The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. German Mysticism and Its Foundations: Jakob Böhme

[ 1 ] Jakob Böhme, the shoemaker from Görlitz, appears to embody the mystical aspirations of the Middle Ages. At first, his language is not easily accessible, but anyone who has read his works and can follow what they have read with intuitive insight will see that they are dealing with a true sage. One is faced with a puzzle when one thinks that one would have to have accumulated a great deal of knowledge on the subject today, whereas the power of thought displayed here by a layperson undoubtedly reveals the greatness of his spiritual life and his outstanding influence on all thinkers. It is only possible to briefly outline the main points; in this respect, Jakob Böhme has elaborated on problems that others have paid little attention to. Lücke.

[ 2 ] Once, as a boy, he climbed to the summit of the mountain surrounded by red rocks, where he felt profoundly enlightened, and it seemed to him as if he could see into the very heart of the earth. Another time, when he was still a shoemaker’s apprentice, a man came—a strange man. – He had been instructed not to sell anything. – The man walked away, then a voice rang out: “Jakob, Jakob, come out!” – Then, in a strange voice whose sound he could never forget, he heard the words: “Jakob! Yes, you are still small, but you are destined to kindle a light for the world.” – A third experience was that, upon seeing a gleaming pewter bowl, he had a special epiphany. Jacob later incorporated this epiphany when he developed the entire system of his wisdom, and gave it symbolic meaning.

[ 3 ] The person who judges things with the intellect seeks to delve into them and thereby assess them by exploring their inner nature; this is natural science. — The one who seeks something higher pursues something else; for him, the innermost part of the soul shines forth, and there he sees the sun of the spirit. The things within him then shine through the reflected light of the sun of the spirit. Indeed, it is impossible for the mystic to describe what he experiences inwardly other than through symbols, for what he experiences is so vast and mighty, and language is so limited, since it is applied only to matters of experience.

[ 4 ] The question that Jakob Böhme addresses as particularly important is that of the origin of evil and imperfection in the world. Those who assume that the world has its origin in the divinely perfect being ask themselves: Yes, but where does it come from?—Schelling saw in these lines of thought by Jakob Böhme something so profound and infinitely significant that he took up this problem in this way in his treatise on human freedom: The world undoubtedly originates in the Good, and if a philosopher seeks its truly deeper essence, its core, he can find it only in the Good and the Sublime, just as one who wishes to see things illuminated must see them in the light. Now he says: Yes, the Perfect, the Good, has revealed itself; it has come into being. When it comes into being, it becomes a diversity, a structured whole. Man is a unity in spirit, and this unity makes itself known through the diverse parts of the world. This diversity will be all the more perfect the more each part is, in itself, a reflection of the whole of the soul. – This is how it is throughout the world, and let us assume that the interdependence takes effect: take, for example, hands that do not tear each other apart. Jakob Böhme says that a multiplicity arises only from a unity, but that the multiplicity must be guided solely by the will of the unity; just as, for example, two hands, if they are not directed by a single will, are separate limbs; without this guiding unity, we cannot create a great work. These hands can rage against each other; they can tear each other apart. This possibility arises precisely when the two are given what we call freedom. As long as the two hands are coordinated by the personality and as long as a single will governs them, they will not turn against each other.

[ 5 ] If the Deity wishes to make itself so perfect that beings become godlike, then it must give itself over in infinite love; it must give every being the opportunity to make its own decision. Jakob Böhme thus sees in this selfless devotion the possibility of evil and of freedom. Freedom is possible only if the Deity has relinquished the possibility of a unified decision, and thus the possibility of evil enters the world. And this occurs when we consider it not only spatially but also temporally. Consider the example of the piano maker and the virtuoso: Imagine a piano workshop containing a master piano maker who not only possesses the highest technical skill but also works with love in the crafting of pianos. Within the workshop, we will find nothing imperfect. When we bring a piano into the concert hall and a virtuoso sits down to play it, something perfect will once again emerge. Everyone achieves perfection in their own place. But suppose the piano builder were too enthusiastic and continued hammering while the virtuoso was playing; this activity, performed in the wrong place, would produce something imperfect. The imperfect result is then brought about by the interplay of these actions.

[ 6 ] Every evil is, in truth, a good that has been displaced. We can already trace this in the course of history. What we call “reactionary” today was once considered good in a certain era. – Jakob Böhme laid the foundation for understanding this problem in more recent times. He says: This evil actually originates from nothing; what is inherent is the good; the parts need only interact, and then the interplay of the Primordial Ground and the Unground arises. Just as the shadow has no basis in the sun, so too does evil have no basis in the good. Böhme has shown that it is wrong to treat the problems of evil in isolation. In every thing there is something that does not arise from the Primordial Ground but from this interaction, and thus it contains evil within itself. His system of thought—if one follows it closely; notably, De signatura rerum contains the key to everything—can be summarized as follows: We now have humans, animals, and minerals before us. – Böhme assumes that human beings, having already passed through the animal kingdom once, had to repeat all earlier stages once more. They have already gone through three cycles. Now they are in the fourth cycle; there they briefly repeated the stages of the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the animal kingdom, and are now passing through higher ones.

[ 7 ] We have an important distinction: between poikilothermic animals and endothermic animals. If we look back geologically, we arrive at earlier times when humans did not yet exist—only warm-blooded animals and others—and then at times when cold-blooded animals predominated. What lives within human beings actually flowed in from the outside, so Böhme envisions this moment as one in which these early qualities of the world soul became external—as an outward reflection of inner warmth in the external world. We must then conceive of a powerful shift in the development of warmth in nature.

[ 8 ] Those who have absorbed a certain degree of heat have done so at the expense of the lower animals. “The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (Gen. 1:2). This is the heat that is conceived as hovering externally and was then absorbed by warm-blooded animals and humans. Passion is thus absorbed from the environment, and Böhme calls this element in nature his “fourth form of nature” and “fire.” This form of nature thus stands in the middle; three preceded it, and three follow it. During the present era, the warm-blooded animal has emerged. – Böhme calls the state of the mineral the state of harshness; when humans repeated the state of the plant, they were in the state of life. Böhme refers to this as harshness. During the third stage, the possibility of death arises; he calls it the torment of life, the capacity for death. The fourth … a gap. The fifth is what he calls “the longing for love,” the sixth is “sound” or “voice,” and the seventh is “bliss.” These lie ahead. It is a grand cosmic tableau.

[ 9 ] Everything Böhme has created as a “charcoal sketch” of his worldview is greater; they flow from him as if a divine soul were flowing from him. He offers not concepts, but true wisdom.

[ 10 ] Natural science, however, begins mystically, as the famous mystic Giordano Bruno defends Copernicus; it then continues in a subtle current, finds its full expression in Goethe, and flows in delicate rays through Baader, Novalis, and on to Maeterlinck. Today I would like to mention another great figure who belongs more to the tradition of Jakob Böhme—while we saw a new light in Giordano Bruno—a personality in whom all great thoughts are dissolved into mood, as if emerging directly from the innermost soul. He did not offer theories, but something that, as if emerging anew from all theories yet at the same time from the innermost soul, flows with wondrous life. The entire personal manner in which one who has developed to the highest degree of impersonality expresses it has become consciousness of what others have conceived and beheld: this medieval mysticism has become utterly sweet with maturity in Angelus Silesius.