Mysterium pansophicum: Theosophisch-pansophische Schriften

by Jakob Böhme, Jakob Böhme

JACOB BOEHME (1575-1624) was the son of peasant farmers, a shoemaker by trade, and had only a rudimentary education. One morning, watching the sunlight play on a pewter bowl, he experienced an extraordinary spiritual illumination, and started writing books. Amazing books. Scholars at the great German Universities were astounded that an unlearned craftsman could produce works like The Three Principles of the Divine Essence and The Threefold Life of Man.

But Jacob Boehme

I never desired to know anything of the Divine Mystery, much less understood I the way how to seek or find it. I sought only after the heart of Jesus Christ...

In this my earnest Christian seeking and desire, the gate was opened unto me, so that in one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at an University...

For I saw and knew the Being of all Beings, the Byss and Abyss; also the eternal generation of the Holy Trinity; the descent, and origin of this world, and of all creatures, through the divine Wisdom; I knew and saw in myself all the three Worlds; namely, the Divine, Angelical, and Paradisical World and then the Dark World, the original of the Nature to the Fire; and then thirdly, the external, and visible World, being a Procreation, or External Birth; or as a substance expressed, or spoken forth, from both the internal and spiritual Worlds; and I saw, and knew the whole working Essence in the evil, and in the good; and the mutual origin, and existence of each of them; and likewise how the fruitful bearing Womb of Eternity brought forth...

And presently it came powerfully into my mind to set the same down in writing... {Epistles p. 19}

For four centuries these writings have run through the world like a hidden stream, known only to a few. Among the few are Isaac Newton, John Milton, George Fox, Jane Lead, St. Martin, William Law, William Blake, Coleridge, Goethe, Angelus Silesius, Hegel, Schoepenhauer, Kierkegaard, Carl Jung, Martin Buber, George MacDonald, Emerson...

163 pages, Perfect Paperback

First published January 1, 1620

About the author

Jakob Böhme (probably April 24, 1575[1] – November 17, 1624) was a German Christian mystic and theologian. He is considered an original thinker within the Lutheran tradition, and his first book, commonly known as Aurora, caused a great scandal. In contemporary English, his name may be spelled Jacob Boehme; in seventeenth-century England it was also spelled Behmen, approximating the contemporary English pronunciation of the German Böhme.

Reviews

[Hagar]

This got pretty trippy at the end, especially when he mentions all the colours of the mysterium. I will need more time to process this. Could clearly see the heavy influence on the Romantics, especially Schelling and German Idealists in general. It's surprisingly quite erotic and visceral in its language.

"The non-ground is an eternal nothing but forms an eternal beginning as a craving [Sucht]. For the nothing is a craving for something. And since there is also nothing that may give something, the craving is itself the giving of that which is indeed also a nothing as merely a desiring [begehrende] craving.......The will is a spirit and different from desiring craving. For the will is an insentient and unknowing life, but the craving is found by the will and is a being [Wesen] in the will. Now it is recognized that the craving is a magia and the will is a magus, and that the will is larger than its mother who gives it. For the will is the master in the mother, and the mother is recognized as silent and the will as a life without origin; and because indeed the craving is a cause of the will but without cognition and understanding, and the will is the craving’s understanding."

[Phil Calandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very difficult and challenging book as all books concerning Jacob Boehme. However, this book puts the mysticism of Jacob Boehme in clearer and more understandable terms, Also, I believe many questions have been answered in this book which have not been quite addressed in other Jacob Boehme books. Furthermore, I believe, at best, a very rudimentary understanding can be grasped of Jacob Boehme's teachings without great spiritual gifts. Yet there is something in these teachings that draw many readers to Jacob Boehme