William Blake and Jacob Boehme: An Alchemical Union
Audio script of a paper presented to Sapere Aude on 22 December 2024
Thank you for inviting me back to present the second part of my series of lectures on the symbolism in William Blake's 1811 tempera painting, titled ‘An Allegory of the Spiritual Condition of Man'.
In Part 1 I discussed this complex painting's structure, its alchemical and astrological aspects, and how these demonstrate Blake's cosmogony. Today, we will consider how the three-fold metaphor in the painting draws from the writings of Jakob Boehme, a German theorist and mystic who was born in 1575.
Boehme's works proved popular in England and were translated into English several times. It is known that Blake had a copy of Boehme's The Three Principles Of The Divine Essence, first published in 1619. For many, it is Boehme's clearest work, and it inspired Blake's painting.
As a teenager, Boehme was apprenticed to a cobbler and remained a journeyman shoemaker for the remainder of his life. However, he is known to have been introduced to alchemy by Abraham Behem, a local physician who was familiar with Paracelsus's works. Through him, Boehme acquired the vocabulary and terminology of alchemy he needed to express his thoughts and experiences in writing.
In 1600, Boehme had an epiphany when he saw the exquisite beauty of a beam of sunlight reflected in a pewter dish. This experience revealed to him the spiritual structure of the world, the relationship between God and Man, spirit and nature, and the purpose of good and evil.
Twelve years later, Boehme wrote Aurora, a collection of revelations and meditations on God, Man and Nature, in which he expressed a particular knowledge of the Christian Bible. His chief aim became the desire to explain the origin of things, especially the existence of evil, which he did through the material symbols of alchemy.
Like Blake, Boehme's legacy is an observation of elemental nature. His message is that natural and spiritual light lies hidden within the elements, and this view is repeated in Blake's work, which cleverly conceals light in darkness. This is key to understanding both men's perception of reintegration as transforming elemental form. Boehme regarded regeneration is a process where the substance or true nature of the human soul unites with the substance of God. In the resurrection body, we encounter the hardening of the divine substance in reversing the decomposition of the human physical form. This was the body of the incarnate Jesus Christ, comprised of spirit and body, two forms whose spirit separated from the sacred ternary of the Godhead during his earthly sojourn and which was reunited with it at his resurrection (or reintegration).
Holy Sophia, or Wisdom, is the quaternary aspect of God emanating from his ternary being, best thought of as the “Outcome” of his triune Thought, Will and Action. We see this in Blake's painting as the rising, fully reintegrated anima in Blake's Allegory.
Sophia, however, is a Virtue, not a Person, of the godhead, and she filters away the bad or negative aspects of Man in his reconciliation, regeneration and reintegration. This is why all of the centre images in Blake's painting are female, representing aspects of Sophia working on the human condition. These are seen in the triune central images in Blake's painting:
Sophia is, therefore, shown as the redeeming spirit in Blake's painting, who draws Man back into the eternal. The eternal, first principle of Omniety is shown as a non—human form, a Circle, above the top three figures in Blake's painting.. When they make themselves visible, the angels use a light of their own, hidden in the elements. We see these dotted about Blake's painting.
Boehme's writing describes his profound struggles with faith, a personal journey marked by difficulties that often left him feeling depressed. His fear of insignificance led to the repeated testing of his faith. This resonated with Blake, whose own perception of the universal human experience evoked a sense of connection with a more significant spiritual truth. Like Boehme, Blake observed that everything possesses both good and evil, love and wrath inherent within it. Boehme described this as ”the battle between love and wrath”.
Yet, whatever we believe changes nothing about God's true nature, which also manifests as a third harmonising movement between the two. Boehme pondered where humanity fitted into the overall scheme of these things, realising that everything has a contrary nature. What troubled him the most was that good and evil results were strikingly similar. This made Boehme despondent at times and filled him with doubt. His solution came from the idea that humanity can never be entirely free from sin and anger and that the mind can travel between the higher and lower planes. Nevertheless, God had made light and darkness available to everyone, and the human race reflects its Creator. Therefore, to seek an answer to injustice, Boehme reasoned that there is no need to search for answers anywhere other than in ourselves since our intentions influence our perception of everything. Our work focuses on understanding what we are. This is also the summary of Blake's message.
For Boehme, our work to reunite with the Essence of God is achievable by merging with the Principal Cause or Divine Light concealed within us, thereby forever balancing it with the Darkness within. His goal was to awaken our capacity to perceive the spirit contained in nature, and also, therefore, in ourselves He once wrote:
"There is every assistance in the centre of everyone, and thus, this reintegration process occurs in this life and the next. it is the most profitable thing for man in this world that he can search for and seek after; for herein he learns to know himself, what matter and substance he is of; also from whence his understanding and sensibility is stirred, and how he is created out of the Substance of God." (Quoted from: The Three Principles of the Divine Essence)
Therefore, all life is derived from a generative process derived from the “first Principle” in the Godhead Itself. According to Boehme, evil is attributed to the energy of negation ("separation"), which represents the principle of contradiction in God. Consequently, his metaphysics involves two opposing factions in the Divine Unity, which coexist simultaneously. These manifest as darkness and light. This creates a desire in us to choose between good and evil. Although Boehme personified Evil as “the Devil”, it is in truth an aspect of the chaotic forces that drive the manifestation of entropy and death in nature.
Yet human beings retain the ability to perceive what Boehme called the "Virtue, Effect, and Origin" of all created things, mirroring the three intellectual wisdoms taught by the ancient Hermeticists (imagination, reason, and memory):
And it is the most profitable Thing for Man in this World that he can search for, and seek after; for herein he learns to know himself, what Matter and Substance he is of; also from whence his Understanding [Cogitation, Perceptibility,] and Sensibility is stirred, how he is created out of the Substance of God … as a Mother brings forth a Child out of her own Substance, and nourishes it therewith, and leaves all her Goods to it for its own, and makes it the Possessor of them, so does God also with Man."
For Boehme, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity represents balance and generation within the Godhead. On the other hand, imbalance is a feature of forces yet to be brought into harmony by encountering one another. The concealment of spirit within nature underscores a more profound mystery, indicating that the material or gross elemental world will transition into the Celestial World beyond our perception. According to Boehme's cosmogony, opposition is harmonised by the force of number, with the number three symbolising action, new life, and birth, making it the perfect number in numerology. This we see clearly in Blake's painting:
For their part, both Boehme and Blake dared to speak on a topic that most theological thinkers in the Judaeo-Christian tradition have feared to tread - the origin of God. They wanted to get to the very core of this question, because they believed it contained the answer to everything else there is to know. For him, God the Father signified the original and indistinguishable Unity devoid of ontological status. Thus, he wrote of God as the "Abyss" who is neither light nor darkness, love nor fear. Yet Boehme's God was simultaneously all of these things too because he manifested himself in to Man:
“When you observe the depths, the stars, and the earth, you see and understand your God within them. However, what you perceive with your eyes first is death and then the anger of God. Although the bright and pure divinity is present in all these things, when you look at the depths, the stars, the elements, and the earth, you do not comprehend them with your eyes. Instead, you first see and understand death and then God's anger. But if you elevate your thoughts and contemplate the location of God, you will begin to perceive the celestial movements, which represent the interplay of love and anger. Having faith and approaching the holy ruler in this realm, you will grasp God within his sacred heart. Once this is achieved, you will become like God, who encompasses the heavens, the earth, the stars, and the elements.” (Boehme, The Confessions)
This article is the copyright (c) of M.R. Osborne, 2024
