This is a biography of one of the most original and one of the least understood seminal writers of the Baroque world, Jacob Boehme.

In a period tormented by mysteries and controversies, Boehme's visionary mysticism responded to the vexing quandaries confronting his contemporaries. His concerns included the apocalyptic religious disputes of his day, the havoc wrought by the Thirty Years' War in his region, the disintegration of the Old Middle European order, the rise of new cosmic models from avant-garde heliocentrism to obscure esoteric theories, and his endeavor to express by means of...

This book offers the reader an introduction to the writings of Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Nicholas of Cusa, Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, Angelus Silesius, Novalis and includes the more recent thinkers, such as Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein, who were influenced by the tradition. It is the first study of its scope to take into account the much ignored historical preconditions of German mysticism and the first to trace the thematic evolution of mystical literature from a core of biblical and Augustinian materials. It also follows in the footsteps of recent scholarship in showing...

The daunting writings of Paracelsus--the second largest 16th-century body of writings in German after Luther's--contributed to medicine, natural science, alchemy, philosophy, theology, and esoteric tradition. This volume provides a critical edition of essential writings from the authoritative 1589 Huser Paracelsus alongside new English translations and commentary on the sources and context of the full corpus. The Essential Theoretical Writings incorporate topics ranging from metaphyics, cosmology, faith, religious conflict, magic, gender, and education, to the processes of nature, disease and...

Jacob Boehme's Aurora (Morgen Rote im auffgang, 1612) exercised a vast open or underground influence on popular and mystical religion, poetry, and philosophy from Germany to England to Russia. This beautiful and highly original work containing elements of alchemical, esoteric, and anticlerical thought is a portal to the cultural, scientific, and theological currents on the eve of the Thirty Years' War. Its author heralded the new heliocentrism, opposed intolerance and religious conflict, and entertained an ecstatic vision of order reconciled with freedom. This first modern English translation...