Jakob Böhme Biography

(born 1575, Altseidenberg, Saxony—died Nov. 21, 1624, Görlitz) German philosophical mystic. Originally a cobbler, Böhme had a religious experience in 1600 that he felt gave him insight into how the tensions of his age could be resolved. He expounded this insight in his work Aurora (1612). The writings of Paracelsus inspired his interest in nature mysticism. In The Great Mystery (1623), he explained the Genesis account of creation in terms of Paracelsian principles. In On the Election of Grace, he expounded the free will problem, made acute at the time by the spread of Calvinism and its doctrine of predestination. He profoundly influenced later intellectual movements such as idealism and Romanticism, and he is regarded as the father of theosophy.

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