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Böhme, Jacob · [1636 ?]

tured: it yet dwells in them.be captured: it cannot be lost in the two forms either / for it is intangible / and where it yet must be in the two forms / and dwells in the sting / and it is its flash original: "blixem," meaning a lightning-flash of divine insight or manifestation: for the two forms are in themselves dark / and the will is not / for it is in itself free: but the two forms take it into their property: for it is their Father / and sharpens itself in their property / so that it appears in itself as a flash.
23. How the will is sharpened by the two forms.23. For harshness [or the contraction] makes dark: and the bitter sting (in the wheel) which divides [or scatters] the darkness: and thus the freedom of the still will appears in the wheel in the speed as a fire-flash: for from the harshness [or tartness] it sharpens itself so / that it becomes so severe: for it is as if stone and steel were rubbed against each other so that the fire leaps out.
24. What two things / which are understood with the fire / such as freedom and severity.24. For there are two things understood with the fire: such as the freedom outside of nature / and the severity of nature: just as you have an example in a stone from which one strikes fire. For as soon as one strikes on the sharpness of the stone / so the bitter sting of nature sharpens itself / and becomes enraged to the highest. For nature is divided [or scattered] in the sharpness / so that the freedom appears as a flash: and you see by that that it is true: For as soon as the freedom appears so it consumes the darkness / and from that comes that God the Father's severity is a consuming fire. For as soon as the flash in the severity grasps anything which is essential / it consumes it instantly / so that there thus remains no more nature.
25. The flash is free from nature.25. And that the flash extinguishes so quickly / that comes because the severity cannot hold it: for it is free from nature / and is seen in nothing else but in the scattering.
26. The freedom outside nature / is God the Father. How God is almighty.26. And we give you to understand: that this freedom outside of nature / be God the Father: and nature is thus born in him / that he is thus an almighty one of nature / just like the mind of man / over the senses: for it has only one kind of origin / just as we want to show you hereafter.
27. A parable of the birth of nature / how out of the Wheel a cross becomes.27. Further of the birth of nature (so we give you to understand / yet as a parable.) In the event that the flash appears thus in the harsh [or tart] anguish / it is a very great shock / which seizes the harshness / and terrifies it much more / for its dark right / in the tart [or bitter] death / is instantly killed / so that it loses its severe right / and sinks back: and can no longer contract so severely: also the flash goes straight through the wheel / in the raging [or madness] of the whirling wheel: where the sting must then give itself out on both sides / and the flash fares through the middle
Death; thus out of the wheel / a cross becomes / and it can no longer whirl / but it stands trembling in the sharp power of the will of the eternal freedom / which is there God the Father.
28. The flash is the third form.28. So [when] now the severe harshness has captured [or obtained] the flash of freedom / so that it loses its right; so the fourth form (as the Salt-spirit the principle of stability and sharp contraction) is born. For the grim [or severe] hardness / which becomes / from the fire and the shock / soft; and yet retains its sharpness. Thus is this form like a sharp Water-spirit: and the flash (as the shock) is the third form / and makes in itself / in the tart killed anguish / a Sulfur-spirit the principle of fire and movement.
29. The boundary of eternal death.29. For if the severe harshness first loses its dead [or meager] right: so it must be soft / and yet cannot / for it is terrifyingly sharp: and here is the sign [boundary or the goal] of eternal death: for the desire out of the free will is no longer able to pull thus: for it stands in the anguish of the shock / and yet retains its right in the pulling.
30. What desire the anguish has.30. For all kinds of anguish have desire [to] go out of the torment [or misery]: and that is the natural right of anguish / to drive out of itself / and where it yet cannot / but the torment [or the pain] only becomes whirling and greater thereby: just as one can understand by a raging anxious injury [or by a cancer] / where the limb works in the essences to do away with the pain / and only becomes greater by the labor of the essences / and the torment [or the pain] only blooms up [in the sulfur-spirit]: the more the essences resist / the greater the wheel of anguish becomes.
31. This description cannot be spoken against / nature stands in four forms.31. Thus I give you nature to consider / which / if you consider well / you cannot speak against: for it is [or it appears] in all things / and it has its birth exactly so. And nature thus stands in four forms.
32. Harsh: tart / or the severe contraction / the first form.32. As firstly / in harsh [or tart.] And severe pulling: and that is called harsh [or tart.] And makes in itself severe cold.
33. Bitter: or stinging / the second form.33. And then secondly / so is the sign / its sting / and rages [or raves] in the harshness / and breaks the hardness / and makes the wheel of the innumerable essences, in which the wonders are born.
34. The flash of freedom / the third form.34. But the flash of freedom of the eternal will / which sharpens itself in the harshness and becomes consuming fire / that breaks its wheel / in which it penetrates instantly as a flash / and terrifies its mother [to know] the harshness / which loses its hard right / and becomes natured into a sharpness (like the salt): and in this sharpness / so the sting also loses its own right / and becomes bitter: for it has in it two forms / as the