Jacob Boehme (1575-1624.)
§ 56. Jacob Boehme, or Behmen (see [plate 11]), was born at Alt Seidenberg, a village near Görlitz, in 1575. His parents being poor, the education he received was of a very rudimentary nature, and when his schooling days were over, Jacob was apprenticed to a shoemaker. His religious nature caused him often to admonish his fellow-apprentices, which behaviour ultimately caused him to be dismissed. He travelled about as a journeyman shoemaker, returning, however, to Görlitz in 1594, where he married and settled in business. He claims to have experienced a wonderful vision in 1598, and to have had a similar vision two years later. In these visions, the first of which lasted for several days, he believed that he saw into the inmost secrets of nature; but what at first appeared dim and vague became clear and coherent in a third vision, which he tells us was vouchsafed to him in 1610. It was then that he wrote his first book, the Aurora, which he composed for himself only, in order that he should not forget the mysteries disclosed to him. At a later period he produced a large number of treatises of a mystical-religious nature, having spent the intervening years in improving his early education. These books aroused the ire of the narrow-minded ecclesiastical authorities of the town, and Jacob suffered considerable persecution in consequence. He visited Dresden in 1624, and in the same year was there taken ill with a fever. Returning to Görlitz, he expired in a condition of ecstasy.
Jacob Boehme was an alchemist of a purely transcendental order. He had, it appears, acquired some knowledge of Chemistry during his apprentice days, and he employed the language of Alchemy in the elaboration of his system of mystical philosophy. With this lofty mystical-religious system we cannot here deal; Boehme is, indeed, often accounted the greatest of true Christian mystics; but although conscious of his superiority over many minor lights, we think this title is due to Emanuel Swedenborg. The question of the validity of his visions is also one which lies beyond the scope of the present work;[76] we must confine our attention to Boehme as an alchemist. The Philosopher’s Stone, in Boehme’s terminology, is the Spirit of Christ which must “tincture” the individual soul. In one place he says, “The Phylosophers Stone is a very dark disesteemed Stone, of a Gray colour, but therein lyeth the highest Tincture.”[77] In the transcendental sense, this is reminiscent of the words of Isaiah: “He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. . . . He was despised and we esteemed him not,” &c.[78]
[76] For a general discussion of spiritual visions see the present writer’s Matter, Spirit and the Cosmos (Rider, 1910), Chapter IV., “On Matter and Spirit.” Undoubtedly Boehme’s visions involved a valuable element of truth, but at the same time much that was purely relative and subjective.
[77] Jacob Boehme: Epistles (translated by J. E., 1649), Ep. iv. § 111, p. 65.
[78] The Book of the Prophet Isaiah, chap, liii., vv. 2 and 3, R.V.