CHAPTER VI.
Men. I pray thee tell me,
For thou art a great dreamer—
Chi. I can dream, sir,
If I eat well and sleep well.
Men. Was it never by dream or apparition opened to thee—
What the other world was, or Elysium?
Didst never travel in thy sleep?
Beaumont and Fletcher: The Mad Lover.
Willoughby’s Essay—Fourth Evening.
§ 4. Jacob Behmen and his Aurora.
Let us now crave acquaintance with that most notable theosophist, Jacob Behmen.
It is evening, and in the little town of Görlitz the business of the day is over. The shopkeepers are chatting together before their doors, or drinking their beer at tables set out in the open air; and comfortable citizens are taking wife and children for a walk beyond the town. There is a shoe-maker’s shop standing close to the bridge, and under its projecting gable, among the signs and samples of the craft, may be read the name of Jacob Boehme. Within this house, in a small and scantily-furnished room, three men are seated at a table whereon lie a few books and papers and a great heap of newly-gathered plants and wild-flowers. The three friends have just returned from a long ramble in the fields which lie without the Neissethor. That little man, apparently about forty years of age, of withered, almost mean, aspect, with low forehead, prominent temples, hooked nose, short and scanty beard, and quick blue eyes, who talks with a thin, gentle voice, is Jacob.[[228]] On one side of him sits Dr. Kober, a medical man of high repute in Görlitz. He it is who gathered in their walk these flowers, and now he takes up one of them from time to time, and asks Behmen to conjecture, from its form and colour, its peculiar properties. Often has he to exchange looks of wonder with his learned friend on the other side the table, at the marvellous insight of their uneducated host. This third member of the trio is Dr. Balthasar Walter, the Director of the Laboratory at Dresden, a distinguished chemist, who has travelled six years in the East, has mastered all the scientific wisdom of the West, and who now believes that his long search after the true philosophy has ended happily at last, beneath the roof of the Görlitz shoemaker. He, too, will sometimes pronounce a Greek or an Oriental word, and is surprised to find how nearly Behmen divines its significance, from the mere sound and the movement of the lips in the formation of its syllables.[[229]] When Walter utters the word Idea, Behmen springs up in a transport, and declares that the sound presented to him the image of a heavenly virgin of surpassing beauty. The conversation wanders on—about some theosophic question, it may be, or the anxious times, or the spread of Behmen’s writings through Silesia and Saxony, with the persecutions or the praises following; while good Frau Behmen, after putting a youngster or two to bed, is busy downstairs in the kitchen, preparing a frugal supper.
Jacob Behmen was born at the village of Alt-Seidenberg, near Görlitz, in the year 1575. As a child, he was grave and thoughtful beyond his years. The wonders of fairy tradition were said to have become objects of immediate vision to the boy, as were the mysteries of religion, in after years, to the man. Among the weather-stained boulders of a haunted hill, the young herd-boy discovered the golden hoard of the mountain folk—fled in terror, and could never again find out the spot.[[230]]
While not yet twenty, Behmen saw life as a travelling apprentice. The tender conscience and the pensive temperament of the village youth shrank from the dissolute and riotous companionship of his fellow-craftsmen. Like George Fox, whom at this period he strongly resembled, he found the Church scarcely more competent than the world to furnish the balm which should soothe a spirit at once excited and despondent. Among the clergy, the shameful servility of some, the immoral life of others, the bigotry of almost all, repelled him on every hand. The pulpit was the whipping-post of imaginary Papists and Calvinists. The churches were the fortified places in the seat of war. They were spiritually what ours were literally in King Stephen’s days, when the mangonel and the cross-bow bolts stood ready on the battlemented tower, when military stores were piled in the crypt, and a moat ran through the churchyard. The Augsburg Confession and the Formula Concordiæ were appealed to as though of inspired authority. The names of Luther and Melanchthon were made the end of controversy and of freedom. The very principle of Protestantism was forsaken when ecclesiastics began to prove their positions, not by Scripture, but by Articles of Faith. So Behmen wandered about, musing, with his Bible in his hand, and grieved sore because of the strife among Christian brethren, because evil everywhere was spreading and fruitful, and goodness so rare and so distressed; because he saw, both near and far away, such seeming waste and loss of human souls. A profound melancholy took possession of him—partly that the truth which would give rest was for himself so hard to find, but most for the sight of his eyes which he saw, when he looked abroad upon God’s rational creatures. On his return from his travels he settled in Görlitz, married early, and worked hard at his trade. Everywhere these anxious questing thoughts about life’s mystery are with him, disquieting. He reads many mystical and astrological books, not improbably, even thus early, Schwenkfeld and Paracelsus.[[231]] But the cloudy working of his mind is not soon to give place to sunshine and clear sky. He is to be found still with the pelican and the bittern in the desolate places where the salt-pits glisten, and the nettles breed, and the wild beasts lie down, and the cedar work is uncovered,—among the untimely ruins of that City of Hope which had almost won back Christendom in the resistless prime of Luther.
At last, upon an ever-memorable day, as he sat meditating in his room, he fell, he knew not how, into a kind of trance. The striving, climbing sorrows of his soul had brought him to this luminous table-land. A halcyon interval succeeded to the tempest. He did not seek, he gazed; he was surrounded by an atmosphere of glory. He enjoyed for seven days an unruffled soul-sabbath. He looked into the open secret of creation and providence. Such seemed his ecstasy. In Amadis of Greece an enchanter shuts up the heroes and princesses of the tale in the Tower of the Universe, where all that happened in the world was made to pass before them, as in a magic glass, while they sat gazing, bound by the age-long spell. So Behmen believed that the principles of the Universal Process were presented to his vision as he sat in his study at Görlitz. We may say that it was the work of all his after days to call to mind, to develop for himself, and to express for others, the seminal suggestions of that and one following glorious dream.
Behmen was twenty-five years of age when the subject of this first illumination. He stated that he was thrown into his trance while gazing on the dazzling light reflected from a tin vessel, as the rays of the sun struck into his room. Distrusting at first the nature of the vision, he walked out into the fields to dissipate the phantasmagoria; but the strange hues and symbols were still present, and seemed to point him to the heart and secret of the universe. For several years his gift lay hidden. Behmen was known as a quiet, meditative, hard-working man, fond of books; otherwise scarcely distinguishable from other cobblers. Ten years after the first manifestation he believed himself the recipient of a second, not, like the former, mediated by anything external; and revealing, with greater fulness and order, what before lay in comparative confusion. To fix this communication in a form which might be of abiding service to him, he began to write his Aurora.
But he shall tell his own story, as he did tell it, one-and-twenty years later, to his friend Caspar Lindern.
‘I saw and knew,’ he says, ‘the Being of all Beings, the Byss (Grund) and the Abyss: item, the birth of the Holy Trinity; the origin and primal state of this world and of all creatures through the Divine Wisdom. I knew and saw in myself all the three worlds,—i.e. (1) the divine angelic or paradisiacal world; then, (2) the dark world, as the original of nature, as to the fire; and (3) this external visible world, as a creation and out-birth, or as a substance spoken forth out of the two inner spiritual worlds. Moreover, I saw and had cognizance of the whole Being in good and in evil—how each had its origin in the other, and how the Mother did bring forth;—and this all moved me not merely to the height of wonder, but made me to rejoice exceedingly. (Incredible as it may appear, this passage has a meaning, which may become apparent to some readers after a perusal of what is said farther on, in explanation of Behmen’s system.)
‘Soon it came strongly into my mind that I should set the same down in writing, for a memorial, albeit I could hardly compass the understanding thereof in my external man, so as to write it on paper. I felt that with such great mysteries I must set to work as a child that goes to school. In my inward man I saw it well, as in a great deep, for I saw right through as into a chaos in which everything lay wrapped, but the unfolding thereof I found impossible.
‘Yet from time to time it opened itself within me, as in a growing plant. For the space of twelve years I carried it about within me—was, as it were, pregnant therewith, feeling a mighty inward impulse, before I could bring it forth in any external form; till afterwards it fell upon me, like a bursting shower that hitteth wheresoever it lighteth, as it will. So it was with me, and whatsoever I could bring into outwardness that I wrote down.
‘Thereafter the sun shone on me a good while, yet not steadily and without interval, and when that light had withdrawn itself I could scarce understand my own work. And this was to show man that his knowledge is not his own, but God’s, and that God in man’s soul knoweth what and how he will.
‘This writing of mine I purposed to keep by me all my life, and not to give it into the hands of any man. But it came to pass in the providence of the Most High, that I entrusted a person with part of it, by whose means it was made known without my knowledge. Whereupon my first book, the Aurora, was taken from me, and because many wondrous things were therein revealed, not to be comprehended in a moment by the mind of man, I had to suffer no little at the hands of the worldly-wise—(von den Vernunft-weisen).
‘For three years I saw no more of this said book, and thought it verily clean dead and gone, till some learned men sent me copies therefrom, exhorting me not to bury my talent. To this counsel my outward reason was in no wise willing to agree, having suffered so much already. My reason was very weak and timorous at that time, the more so as the light of grace had then been withdrawn from me some while, and did but smoulder within, like a hidden fire. So I was filled with trouble. Without was contempt, within, a fiery driving; and what to do I knew not, till the breath of the Most High came to my help again, and awoke within me a new life. Then it was that I attained to a better style of writing, likewise to a deeper and more thorough knowledge. I could reduce all better to outward form—as, indeed, my book concerning The Threefold Life through the Three Principles doth fully show, and as the godly reader whose heart is opened will see.
‘So, therefore, have I written, not from book-learning, or the doctrine and science of men, but from my own book which was opened within me,—the book of the glorious image of God, which it was vouchsafed to me to read: ’tis therein I have studied—as a child in its mother’s house, that sees what its father doth, and mimics the same in its child’s-play. I need no other book than this.
‘My book has but three leaves—the three principles of Eternity. Therein I find all that Moses and the prophets, Christ and his apostles, have taught. Therein I find the foundation of the world and all mystery,—yet, not I, but the Spirit of the Lord doth it, in such measure as He pleaseth.
‘For hundreds of times have I prayed him that if my knowledge were not for his glory and the edifying of my brethren, he will take it from me, only keeping me in his love. But I have found that with all my earnest entreaty the fire within me did but burn the more, and it is in this glow, and in this knowledge, that I have produced my works....
‘Let no man conceive of me more highly than he here seeth, for the work is none of mine; I have it only in that measure vouchsafed me of the Lord; I am but his instrument wherewith he doeth what he will. This, I say, my dear friend, once for all, that none may seek in me one other than I am, as though I were a man of high skill and intellect, whereas I live in weakness and childhood, and the simplicity of Christ. In that child’s work which he hath given me is my pastime and my play; ’tis there I have my delight, as in a pleasure-garden where stand many glorious flowers; therewith will I make myself glad awhile, till such time as I regain the flowers of Paradise in the new man.’[[232]]
This letter alludes to the way in which the Aurora was made public without the knowledge of its author. The friend to whom he showed it was Karl von Endern, who, struck by its contents, caused a copy to be taken, from which others were rapidly multiplied. The book fell into the hands of Gregory Richter, the chief pastor in Görlitz. Well may Behmen say that the Aurora contained some things not readily apprehended by human reason. A charitable man would have forgiven its extravagances, catching some glimpses of a sincere and religious purpose; a wise man would have said nothing about it; a man the wisest of the wise would have been the last to pretend to understand it. But Richter—neither charitable nor wise exceedingly, nor even moderately stocked with good sense—fell into a blundering passion, and railed at Behmen from the pulpit, as he sat in his place at church, crimson, but patient, the centre of all eyes.
Behmen had already rendered himself obnoxious to Richter by a temperate but firm remonstrance against an act of ecclesiastical oppression. Now, his pretensions seem openly to militate against that mechanical religious monopoly with which Richter imagined himself endowed,—a privilege as jealously watched and as profitably exercised by such men as that of the muezzins of the mosque of Bajazet, who are alone entitled to supply the faithful with the praying compasses that indicate the orthodox attitude. The insolent, heretical, blasphemous cobbler shall find no mercy. Richter loudly calls for the penalties of law, to punish a fanatic who has taught (as he declares) that the Son of God is Quicksilver! Görlitz magistrates, either of the Shallow family, or, it may be, overborne by the blustering Rector, pronounce Behmen ‘a villain full of piety,’ and banish him the town. But by the next day the tide would appear to have turned, and the exile is brought back with honour. The shoemaker’s booth is the scene of a little ovation, while Richter fumes at the parsonage. Behmen, however, must give up the manuscript of the Aurora, and is required for the future to stick to his last.
His book, as it became known, procured him many influential friends among men of learning and men of rank throughout Lusatia. He was exhorted not to hide his talent, and the ensuing five years became a period of incessant literary activity.[[233]] The scholarship of friends like Kober and Walther assisted him to supply some of the defects of his education; the liberality of others provided for his moderate wants, and enabled him to forsake his business for his books.[[234]] Once more did his old enemy, the primarius Richter, appear against him, with a pamphlet of virulent pasquinades in Latin verse. Behmen issued an elaborate reply, entering minutely into every charge, sending the clerical curses ‘home to roost,’ and praying for the enlightenment of his persecutor with exasperating good temper.[[235]] The magistrates, fluttered and anxious, requested him to leave Görlitz. Knightly friends opened their castle gates to him; he preferred retirement at Dresden. There, a public disputation he held with some eminent divines and men of science, was said to have excited general admiration. He returned to Görlitz in his last illness, to die in the midst of his family. He expired early on Sunday morning, on the twenty-first of November, 1624, in his fiftieth year. He asked his son Tobias if he heard the beautiful music, and bade those about him set the doors open that the sounds might enter. After receiving the sacrament, he breathed his last, at the hour of which a presentiment of dissolution had warned him. His last words were, ‘Now I am going to Paradise!‘[[236]]
Note to page 80.
Behmen’s learned friends were accustomed thus to test the insight they so revered, and would occasionally attempt to mislead his sagacity by wrong terms and entrapping questions; but always, we are assured, without success. See Ein Schreiben von einem vornehmen Patritio und Rathsverwandten zu Görlitz wegen seel. Jac. Behmen’s Person und Schriften, appended to Franckenberg’s Life of Behmen.
The rationale of this peculiar significance of letters and syllables he gives in the following passage:—
When man fell into sin, he was removed from the inmost birth and set in the other two, which presently encompassed him, and mingled their influences with him and in him (inqualireten mit ihme und in ihme), as in their own peculiar possession; and man received the spirit and the whole generation of the sidereal, and also of the external birth. Therefore he now speaks all words according to the indwelling generative principle of nature. For the spirit of man, which stands in the sidereal birth, and combines with all nature, and is as all nature itself, shapes the word according to the indwelling principle of birth. When he sees anything he gives it a name answering to its peculiar property or virtue; and if he does this he must fashion the word in the form, and generate it with his voice in the way in which the thing he names generates; and herein lies the kernel of the whole understanding of the Godhead.—Aurora, cap. xix. §§ 74-76. On this principle he examines, syllable by syllable, the opening words of Genesis—not those of the Hebrew, but the German version (!), as follows:—‘Am Anfang schuff Gott,’ &c. These words we must very carefully consider. The word AM takes its rise in the heart, and goes as far as the lips. There it is arrested, and goes sounding back to whence it came. Now, this shows that the sound went forth from the heart of God, and encompassed the entire locus of the world; but when it was found to be evil, then the sound returned to its place again. The word AN pushes forth from the heart to the mouth, and has a long stress. But when it is pronounced, it closes in its sedes in the midst with the roof of the mouth, and is half without and half within. This signifies that the heart of God felt repugnance at the corruption of the world, and cast the corrupt nature from him, but again seized and stayed it in the midst by his heart. Just as the tongue arrests the word, and retains it half without and half within, so the heart of God would not utterly reject the enflamed Salitter, but would defeat the schemes and malice of the Devil, and finally restore the other.—Aurora, cap. xviii. §§ 48-52. A similar precious piece of nonsense is to be found, cap. xviii. §§ 72, &c. of which Barmherzig is the thema. He declares, in another place, that when the spiritual Aurora shall shine from the rising of the sun to the going-down of the same, RA. RA. R.P. shall be driven into banishment, and with him AM. R. P. These are secret words, he says, only to be understood in the language of nature.—Aurora, xxvi. 120.
Behmen was indebted to his conversations with men like Kober and Walther for much of his terminology, and probably to the suggestions awakened by such intercourse for much of the detailed application of his system. See Lebens-lauff, § 20; and compare the Clavis, or Schlüssel etlicher vornehmen Puncten, &c.