Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Boehme and Law

"Giornale Nuovo" has a great post on Behmenists. Behmenists are followers of the mystic Jakob Boehme (1575-1624). I read a translation of his Aurora once; very weird stuff, although it's always hard to tell how much of that is real weirdness and how much is just apparent weirdness due to choice of words. For further information on Boehme, see the Jacob Boehme Resource Page. There are lots of links to great images there.

My first introduction to Boehme was through William Law (1686-1761). Law is most famous for his A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, a sober, practical guide to the elements of religious devotion, which is most notable for its illustration of its points by beautifully written, and psychologically realistic, representations, or fictional character sketches. This work impressed the likes of Samuel Johnson and the Wesleys. His Boehme-influenced works are a bit later.

This website says that Law wrote a thesis at Cambridge on Malebranche's Vision in God thesis. This is the first I'd heard of it. Since I do Malebranche, I'll have to see if I can find it.