Jakob böhme quotes

He can dwell in the midst of sects, and appear in their services, without being attached or bound to any. in the Nothing; for the Will of the Liberty overshadows itself with the Essence of the Desire, for the Desire makes Essence and not the Will.”

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Jakob Böhme, The Signature of All Things — Chapter XV(1650s)

“A true Christian is himself the great and anxious Work which continually desires to Work in God's Will, and forces against the self-ful Lusts of Selfhood, and wills continually so to do, and yet is many Times hindered by Self-hood: He breaks Self-hood, as a vessel, wherein he lies captive, and buds forth continually in God's Will-Spirit, with his Desire resigned in God (as a fair Blossom springs out of the Earth) , and Works in and with God, what God pleases.”

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Jakob Böhme, The Signature of All Things — Chapter VIII(1650s)

“He gives in his Power to all his Beings and Works, and each Thing receives his Power according to its Property; one takes Darkness, the other Light; each Hunger desires its Property, and yet the whole Essence [or Being] is all God's, be it Evil or Good, for from him and through him are all Things, what is not of his Love, that is of his Anger.

into its own Lubet, the same receives, in passing through the Degrees, the Abominate; for each Form of Nature out of the Mystery receives of its Property in its Hunger, and therein it is not annoyed or molested, for it is of their Property.”

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Jakob Böhme, Dialogues on the Supersensual Life

“If thou forsakest the World, then thou comest unto that out of which the World is made, and if thou losest thy life, then thy life is in that for whose sake thou forsakest it.

So that he can have no want of spiritual friends and relations, who are all rooted with him together in the Love which is from above, who are all of the same blood and kindred in Christ Jesus; and who are cherished all by the same quickening sap and spirit diffusing itself through them universally from the one true Vine, which is the tree of life and love.”

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Jakob Böhme, The Signature of All Things — Chapter II(1650s)

“It finds nothing except only the Property of the Hunger, which is itself, which it draws into itself, that is, draws itself into itself, and finds itself in itself; and its Attraction into itself makes an Overshadowing or Darkness in it, which is not in the Liberty, viz.

Known as the “Teutonic Theosopher,” he sought to explain the nature of God, creation, good and evil, and the human soul through symbolic and mystical insights. He came from a humble peasant background; his father, George Wissen Böhme, was a farmer. Rightly speaking there is no such thing as supernatural religion; there is but one Religion, that of Nature.

In play, life expresses itself in its fullness. But its substance which it loves, namely the poor soul, being in trouble and pain, it hath thence cause to love this its own substance and to deliver it from pain, that so itself may by it be again beloved. — Jakob Bohme

The holy angels live and qualify in the light, in the good quality wherein the Holy Ghost reigneth.

— Jakob Bohme

In this light, my spirit saw through all things and into all creatures and I recognized God in grass and plants. But mark what I have further to say, and be not thou startled at it, though it may seem hard for thee at first to conceive. Thy life is in God, from whence it came into the body, and as thou comest to have thine own power faint and weak and dying, the power of God will then work in thee and through thee.”

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Jakob Böhme, Dialogues on the Supersensual Life

“Know then, my son, that when the Ground of the Will yieldeth itself up to God, then it sinketh out of its own Self, and out of and beyond all ground and place, that is or can be imagined, into a certain unknown Deep, where God only is manifest, and where he only worketh and willeth.

But because the World, as the World, loveth all deceit and vanity, and walketh in false and treacherous ways, thence, if thou hast a mind to act a clean contrary part to the ways thereof, without any exception or reserve whatsoever, walk thou only in the right way, which is called [Pg 79] the Way of Light, as that of the World is properly the Way of Darkness.”

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Jakob Böhme, Dialogues on the Supersensual Life

“The virtue of Love is nothing and all, or that Nothing visible out of which All Things proceed.

Nevertheless in this very anxiety of soul arising from the world or the flesh, the Love doth most willingly enkindle itself, and its cheering and conquering fire is but made to blaze forth with greater strength for the destruction of that evil.”

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Jakob Böhme, Dialogues on the Supersensual Life

“He hath but one knowledge, and that is, Christ in him.

— Jakob Bohme

Adam was the image of God, he was man and woman, and yet neither of them before his Eve, but a masculine virgin in peculiar love, full of chastity and purity. — Jakob Bohme

When thou art quiet and silent, then art thou as God was before nature and creature; thou art that which God then wats; thou art that whereof he made thy nature and creature: Then thou hearest and seest even with that wherewith God himself saw and heard in thee, before every thine own willing or thine own seeing began.

It is this which breaks forth from the seed, forces itself up through the dark, imprisoning, and yet nourishing and necessary earth, and at last, if it can win its way through obstacles, cheerfully expands in the light of the sun and feeds upon his warmth.”

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Jakob Böhme, Dialogues on the Supersensual Life

“There is in truth but one Religion, that founded upon the eternal, immutable, universal processes of the actual Nature of things, and of this Christianity, rightly apprehended, is the supreme Revelation.

— Jakob Bohme

It is the greatest folly that is in Babel for people to strive about religion, so that they contend vehemently about opinions of their own forging, viz. It was a complex, symbolic exploration of God, creation, and the struggle between light and darkness.

Local clergy, particularly Pastor Gregor Richter of Görlitz, accused him of heresy and forced him to stop writing.

— Jakob Bohme

The heart in man signifieth the heat or the element of fire, and it is also the heat; for the heat in the whole body hath its original in the heart. Behold this is the true supersensual ground of life.