Esoteric Coffeehouse

I have spent my last few weeks researching the German theosophist Jacob Boehme, and I thought – why not write an introduction to this esotericist who has influenced so much of modern thinking, including Romanticism, Hegel or Schopenhauer?

Boehme (1575-1624) is mostly known and revered today as the forerunner of modern theosophy, a major esoteric movement made famous by Helena Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner and Krishnamurti (the latter two in their early years). As conceived by Boehme, theosophy was an eclectic mixture of Christian theology, natural philosophy and mysticism. He perceived the Bible as containing esoteric knowledge about God that he felt he had a duty to reveal.

It all started with a mystical revelation. In 1600, at age 25, Boehme was a rather prosperous shoemaker in the eastern German town of Gorlitz. He had just married, acquired his license to practice shoemaking, and all was set for him to become a respected and average citizen of Gorlitz. But, the legend goes, Boehme was not a happy man; he was depressed and often fell into melancholy. One day, however, as Boehme was sitting at home, he suddenly saw the light of the sun reflected in a tin dish. In one flash, Boehme experienced a mystical vision of God which changed his life forever.

Moved by such a powerful revelation, Boehme began to write his first book, Aurora, which he only finished twelve years later. He never abandoned his ‘day-job’, so to speak: he continued to work as a shoemaker until l613, when he began a yarn business. Yet his mystical-esoteric side got him into trouble with the local Lutheran church, which pronounced him a heretic and forbade him to write. That, of course, did not happen; his Aurora became very popular in several influential circles and subsequently Boehme wrote more than fifteen thick books, which expanded on the first revelations of Aurora.

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