Boehme continues: “The commencement of all Beings is the Word as the breath of God, and God has become the eternal One of eternity and likewise remains so in eternity. The Word is the eternal beginning and remains so eternally, for it is the revelation of the eternal One through and by which the divine power is brought into one knowledge of somewhat. By the Word we understand the revealed will of God: by the Word we mean God the hidden God, from whom the Word eternally springs forth. The Word is the efflux of the divine One, and yet God Himself as His revelation.” is more definite than Word, and there is a, delightful double significance in the Greek expression indicating as it does both reason and speech. For speech is the pure existence of spirit; it is a thing which when once heard goes back within itself. “What has flowed out is wisdom, beginning and cause of all powers, colours, virtue and qualities.”(18)Of the Son Boehme says: “The Son is” of the Father and “in the Father, the heart of the Father or light, and the Father beareth him ever, from eternity to eternity.” Thus “the Son is” indeed “another Person from the Father, though no other,” but the same “God as the Father,” whose image he is.(19) “The Son is the Heart” or the pulsating element “in the Father; all the powers which are in the Father are the propriety of the Father; and the Son is the heart or the kernel in all the powers in the whole Father, and he is the cause of the springing joy in all powers in the whole Father. From the Son the eternal joy rises and springs in all the powers of the Father, as the sun does in the heart of the stars. It signifies the Son, as the circle of the stars signifies the manifold powers of the Father; it lightens the heavens, the stars and the deep above the earth, working in all things that are in this world; it enlightens and gives power to all the stars and tempers their power.
The Son of God is continually generated from all the powers of his Father from eternity, just as the sun is born of the stars; He is ever born and is not made, and is the heart and lustre shining forth from all powers. He shines in all powers of the Father, and his power is the moving, springing joy in all the powers of the Father, and shines in the whole Father as the sun does in the whole world.
For if the Son did not shine in the Father, the Father would be a dark valley; for the Father's power would not rise from eternity to eternity, and so the divine Being would not subsist.”(20)This life of the Son is an important matter; and in regard to this issuing forth and manifestation Boehme has likewise brought forward the most important assertions.
b. “From such a revelation of powers in which the will of the eternal One contemplates itself, flows the understanding and the knowledge of the something [Ichts], since the eternal will contemplates itself in the something [Ichts].” “Ichts” is a play upon the word “Nichts” (nothing), for it is simply the negative; yet it is at the same time the opposite of nothing, since the Ich (Ego) of self-consciousness is contained in it. The Son, the something, is thus “I,” consciousness, self-consciousness: God is not only the abstract neutral but likewise the gathering together of Himself into the point of Being-for-self. The “other” of God is thus the image of God. “This similitude is the Mysterium magnum, viz. the creator of all beings and creatures; for it is the separator” (of the whole) “in the efflux of the will which makes the will of the eternal One separable - the separability in the will from which powers and qualities take their rise.” This separator is “constituted the steward of nature, by whom the eternal will rules, makes, forms and constitutes all things.” The separator is effectuating and self-differentiating, and Boehme calls this “Ichts,” likewise Lucifer, the first-born Son of God, the creaturely first-born angel who was one of the seven spirits.” But this Lucifer has fallen and Christ has come in his place.”(21) This is the connection of the devil with God, namely other-Being and then Being-for-self or Being-for-one, in such a way that the other is for one; and this is the origin of evil in God and out of God. This is the furthest point of thought reached by Jacob Boehme. He represents this Fall of Lucifer as that the “Ichts,” i.e. self-knowledge, the “I” [Ichheit] (a word which we find used by him), the inward imagining of self, the inward fashioning, of self (the being-for-self), is the fire which absorbs all things. This is the negative side in the separator, the anguish; or it is the wrath of God. This divine wrath is hell and the devil, who through himself imagines himself into himself. This is very bold and speculative; Boehme here seeks to show in God Himself the sources of the divine anger. He also calls the will of the something [“Ichts”] self-hood; it is the passing over of the something [“Ichts”] into the nothing [Nichts], the “I” imagining itself within itself. He says: “Heaven and hell are as far removed from one another as day and night, as something and nothing.” Boehme has really here penetrated into the utmost depths of divine essence; evil, matter, or whatever it has been called, is the I = I, the Being-for-self, the true negativity. Before this it was the nonens which is itself positive, the darkness; but the true negativity is the “I.” It is not anything bad because it is called the evil; it is in mind alone that evil exists, because it is conceived therein as it is in itself.
