Jakob böhme quotes

In this world, with thy earthly life, thou art under heaven, stars, and elements, also under hell and devils; all ruleth in thee, and over thee. in the fulfilling of the obedience, the Jew and the Christian, and so likewise the heathen who has neither the law nor Gospel.

— Jakob Bohme

Whatever the self describes, describes the self. — Jakob Bohme

In this light my spirit suddenly saw through all, and in and by all creatures, even in herbs and grass it knew God, who he is, and how he is, and what his will is: And suddenly in that light my will was set on by a mighty impulse, to describe the being of God.

— Jakob Bohme

When in such sadness I earnestly elevated my spirit into God and locked my whole heart and mind along with all my thoughts and will therein, ceaselessly pressing in with God's Love and Mercy, and not to cease until he blessed me? And then it becometh nothing to itself, as to its own working and willing, and so God worketh and willeth in it.

So shall thy light break forth as the morning; and after the redness thereof is passed, the Sun Himself, which thou waitest for, shall arise unto thee, and under His most healing wings thou shalt greatly rejoice; ascending and descending in His bright and salutiferous beams. The liver is the mother of the blood.

The one is fire, and the other is light.”

These sayings reflect his mystical dualism, his ethic of love, and his insistence on divine mystery within human existence.

Lessons from Jakob Böhme’s Life

• Mystical experience transcends formal education: Profound spiritual insight does not require elite training.

• Visionary courage: Despite persecution, he pursued his revelations with integrity.

• Unity of opposites: His teaching that light and darkness coexist speaks to the complexities of human life.

• Nature as divine text: His notion of a “signature of all things” encourages us to see the sacred in creation.

• Humility before mystery: He reminds us that theology is less about mastery and more about reverence for the unfathomable.

Conclusion

Jakob Böhme stands as a luminous figure in the history of mysticism—an unlettered shoemaker whose visions reshaped theology, philosophy, and poetry.

— Jakob Bohme

All strife concerning Christ's testaments cometh hence that men do not understand that Heaven wherein Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. They understand not that he is in this World, and that the World standeth in Heaven, and Heaven in the World, and are in one another, as Day and Night.

— Jakob Bohme

I contemplated man's little spark, what it should be valued before God alongside of this great work of heaven and earth. — Jakob Bohme

Christ hath instituted Baptism as a bath, to wash away the anger, and hath put into us the Noble Stone, viz. — Jakob Bohme

He that serves God is resigned up into him, and in all things has respect to truth and righteousness, and will promote that.

— Jakob Bohme

The virtue of Love is nothing and all, or that Nothing visible out of which All Things proceed. And God dwells in this designed Will, by which the Soul is sanctified, and so fitted to come into Divine Rest.”

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

“The Physician must not give Saturn without Mars in hot Diseases, not Cold without Heat, else he enkindles Mars in the Wrath, and stirs up Mercury in the hard Impression in the Property of Death; Mars belongs to the Cure of every Mars-like Sickness, which is of Heat, and pricking Pangs: But let the Physician know, that he must first correct and qualify Mars, which he intends to administer, with Jupiter and Venus, that the Wrath of Mars may be changed into Joy, and then, he will also change the Sickness in the Body into Joy; Cold is quite contrary to it.”

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Jakob Böhme, Dialogues on the Supersensual Life

“If Love dwelt not in Trouble, it could have nothing to love.

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. And it is impossible that these [Pg 40] two should stand together, or subsist in one person; the one driving out the other by a necessity of nature.

the water of eternal life, for an earnest-penny, so that instantly in our childhood we might be able to escape the wrath. — Jakob Bohme

Just as a drop of water in the ocean cannot avail much; but if a great river runneth into it, that maketh a great commotion. 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.

For God is not served by any law, but only by obedience. The like we are to consider of the inchoative poisonful Mercury in the Devil, and in Man, and in the Serpent also; how an Oil corrupts, and yet the Essence or Being of God is not hereby at all corrupted, but enters into itself, viz.”

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

“And though he does some Thing that is good, yet he does it not from his own Self-Will, but the Will resigned in God compels him that he must do what his Self would not willingly do: And now if he does it, he does it as an Instrument of the resigned Will, not from his own Desire, but from God's Will, which guides the resigned Will in the Desire as an Instrument.”

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Jakob Böhme, Dialogues on the Supersensual Life

“I bid thee not, Child, to do harm to anyone, thereby to create to thyself any misery or unquietness.