Note 5 — Chapter IX · THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM, OR OF NATURE IN GOD.

A despotic fiat could not suffice as an explanation of the origin of Nature to Jacob Böhme; Nature appealed too strongly to his senses, and lay too near his heart; hence he sought for a natural explanation of Nature; but he necessarily found no other ground of explanation than those qualities of Nature which made the strongest impression on him. Jacob Böhme—this is his essential character—is a mystical natural philosopher, a theosophic Vulcanist and Neptunist,5 for according to him “all things had their origin in fire and water.” Nature had fascinated Jacob’s religious sentiments,—not in vain did he receive his mystical light from the shining of tin utensils; but the religious sentiment works only within itself; it has not the force, not the courage, to press forward to the examination of things in their reality; it looks at all things through the medium of religion, it sees all in God, i.e., in the entrancing, soul-possessing splendour of the imagination, it sees all in images and as an image. But Nature affected his mind in an opposite manner; hence he must place this opposition in God himself,—for the supposition of two independently existing, opposite, original principles would have afflicted his religious sentiment;—he must distinguish in God himself a gentle, beneficent element, and a fierce consuming one. Everything fiery, bitter, harsh, contracting, dark, cold, comes from a divine harshness and bitterness; everything mild, lustrous, warming, tender, soft, yielding, from a mild, soft, luminous quality in God. “Thus are the creatures on the earth, in the water, and in the air, each creature out of its own science, out of good and evil.... As one sees before one’s eyes that there are good and evil creatures; as venomous beasts and serpents from the centre of the nature of darkness, from the power of the fierce quality, which only want to dwell in darkness, abiding in caves and hiding themselves from the sun. By each animal’s food and dwelling we see whence they have sprang, for every creature needs to dwell with its mother, and yearns after her, as is plain to the sight.” “Gold, silver, precious stones, and all bright metal, has its origin in the light, which appeared before the times of anger,” &c. “Everything which in the substance of this world is yielding, soft, and thin, is flowing, and gives itself forth, and the ground and origin of it is in the eternal Unity, for unity ever flows forth from itself; for in the nature of things not dense, as water and air, we can understand no susceptibility or pain, they being one in themselves.6 In short, heaven is as rich as the earth. Everything that is on this earth is in heaven,7 all that is in Nature is in God. But in the latter it is divine, heavenly; in the former, earthly, visible, external, material, but yet the same.” “When I write of trees, shrubs and fruits, thou must not understand me of earthly things, such as are in this world; for it is not my meaning that in heaven there grows a dead, hard, wooden tree, or a stone of earthly qualities. No: my meaning is heavenly and spiritual, but yet truthful and literal; thus, I mean no other things than what I write in the letters of the alphabet;” i.e., in heaven there are the same trees and flowers, but the trees in heaven are the trees which bloom and exhale in my imagination, without making coarse material impressions upon me; the trees on earth are the trees which I perceive through my senses. The distinction is the distinction between imagination and perception. “It is not my undertaking,” says Jacob Böhme himself, “to describe the course of all stars, their place and name, or how they have yearly their conjunction or opposition, or quadrate, or the like,—what they do yearly and hourly,—which through long years has been discovered by wise, skilful, ingenious men, by diligent contemplation and observation, and deep thought and calculation. I have not learned and studied these things, and leave scholars to treat of them, but my undertaking is to write according to the spirit and thought, not according to sight.”8