jakob Böhme, this is where alchemy begins—alchemy that is capable of acting back upon matter, the *tinctura*, and from there also upon sensory things. Thus, the imaginative person can become a magician. Because Jakob Böhme understood this, we may call him the greatest magician of the modern era. Jakob Böhme calls the imagination the great Virgin of Nature, the Virgin of Wisdom. He then traces back to the creation of Adam and further still to the original divine imagination. He says that the divine imagination fashioned the original spiritual human being out of matter according to its mirror image. He calls this spiritual human being the original Adam. Since this spiritual human being has existed from the very beginning, he demonstrates how the spiritual human being was already present in the original Tinctura, but also how a complete spiritual transformation actually took place during the creation of the world. He places this transformation on the fourth day of creation. This original human, whom he calls the “Tinctura human,” did not see with actual eyes, but inwardly he possessed clairvoyance, so that he could perceive through it everything that was taking place within him. Then selfhood—autonomy—came upon this human; it arrived on the fourth day, and the clairvoyant human became aware of himself and began to perceive his own being. Originally, spiritual-divine creation surrounded him on all sides. The primordial human being perceived this through clairvoyance. Now he saw himself. That was his fall from God. This human being would have become completely hardened, lost in bitterness, had something else not been possible. Man no longer perceived the world clairvoyantly. The moment arrived when the clairvoyant human being could perceive externally what is divine. The sun, moon, and stars are, at first, images of the divine, which he had previously seen within himself. Thus, man had fallen away from divinity, but through the senses the world had become perceptible to him. It is the concept of sensory perception that transformed human beings from the ancient “Tinctura” human into the material human. He becomes a material human through his own concept derived from the material world, so that human beings have become sensory beings from within through their own imagination of the sensory.

[ 21 ] Jakob Böhme saw a deep kinship among all beings—animals, plants, and minerals. He said that everything in the world that lives—flesh and blood, flesh and bone, and so on—is related to something on Earth. Jakob Böhme also relates the entire social, artistic, and societal structure to the constellations of the planets. He demonstrates the connection between the planets and human life. All of this is so clear in his work to those who wish to understand him, yet so vast that it certainly cannot be grasped in a short time.

[ 22 ] Another question came to his attention: the question of the origin of evil in the world—the question: How does evil come into the world? Is evil inherent in the very foundation of the world? If so, then that foundation is not a good one. — He finds the answer to this by comparing the original good to light—pure, unadulterated light. There is no darkness contained within it. But as the light appears and becomes perceptible, it manifests through objects along with shadows. Can we say that darkness is contained within the light? Certainly not. Only pure, unadulterated light emanates from the source of light. But the opposite of light emanates from objects. In the world, light confronts us as the primordial source… not to be derived from that source. Just as the shadow must be present with the light, so too must evil be present within the good. We can compare divine harmony to the human soul. It permeates the organism. The limbs of the human organism are set in motion by the soul. The world harmony of the Divine manifests itself in the soul in such a way that the limbs possess autonomy. Yet even though the harmony of the soul underlies them, the limbs can turn against one another. If there is to be freedom in the world, then the limbs must be able to turn against one another. Freedom and the possibility of evil belong together, just as harmony and the possibility of disharmony do. It was precisely this idea of Jakob Böhme that inspired Schelling, and in his work one finds a wonderful depiction of what lives within human freedom. Schelling’s treatise on human freedom is like an offering to Jakob Böhme. Schelling grasped something of Jakob Böhme. His ideas also lived on in Goethe and other great minds of the 19th century. It was only with the rise of materialism that spiritual life became estranged from Jakob Böhme. From then on, people understood him less and less. A time will come again when people will not only understand him but will also want to learn from him. Then a new era will dawn for what is today called theosophy. A time will then come when such profound spiritual works as the writings of Jakob Böhme and Germanic mythology will once again be understood, and when these will be transformed into a new glory. Then a spiritualization of all wisdom and all human energy will be brought about. When the age that has made its mission the external mastery of all natural forces comes to an end, Jakob Böhme will also be understood once more. Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno also belonged to the same era as Jakob Böhme. They led the world toward contemplation of the sensory world, the external world. Jakob Böhme appeared precisely in that era, and his works are like a great synthesis of all humanity’s spiritual achievements. He presents all of this to the world at the dawn of an era that ushers in the materialistic epoch. Once the materialistic age has been left behind, Jakob Böhme will be rediscovered, along with everything contained in his works. Everything that the world has gathered in terms of spiritual treasures is contained in his works.

[ 23 ] We must not regard what Theosophy has achieved so far as anything extraordinary. The Theosophical World Movement must be something that is alive, something that embodies life and growth. If it becomes that, and if the Theosophical Society upholds these principles, then it will understand how to work in the spirit of the great minds of earlier times, in the spirit of Jakob Böhme; only then will it act in the true sense of the word “theosophically.”