The Confessions of Jacob Boehme
JACOB BOEHME, who reveals to us in this book some of the secrets of his inner life, was among the most original of the great Christian mystics. With a natural genius for the things of the spirit, he also exhibited many of the characteristics of the psychic, the seer, and the metaphysician ; and his influence on philosophy has been at least as great as his influence on religious mysticism.
No mystic is born ready-made. He is, like other men, the product of nurture no less than of nature. Tradition and environment condition both his vision and its presentation. So, Boehme's peculiar and xii CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME often difficult doctrine will better be understood when we know something of his outer life and its influences. He was born of peasant stock in 1575, at a village near Gorlitz on the borders of Saxony and Silesia, and as a boy tended cattle in the fields. Of a pious, dreamy, and brooding disposition, even in childhood he is said to have had visionary experiences. Not being sufficiently robust for field-work, he was apprenticed to a shoemaker ; but, his severe moral ideas causing disputes with the other workmen, he was dismissed and became a travelling cobbler. During this enforced exile, which coincided with the most impressionable period of youth, Boehme learned something of the unsatisfactory religious conditions of his time ; the bitter disputes and mutual intolerance which divided Protestant Germany, the empty formalism which passed for Christianity. He also came into contact with the theosophic and
INTRODUCTION xiii
hermetic speculations which distinguished contemporary German thought, and seemed to many to offer an escape into more spiritual regions from the unrealities of institutional religion. He was himself full of doubts and inward conflict ; tortured not only by the craving for spiritual certainty but also by the unruly impulses and passionate longings of adolescence — that " powerful contrarium " of which he so constantly speaks — which are often felt by the mystic in their most exaggerated form. His religious demands were of the simplest kind : " I never desired to know anything of the Divine Majesty ... I sought only after the heart of Jesus Christ, that I might hide myself therein from the wrathful anger of God and the violent assaults of the Devil." Like St. Augustine in his study of the Platonists, Boehme was seeking "the country which is no mere vision, but a home " ; and in this he already showed himself a true mystic. H is longings xiv CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME and struggles for light were rewarded, as they have been in so many seekers at the beginning of their quest, by an intuition of reality, resolving for a time the disharmonies that tormented him. Conflict gave way to a new sense of stability and "blessed peace." This lasted for seven days, during which he felt himself to be " surrounded by the Divine Light": an experience paralleled in the lives of many other contemplatives.
JACOB BOEHME, who reveals to us in this book some of the secrets of his inner life, was among the most original of the great Christian mystics. With a natural genius for the things of the spirit, he also exhibited many of the characteristics of the psychic, the seer, and the metaphysician ; and his influence on philosophy has been at least as great as his influence on religious mysticism.
No mystic is born ready-made. He is, like other men, the product of nurture no less than of nature. Tradition and environment condition both his vision and its presentation. So, Boehme's peculiar and xii CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME often difficult doctrine will better be understood when we know something of his outer life and its influences. He was born of peasant stock in 1575, at a village near Gorlitz on the borders of Saxony and Silesia, and as a boy tended cattle in the fields. Of a pious, dreamy, and brooding disposition, even in childhood he is said to have had visionary experiences. Not being sufficiently robust for field-work, he was apprenticed to a shoemaker ; but, his severe moral ideas causing disputes with the other workmen, he was dismissed and became a travelling cobbler. During this enforced exile, which coincided with the most impressionable period of youth, Boehme learned something of the unsatisfactory religious conditions of his time ; the bitter disputes and mutual intolerance which divided Protestant Germany, the empty formalism which passed for Christianity. He also came into contact with the theosophic and
INTRODUCTION xiii
hermetic speculations which distinguished contemporary German thought, and seemed to many to offer an escape into more spiritual regions from the unrealities of institutional religion. He was himself full of doubts and inward conflict ; tortured not only by the craving for spiritual certainty but also by the unruly impulses and passionate longings of adolescence — that " powerful contrarium " of which he so constantly speaks — which are often felt by the mystic in their most exaggerated form. His religious demands were of the simplest kind : " I never desired to know anything of the Divine Majesty ... I sought only after the heart of Jesus Christ, that I might hide myself therein from the wrathful anger of God and the violent assaults of the Devil." Like St. Augustine in his study of the Platonists, Boehme was seeking "the country which is no mere vision, but a home " ; and in this he already showed himself a true mystic. H is longings xiv CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME and struggles for light were rewarded, as they have been in so many seekers at the beginning of their quest, by an intuition of reality, resolving for a time the disharmonies that tormented him. Conflict gave way to a new sense of stability and "blessed peace." This lasted for seven days, during which he felt himself to be " surrounded by the Divine Light": an experience paralleled in the lives of many other contemplatives.
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