Jakob Böhme
(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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