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Pp297, The nations of Europe, like Boehme's qualities, support each other in their mutual differences and oppositions. It is their constant motion, their relative rising and falling that has kept western civilisation alive. Historical progress, the formation of changing patterns.
Pp346 Aurora, one of the greatest books humanity possesses.
Pp 367, Boehme did not write poetry, he staked a claim for our allegiance, as did Mohammed. So did Freud, and by extension, Jung, Adler, Reich and the rest. Marx also staked a claim in his idea that he had made socialism scientific.
An 111, Forms of Christianity. Behmenism and the idea of consolation. Forgiveness of sin. I would say that sometimes one does stand in need of some form of forgiveness. Sometimes one’s own wrath may create too many oppositions.
Wesley v Law. Wesley represents the accursed black and hateful form of Christianity. That which one hates.
Hegel copies Boehme by offering reconciliation, but in a tendentious doctrinal manner. His God, his Absolute, contains too much of his own will. He falls short of the depth of Boehme. I would not say that Blake succeeds either, his solution is too purely personal. But almost every thinker can come to appear hackneyed and repressive.
Ways of seeing people. Way of opposition
Am 180, Henry More and scientific philosophy. Henry More is like a foil. On some matters he was so wrong. Because of that he helped to shift thought decisively away from the spiritual explanations that attracted him. He is defeated on a ground of his own choosing.
Here’s Law, following Boehme:-
“Nature or the first properties of life are in a state of the highest contrariety and the highest want of something which they have not. This is their whole nature and they have nothing else in them. And this is their true ground and fitness to become a life of triumphing joy and happiness, as when united in the possession of that that which they seek for in their contrariety.. And if life, in its first root, was not this depth of strife, this strength of hunger and sensibility of want, the fullness of heavenly joy could not be manifested in it." (P145)
This philosophy has a very clear point to it, one that is not dealt with by Cartesian mechanism. The test of experiment is hardly applicable in the same way. More came to seem silly in a way Law does not.
Al 195, Appeal of Heidegger. Steiner notes a possible influence of Boehme, which is interesting, as Boehme always suggested to me an alternative to Neoplatonism.
Qq 64, The fiery wrathful quality needs to be counteracted by the sweet waters of sympathy. Fiery wrathful quality, something to do with the sense of isolation and paranoia. Needed. Action to arouse the sweet waters. ‘Evil, suppress it!’ No, mollify it with the sweet waters and you have energy.
Oo 24, Possibilities of life unfolding. Boehme and the history of Lucifer. Solution to of the problem of evil. To say evil does not exist or does not exist in a full sense. The wrath of God. Possibilities disorganised in the memory. A writer.
Greatness. Not a Luciferian pride of ego. That was all mistake, all feelings can be satisfied. Compacted to burn more brightly.
Oo 26, The Russians, their Marxism, so false, a bricked up wall, barriers one encounters, absolute. Yet the wall, the very falsity of it, is perhaps but a form of the Veil. To see the Veil and know there is something behind it. Perhaps the best religion of all is the most grossly materialistic and superstitious of all, like sun worship.
Boehme, the last in the line. Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Luther. Boehme.
Oo 51, I cannot help feeling some admiration even for Boehme’s Lucifer. At least he made something glow more brightly that it did before. His trouble is that he was stuck in the false limits of his own ego, but is even his damnation, as serious a matter as it is usually presented? Is not eternal damnation an essentially verbal formula? Blake saw the pains of hell as the enjoyments of genius, The gnosis is something above and beyond Lucifer. His pride and his burning, yes and his pain, all may be escaped if we can escape the bonds of ego and formulae of words. Imagine being checkmated in chess. According to the rules you have lost, absolutely, but you can always play something else.
Ll 133, Boehme’s explanation of the growth of a flower is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. I find him easier to understand than I had expected.
Kk 215, Boehme and his solution to the problem of evil, Wittgenstein and his solution to the problems of philosophy. Boehme’s is a satisfactory solution, in its way, all revolving around the question of what is. If we can show that somehow evil is not, then God’s perfect goodness is not compromised. A proof is required that evil is to be excluded from what we are to treat as the things that are. It is only those things that can really worry us. Being, existence, essentially grammatical terms, how we determine to use them decides what we are to allow to worry us. ‘Being’ allowed to some concept or other gives it a certain solidity in the mind. That to which we do not allow the status we can glide away from, it cannot cause us real mental disquiet when we conceptualise it, , it is a mere cipher. Not everything can be a cipher, the mind must have something that is solid.. Does therefore the mind create being? One feels here (I adopt a Wittgensteinian style) that there must be a substratum of that which is. But maybe all that is needed is substratum of that which could be? What determines the limit? How do we know there are any? There are hierarchies of different possibilities existing at different levels. At different points there are moves which are prohibited, just as in pure mathematics, which is tautological. So here again I can resolve a problem by manipulation of the concept ‘being’ ‘What are the limits’? ‘There are no limits’ The rules governing the use of the verb ‘to be’ are among the most important tools for the control of the mind. They govern what is to be considered as a problem to be resolved and what is to be disregarded.
Dd 149, Fichte, or the rational conquest by the ego of whatever it experiences as alien to itself. Boehme or the ultimate object of understanding as one wherein all such tension are resolved. But putting contradiction and tension into reality itself Hegel is very suppressive of the individual and individual effort.
Bb 80, Boehme, urge to reconcile Christian dogma with the total honesty of his own spirit. The antithesis of Jesuitry. Nietzsche and Boehme, both thinking only what is found satisfying to all the instincts. Think what you want to think within the limits of what you can think.
Ai 83, Part of Hegel’s appeal is the same as the appeal of Boehme. Boehme introduced into mysticism what seems like a strikingly original viewpoint, though perhaps influenced by the kabbalah.
Boehme’s God is convincing, but the word ‘God’ is itself a vague and symbolical term. There are natural forces. Without contraries is no progression
Ai 147, But if there are parts of Hegel which appeal today, surely there is so much it which unreadable and unconvincing and which reads like so much theology? From Boehme there is this attractive vision of the balance of thrusting, fighting forces which sustain the present. The triviality of immediate objections.
Against Hegel’s idea that definite and binding conclusions may be reached I would say that here are features not susceptible to logic, or not that kind of logic. That psychological motives are not the same as logical reasons. That what he sees as one sided reasons are full possibilities in themselves. Insofar as they are not possibilities for me, it is that I ask a particular question.
See how he can produce a reverse effect to that claimed, setting up a sectional desire as an absolute. The desire for a class of people to think as highly as possible of themselves can be elevated to the standard of an absolute truth.
Ai 165, The Black Death, scientific theories about corruption of the air. Primitive science Qualities of things classified in a way that relates to human emotions. Like Boehme, kabbalah, Hegel.
Mm 85, Wittgenstein, Boehme. Boehme on Lucifer. He calls him a murderer, as if his very crime against the light is itself murder, with all the odium that attaches to it. Christianity can work and natural rational objections to it can be dealt with in precisely the same ways as the rational philosophical objections to ordinary language. Let there but be a motive for believing in something or other and a way will be found. Suppose God seems unjust, that omnipotence seems incompatible with goodness? Then it is possible to show that that we are misapplying the concepts of omnipotence and justice.
As 314, Berdayev. The Meaning of History Mention of Chamberlain as an Aryan thinker, rejecting the whole semitic tradition.
Clear influence of Boehme, who I could feel him leading up to.
As 322 Plato’s valid point that the life of the tyrant is not only not the happiest, but that is not particularly happy at all. But what about a mediaeval Norman King? The kings of Sicily or Emperor Frederick or Manfred? The quarrel with the Pope. In the name of what? Of a truly aristocratic ideal of life, the most enjoyable involvement., This kind of enjoyment, what Boehme finds in Christianity.
Berdayev sees a sort of bankruptcy in Nietzsche's idea of the Ubermensch. As if in his effort to do whatever he is doing he has had to go beyond humanism, into something inhuman. He sees mediaeval saints as embarked on great historic tasks, such as rhat of rising superior to the natural man. But that’s not really good sound honest history.
Ax 74 From Erdmann. Originality from ignorance of theology.
Ba 112 Coleridge on Bruno and Boehme. Biographia Literalis.
178
Schelling’s interest in Boehme. The time when he gave up philosophy for theology
