The Confessions of Jacob Boehme
cance and authority. Thus it is often his own interior drama which he sees reflected on the cosmic screen ; a proceeding which the " theosophic " doctrine of man as the microcosm of the Universe helped him to justify. His unstable temperament, with its alternations between gloom and illumination, its constant sense of struggle, its abrupt escapes into the light — the "powerful contrarium" with which he " stood in perpetual combat" — conditions his picture of the eternal conflict between light and darkness at the very heart of creation ; the crude stuff of striving nature and the formative Spirit of God. The " living running fire" which he feels in his own spirit, is his assurance of the Divine fiery creative energy.
Further, the Lutheran Christianity which formed the basis of his religious life contributed many elements to his scheme. Thence came the intense moral dualism, the Pauline opposition between the " darkINTRODUCTION xxiii world" of unregenerate nature and the " light- world " of grace, the doctrines of the Trinity and of regeneration, and generally those credal symbols which he often uses in a theosophic sense. He is familiar with the Bible, making constant though sometimes fantastic use of its language and imagery. Finally, the German mystics and hermetic philosophers of the Renaissance, in whom he was deeply read, gave him much of the raw material of his philosophy. Alchemy in his day was still a favourite toy of speculative minds ; being understood partly in the physical, partly in the transcendental sense. The " doctrine of signatures," which is the subject of one of Boehme's later works, was still taken seriously as a guide to practical medicine ; the stuffed crocodile hung in the laboratory, the toad and the spider were carefully distilled. Yet for the spiritual alchemists the quest of the Stone was the quest of an unearthly perxxiv CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME fection, and human nature was the true matter of the "great work." This "hermetic science," in which chemistry, magic, and mysticism were strangely combined, plainly made a strong appeal to Boehme ; and its influence upon his work was not always fortunate. But his debt to the more genuinely mystical writers of the sixteenth century, especially the Silesian reformer, Caspar Schwenckfeld, and Valentine Weigel, is of far greater importance. Certainly through Weigel, and perhaps also at first-hand, he became acquainted with Paracelsus, whose doctrine of humanity as the sum of three orders — the natural, the astral, and the divine — he adopts in the Threefold Life of Man and Three Principles of the Divine Essence. Through Weigel, too, he traces his descent from the great German mystics of the fourteenth century ; for the saintly pastor of Zschopau was soaked in the works of Tauler, and edited that pearl of Christian mysticism
INTRODUCTION xxv
cance and authority. Thus it is often his own interior drama which he sees reflected on the cosmic screen ; a proceeding which the " theosophic " doctrine of man as the microcosm of the Universe helped him to justify. His unstable temperament, with its alternations between gloom and illumination, its constant sense of struggle, its abrupt escapes into the light — the "powerful contrarium" with which he " stood in perpetual combat" — conditions his picture of the eternal conflict between light and darkness at the very heart of creation ; the crude stuff of striving nature and the formative Spirit of God. The " living running fire" which he feels in his own spirit, is his assurance of the Divine fiery creative energy.
Further, the Lutheran Christianity which formed the basis of his religious life contributed many elements to his scheme. Thence came the intense moral dualism, the Pauline opposition between the " darkINTRODUCTION xxiii world" of unregenerate nature and the " light- world " of grace, the doctrines of the Trinity and of regeneration, and generally those credal symbols which he often uses in a theosophic sense. He is familiar with the Bible, making constant though sometimes fantastic use of its language and imagery. Finally, the German mystics and hermetic philosophers of the Renaissance, in whom he was deeply read, gave him much of the raw material of his philosophy. Alchemy in his day was still a favourite toy of speculative minds ; being understood partly in the physical, partly in the transcendental sense. The " doctrine of signatures," which is the subject of one of Boehme's later works, was still taken seriously as a guide to practical medicine ; the stuffed crocodile hung in the laboratory, the toad and the spider were carefully distilled. Yet for the spiritual alchemists the quest of the Stone was the quest of an unearthly perxxiv CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME fection, and human nature was the true matter of the "great work." This "hermetic science," in which chemistry, magic, and mysticism were strangely combined, plainly made a strong appeal to Boehme ; and its influence upon his work was not always fortunate. But his debt to the more genuinely mystical writers of the sixteenth century, especially the Silesian reformer, Caspar Schwenckfeld, and Valentine Weigel, is of far greater importance. Certainly through Weigel, and perhaps also at first-hand, he became acquainted with Paracelsus, whose doctrine of humanity as the sum of three orders — the natural, the astral, and the divine — he adopts in the Threefold Life of Man and Three Principles of the Divine Essence. Through Weigel, too, he traces his descent from the great German mystics of the fourteenth century ; for the saintly pastor of Zschopau was soaked in the works of Tauler, and edited that pearl of Christian mysticism
INTRODUCTION xxv
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