Jacob Boehme - Six Theosophic Points & other writings 1620

From Theosophic Works

Jacob Boehme -  Six Theosophic Points & other writings 1620

SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS

CHAPTER VIII 

Of the right human essence from God's essence.

1. The right true human essence is not earthly,nor from the dark world ; it is generated only in the light-world; it has no communion or fellowship with the dark world, nor with the outer world;there is a great bar, viz. death, between them.

2. Not that there is nothing of the true essence in the external man. It is there; for it was given to Adam in his image. But it is shut up and lies in death, and cannot qualify; neither has it any motion in itself, unless it becomes quick in the power of the Deity. As it became quick in the Virgin Mary by God's motion and entrance; there the right human essence came again to life.

3. So also in us the right human essence is not stirring, except we be born of God in Christ.

4. In the baptism of infants the Word of God enters into union and connection with them in the covenant, and is the first stirring in this world; as a smouldering in wood that begins to glimmer, but the wicklet is often after darkened and extinguished. Moreover, in many a child that is begotten of wholly godless essence, it is not susceptible.

5. Christ said: Suffer little children to come unto me,for of such is the kingdom of God ( Mark x. 14). Not dogs, wolves, toads or serpents, but children,in whom the essence is not wholly devilish. For many a child is baptized in the wrath of God, for which the parents are to blame. An evil tree bears evil fruit, says Christ.

6. And though He is come into this world to save what was lost, yet it depends also on the essence of that which will let itself be helped. For an animal-man may attain the image [of God], if he turn round and suffer the Word that became man to draw him. If not, then he remains in his animal essence an evil beast.

7. But we are not to suppose that baptism lays the first foundation of the human essence, and is wholly the first en-kindling cause of the divine fire.No, that is not so; for a child becomes through the parents' essence a spirit, as also flesh and blood,with espousal of the constellation of the spirit majoris mundi.

8. At the time when a child in the womb has attained to life, then immediately divine or hellish essence glimmers from the primal fount and origin.

9. And if but a small spark of the divine essence be active, the child is susceptible of baptism. And though it should die unbaptized, yet the spark is in God's Mystery, and glimmers in God's kingdom, and is kindled in the fire of God. For it dies in the Mysterium of the Father, and glimmers up in the Mysterium of the Son who became man.

10. The parents' baptism and covenant is its baptism and covenant. The reconciliation has taken place in human blood, in the right true human essence. God's word or heart has given itself to the shut up, dead, human essence; not to the earthly part, but to the heavenly part. Not to the part that Adam by his imagination introduced,which is earth; but to the part which was given to Adam from the angelic world, which he corrupted and poisoned with the earthly craving for in the craving earthly, coarse, animal flesh was produced.

11. This part has the right human essence, and in this part God became man. And this same part has the ground of the angelic world, for it takes its origin from the angelic world.

12. But if most frequently godless parents are immersed wholly in the wrath of God, and so beget children in the wrath; then is their seed shut up in death, and has in it nothing of the right human essence, which is moving, save only what the constellation in the spirit majoris mundi has in itself. There certainly the divine power has some movement; but the wrath's power exists as opposite, and is heavy. Nevertheless, there is no impossibility; for the incarnation of God, his becoming man, is presented to all souls in the life's light.

13. But baptism contains something else. God's essence (as the water of eternal life born of God's gentleness) must move the right human essence (with Adam shut up in death), and yield itself up there as anew life or a living essence. God's water must baptize; the Holy Spirit must be the operant.

14. But I say, according to my knowledge, that the water of eternal life, upon which the Holy Spirit broods, will hardly yield itself up to the poison of wrath and death, where there is not an essence of desire [toward God].

15. I say, then, that a child (as soon as it has life in the womb) is, so far as the divine essence is moving in the heavenly part, already baptized by the Holy Spirit, and attains the incarnation of Christ. For baptism depends not on the priest's power, that the Holy Spirit should wait upon him.

The incarnation of Christ waited not upon man's power, but upon the goal that God set in his covenant. This goal was blessed. Therefore the angel said to Mary: Blessed art thou among women. The goal lay in her, and was blessed,and blessed her also when God's heart awakened the goal.

16. This goal reached back to Adam, and forward to the last man. When God became man,the goal was awakened in the heavenly part; not only in Mary, but also in Adam and Eve, and all their children who had given them selves up to God these were all blessed in the goal.

17. For that is the covenant of grace which God established with Adam and Eve. This covenant is in all human essence, but not in devilish essence.

18. But baptism is the seal that God affixed to the covenant, as in the old testament circumcision.In baptism God gives divine water to the human race as a pledge and seal; but the covenant is already there before baptism; it was made in paradise, yea before the foundation of the world.As soon as a soul is stirring in the womb, so that a human soul is born, it is in the covenant. For Christ has given himself to the fire of God, to the principle, and fulfilled the covenant, and is become the result of the testament.

19. This result waits not upon any external ordinance, upon the delusion of the outer man; but as soon as a soul is born from the principle, it is in the result of the testament, so far as the divine life is moving in it. But not in godless souls; in them the divine life must first be born. God's wrath swallows up many a soul still in essence, before it attains the principle ; because it is from false essence, from evil seed of the parents.

20. Reason says: What can a child do to this,that the parents are wicked? Nay, what can even God do? It is in the parents' power to get a child.

What can God do to this, that whores and profligates creep together? Though the false tree springs not thus from this line only, but also in marriage. Man is free; if he awaken no life, his seed remains an essence. Shall God,because of the child's innocence, cast pearls before swine? The kingdom of heaven confronts it; let it enter, God closes the kingdom of heaven to none.

21. But a badman is shut up in body and soul,why not also in the seed? The seed is truly the fruit of his body. If we would reap good wheat,we of right sow wheat; but if thistle seed be sown,a thistle grows from it. Must God then change that into wheat? Has not the sower power to sow in his field what he pleases? Or wilt thou say: What can the thistle do to this, that it is a thistle and pricks? It belongs not among the wheat, but grows up itself along with it.

22. God were certainly content though no thistle-child did grow; it is not his ordinance. But the devil sows weeds amongst the wheat, viz. in the heart of man. Why does man suffer this and destroy himself, so that his essence becomes a thistle-seed, and yields weeds to the fire in the wrath of God? It is not all attributable to the seed, but depends on the field. Many a noble grain perishes in the evil field's essence. The heavens with the sun give life and power to all growth. The sun makes no weeds, neither desires any; but the essence in the field makes often times another thing, and destroys the good.

23. So also in man. Many a curse sticks which one wishes the other, when the other has provoked it, and is apt for it; as indeed is common among godless married people, one wishing the other the devil and hell-fire. If then they both be godless,should not then their godless will be realized to them, by their begetting godless children? There is not anything that is good in them, what good thing then shall come out of them? What can God do to this? He sets his word and teaching before them, and announces to them their destruction.

If they will not regard it, let them go whither they please. So too is their seed; and thus many a child is born a thistle and evil beast, and is baptized in the wrath of God.

24. For, of what essence the soul's spirit is, in such an essence it receives also the divine nature in the covenant: one in the power of light, in love; another in the power of wrath, in darkness.

25. The covenant at baptism stands firm. Every child is baptized in the covenant; the Spirit of God baptizes each one, if we observe the customary form, but in accordance with the child's property.

Often the father and mother, as also the baptizer,are godless, and only evil beasts, and there is no real earnestness. The outward pomp and the money is the main point with them ; they despise the mystery.

Here the child is wholly in the property of wrath.Who then shall baptize? None other than the wrath of God in his covenant, for that men do but make a mock of it.

26. Thus the source of wrath seizes the new spirit, works powerfully in it, and brings forth fruit to perdition. As St. Paul says of the other testament, that the wicked man receives it unto judgment, not discerning the Lord's body (1Cor. xi.29). That is, he distinguishes not in himself the heavenly part of his essence from the earthly, to put his will into the heavenly and offer this up to God but deems all common,as an ox eats the fodder.

27. Therefore the wrath of God springs in him, so that he doth not break off his will from the earthly and repent of his wickedness. His heavenly part cannot become partaker of God's body, because he cannot awaken the essence of the heavenly part. Thus it has no mouth to receive God's body,the mouth being shut up in death. The earthly part, however, receives Christ's body, but according to the property of wrath, according to the property of the dark world; for the testament must stand.

28. In like manner is baptism. According as the soul's essence is in being, so also does it enjoy God's covenant. It were better a wholly godless child were not baptized, and that a wicked man in his sins without conversion did not touch God's testament; for it brings them both only power to perdition. God's covenant is never moved without fruit. God works in his covenant according to his word.

29. As is the soul which moves the covenant, so is the medicament in the covenant, and in such a power the Spirit of God works in love and wrath; for he is the spirit of every life, and assimilates himself to every life. He is in every thing as the thing's will and property is, for one property seizes the other. What the soul wills, that he wills also,and there into the soul enters.

30. It is all magical; what the will of a thing wills, that it receives. A toad takes only poison into itself; though it sit in the best apothecary's shop; the like also does a serpent. Every thing takes only its own property into itself ; and though it eat the substance of a good property, yet it converts all in itself into its own property. Though a toad should eat honey, yet this becomes poison in it. A sin deed the devil was an angel ; but when he willed nothing good, his heavenly essence became to him hellish poison, and his evil will remained evil one time as another.

31. We are therefore highly to consider our life.what we would do and be at. We have evil and good in us. The one wherein we draw our will,its essence becomes active in us; and such a property we draw also from without into us. We have the two Mysteries, the divine and the devilish in us, of the two eternal worlds, and also of the outer world. What we make of ourselves, that we are; what we awaken in ourselves, that is moving in us. If we lead ourselves to good, then God's Spirit helps us; but if we lead ourselves to evil, then God's wrath and anger helps us. Whatever we will, of that property we obtain a leader, and there into we lead ourselves. It is not God's will that we perish, bu this wrath's and our own will.

And thus we understand the fifth point.. How a life perishes, and how out of good an evil comes,and out of evil a good, when the will turns round.

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SIX MYSTICAL POINTS

THE FOURTH POINT

How 

CHRIST WILL DELIVER UP THE KINGDOM 

TO HIS FATHER.

 1. At the creation of the world and of all being,the Father put himself in motion in accordance with his property, viz. by the center of Nature,by the dark world and the fire-world. These continued in motion and domination till the Father moved himself in accordance with his heart (and the light-world), and God became man. 
Then the love of the hight overcame the Father's fierce wrathful property, and the Father ruled in the Son with love.

2. Then the Son had dominion in those that did cleave unto God; and the Holy Spirit (that proceeds from the Father and Son) drew men in the light of love, through the Son,to God the Father.

3. But in the end the Holy Spirit moves in the Father's and also in the Son's property, and both properties become active at once. The spirit of the Father reveals itself in fire and light, as also in the wrath of the dark world. Then the kingdom falls unto the Father. For the Holy Spirit must govern eternally, and be an eternal revealer in the light-world and also in the dark world.

4. For the two worlds will stand still; and the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and Son, bears rule eternally in the two worlds, according to each world's nature and property.

5. He alone will be the revealer of the wonders.And thus to the Father (who is all) the eternal dominion, which he exercises with the Spirit, is delivered by the Son.