Alchemical Theology in Boehme

Böhme's correspondences in "Aurora" of the seven qualities, planets and humoral-elemental associations:

• 1. Dry - Saturn - melancholy, power of death;
• 2. Sweet - Jupiter - sanguine, gentle source of life;
• 3. Bitter - Mars - choleric, destructive source of life;
• 4. Fire - Sun/Moon - night/day; evil/good; sin/virtue; Moon, later = phlegmatic, watery;
• 5. Love - Venus - love of life, spiritual rebirth;
• 6. Sound - Mercury - keen spirit, illumination, expression;
• 7. Corpus - Earth - totality of forces awaiting rebirth.

In "De Tribus Principiis" or "On the Three Principles of Divine Being" Böhme subsumed the seven principles into the Trinity:

• 1. The "dark world" of the Father (Qualities 1-2-3);
• 2. The "light world" of the Holy Spirit (Qualities 5-6-7);
• 3. "This world" of Satan and Christ (Quality 4).

(via Wikipedia)

One can see “Boehme's alchemical understanding of salvation” where he translates his anthropological theology into alchemical language...

"the true Adamic man whom God made out of the Earth-matrix in whom stands the covenant and gift is similar to a tincture in coarse lead;the tincture consumes in itself, through its own desire, the coarsenessof the lead as the coarse Saturn, kills the saturnine will, leads his own will, understood as the tincture-will and selfhood up into lead and through the lead is transformed into gold."
100 -Mysterium Magnum; oder Erklarun uber das erste Buch Mosis in Theosophia Revelata... (Hamburg 1715) Chapter 51, in Miller, "The Theologies of Luther and Boehme," 2785)

  http://ceu.academia.edu/FlorinGeorgeCalian/Papers/193940/Some_Modern_Controversies_on_the_Historiography_of_Alchemy


Boehme did however systematise the symbols of the alchemists and it is for this reason that his views deserve mention here. A recent expositor writes: ‘Boehme did more than borrow a large part of his vocabulary from alchemy, he took over the whole alchemistic world-view, which he developed into a philosophic system.’

http://ebooks.cambridge.org/chapter.jsf?bid=CBO9780511710285&cid=CBO9780511710285A009 

His best-known treatises include Of the Three Principles of the Nature of God, (1619) and The Way to Christ, (1624), The Signature of all Things, and Mysterium Magnum.

As well as alchemical themes his writings contain Kabbalistic concepts.  Boehme describes the absolute nature of God as the abyss, the nothing and the all, the primordial depths from which the creative will struggles forth to find manifestation and self-consciousness.  The Father, who is groundless Will (c.f. Kabbalah - Keter the first principle is identified with Will), issues forth the Son, who is Love.
Boehme held that everything exists and is intelligible only through its opposite. Thus, he believed, evil is a necessary element in goodness, for without evil the will would become inert and progress would be impossible. Evil is a result of the striving of single elements of Deity to become the whole; conflict ensues as man and nature strive to achieve God.  God himself, according to Boehme, contains conflicting elements and antithetical principles within His nature.

http://www.kheper.net/topics/christianmysticism/JacobBoehme.htm

Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence
preface 7

the will of God is put into, and written in our minds, so that we very well know what we should do

9. Seeing therefore we are in such horrible
danger in this world, that we are environed with
enemies on every side, and have a very unsafe
pilgrimage or journey to walk ; and above all, we
carry our worst enemy within us, which we our-
selves hide, and desire not to learn to know it,

introduction:

The fundamental conception of Jacob Boehme's philo-
sophy might be characterized as Pantheo-dualistic ; that
is to say, he attempts to harmonize the undeniable claim
of Pantheism that God is not to be known out of and
apart from Nature, but in it and through it ; with the
equally undeniable fact of dualism, i.e. the evident
opposition in this divine world of good and evil.

ch1 6. Behold, there are especially three things in
the originalness, out of which all things are, both
spirit and life, motion and comprehensibility, viz.
Sulphur, Mercurius, and Sal. But you will say 2 wherein the
that these are in nature, and not in God ; which cousisteth.
indeed is so, but nature hath its ground in God,
according to the first Principle of the Father
...

7. Now to speak in a creaturely way, Sulphur, 
Mercurius, and Sal, are understood to be thus. 
S U L is the soul or the spirit that is risen up, or 
in a similitude [it is] God : P H U R is the prima 
materia, or first matter out of which the spirit is 
generated, but especially the harshness : Mercurius 
hath a fourfold form in it, viz. harshness, bitterness, 
fire, and water : Sal is the child that is generated 
from these four, and is harsh, eager, and a cause of 
the comprehensibility. 

"The tincture is nothing else but an exulting joyful mighty will, and a house of the soul, and a pleasant paradise of the soul..."

http://archive.org/stream/concerningthreep00bh/concerningthreep00bh_djvu.txt

Boehme on the Principle of Fire

"The principle of fire is the root, and it grows in its root. It has in its proprium sour, bitter, fierceness and anguish. And these grow in its proprium in poison and death the anguished stern life, which in itself gives darkness, owing to the drawing in of the harshness. Its properties make sulphur, mercury, and salt; through the fire's property makes not Sul in sulphur, but the will of freedom makes Sul in sulphur, while the principle goes forward."
(source?)

Linden Emblems and Alchemy p.61 "Boehme split sulphur in the Paracelsian trinity--sul, phur, mercury, and sal--in order to fit the four realms created by the cross. The seven metals of alchemy are also arranged in the diagram. Interestingly, only six are arranged on the wheel, the seventh, Mercury, is missing; it is represented by the wheel itself."

PKD and Edgar Cayce

(this was originally a Facebook comment on a thread between David Gill and Wa Da Ta)

I agree that there's plenty of interest in comparing the two, since Dick was plugging into a lotta post-Cayce New Age ideas about tapping into the unconscious using "channeling" type techniques. Like for instance the time recounted in the letters when he was high and called Tessa, told her to ask him anything since he had access to his unconscious. Sure he was skeptical, but he was able to suspend that skepticism in a way that skeptics are very uncomfortable about. Unfortunately, much of what is written about Cayce is unreadable, and much of what he himself wrote is pretty hard to swallow. I'd love to read a comparative study that distills out the interesting stuff in Cayce that doesn't require buying into his Atlantean belief system.

notes on my SF PKD Fest talk (coming in September)

One of the key problems of the Exegesis is Dick's conflict over whether or not he was a Christian. I'd like to discuss the influence of Neoplatonism on this conflict, which has not received enough scholarly attention. Gabriel McKee has notably argued for Dick's being a Christian in the end, and there is certainly a consistent strain of serious Christian thinking in Dick's writing, but doesn't cover the esoteric versions of Christianity that complicated Dick's voyage. McKee gives short shrift to Dick's Gnosticism--which by the way recently seen some interest from philosopher and Hans Jonas professor Simon Critchley--and doesn't cover Dick's interest in many of the  more mystical and esoteric Christian thinkers that influenced Dick. Elsewhere I have discussed the crucial influence of Christian Hermeticists (per PKD) Paracelsus, Boehme, and Bruno, who all play a role in determining the weird ways that Dick thought about Christianity--at least in their legendary form if not in the specific details of their programs. Dick associated Neoplatonism with Hermeticism in a few interesting passages of the Exegesis that we will look at. At times he was worried that he had destroyed Christianity with his Neoplatonic thinking, that he had found an ancient true religion that predated Christianity. At other times he found himself back to orthodoxy, often by the very same Neoplatonic philosophical lines that led him astray.

Dick understood Neoplatonism as providing a legitimate philosophical ground for interpreting his own weird spiritual experiences. Looking at the ways Dick used Neoplatonism to interpret the Christian Hermetic authors can also give us an important window into his religious thinking.

Before I get into the nitty gritty details of Dick's Neoplatonism, Id like to say a few words about the problems facing the interpreter of his esoteric explorations, and thus the scholarly neglect. What is especially lacking is interpreters of Dick's work who have much expertise in the various esoteric religious and philosophical currents that he was involved with. But we don't necessarily need academic experts, as Dick himself was no expert, and often misunderstood the esoteric territories that he traveled through. We don't need an expert on esotericism in itself, but rather an expert in the ways that Dick made creative use of these esoteric materials. This specialist will still require a relatively comprehensive knowledge of the areas that Dick explored, but it will be better to look into Dick's actual sources -- largely the Britannica and the Bible itself, but especially into the many comments that Dick himself made about what he was reading (and
reading into!).

Then I will dive into Dick's treatment of the relationship between Neoplatonism and Christianity. I will attempt to fill in the context necessary for understanding why he was so troubled by the results of his research into esoteric philosophy, and give a prelimary sketch for a theory of Dick's Neoplatonism. Plotinus had a great deal to offer Dick not only in understanding the strange nature of his religious experiences, but also the difficulties of the theology and esoteric knowledge system that he built in order to understand those experiences. But it was in the Christian Neoplatonism of the Hermetic thinkers such as Bruno, Boehme, and Paracelsus, that Dick found a version of Christianity that has barely been mentioned by Dick scholars, and which occupied a great deal of Dick's time. This can best be seen in Dick's novel VALIS, in which the "entity made of information" is said to be a secret known to hermetic alchemists, and especially in the Exegesis.

Joseph Campbell on Star Wars as Modern Myth

"[The modern myth] has to do with machines, airshots, the size of the universe, it's got to do with what we're living with.

"Star Wars deals with the essential problem: Is the machine going to control humanity, or is the machine going to serve humanity? Darth Vader is a man taken over by a machine, he becomes a machine, and the state itself is a machine. There is no humanity in the state. What runs the world is economics and politics, and they have nothing to do with the spiritual life.

"So we are left with this void. It is the job of the artist to create the new myths. Myths come from the artists."

Joseph Campbell, interviewed by Chris Goodrich in Publisher's Weekly (1985)

Philip K. Dick on his discovery of the Torah

“I must admit that when I got into the Torah and discovered the humane elements of this ancient system of beliefs, for me it was probably one of the great moments of my life. And I still read it — I was reading it last night. There is one thing in Deuteronomy where he says, “You must always pay the hired man before sunset. For he is poor and has his heart set on it.” And in the notes Rabbi Hertz has for that, there is: “The workman is so poor that unless he is paid by sunet, he will not be able to buy food for his family.” I just lay there thinking about that, “For he is poor and has his heart set on it.” It is so incredible that we have fallen away from something that was so basic to our civilization, for maybe as many as 2,000 years."
from an interview (his last?)

PKD Fan Group regular Aharon Varady comments:

PKD was using the Hertz Ḥumash. Rabbi Hertz was the former Chief rabbi of Britain and his Ḥumash (the five books: Genesis, Exodus...) was pretty much the standard Hebrew-English volume available in synagogues when I was growing up. It's an interesting edition -- it's probably the first Jewish Hebrew-English ḥumash to include the commentary and scholarship of non-Jews that Rabbi Hertz considered valuable for his modern audience.

Oh and the verse in Deuteronomy is 24:15.

Netflix review I wrote for Radio Free Albemuth

Radio Free Albemuth is the most faithful adaptation of a Philip K. Dick movie so far--and Linklater's A Scanner Darkly was pretty faithful! RFA is hand-crafted labor of love. The director and his wife, who co-produces, have bled for this scrappy indie film, which deserves to make it to Netflix!

It is well acted, with serious performances from a few familiar faces. Shea Whigham as Philip K. Dick was a casting coup. He nails the man's deadpan humor with his laconic delivery. This performance can be profitably contrasted with Bill Pullman's portrayal of a Phil Dick-based character in Your Name Here. Whereas Pullman's performance exploited the cheap laughs that can be had from Dick's apparent craziness, Whigham goes deeper and captures the seriousness of Dick's own sense of humor, as well as the rationality that complicates his paranoia. Jonathan Scarfe believably captures the beatific confidence of the ecstatic with his likable Nicholas Brady, and Katheryn Wynnick brilliantly captured the loving harshness of his concerned wife. Hannah Hall was terrifying as the honeytrap "teen" police state agent. Her seduction scene is the most sexy/paranoid PKD love scene on film. Finally, Alanis Morrissette pulled off the mysterious aura required of her character, who is the center of the intrigue powering the plot about a secret rebellion against a dystopian America.

Also worth noting are the special effects, which economically and with great originality present a compelling vision of Philip K. Dick's religious experiences, fictionalized in the novel.

You don't have to take my word for it: RFA just won an award: “In our view, the best adaptation of PKD’s works to screen by far!” — Sci-Fi London Film Festival

PKD on "The Little Black Box"

"Here, a religion is regarded as a menace to all political systems; therefore it, too, is a kind of political system, perhaps even an ultimate one. The concept of caritas (or agape) shows up in my writing as the key to the authentic human. The android, which is the unauthentic human, the mere reflex machine, is unable to experience empathy. In this story it is never clear whether Mercer is an invader from some other world. But he must be; in a sense all religious leaders are...but not from another planet as such."