Leseprobe

65 Nature Böhme very frequently uses examples taken from nature in order to explain to his readers the rela- tionship between the visible world and the divine power that created it. The entire preface to Aurora is dedicated to one such similitude: Böhme compares the sciences of “philosophy, astrology and theology [...] to a delightful tree that grows in a beautiful garden of delights,” whereby the “the garden of the tree means the world, the field nature, the trunk of the tree the stars, the branches the elements, the fruits that grow on the tree stand for the human beings, the sap of the tree means the luminous divinity” ( Aurora, Preface 1 and 8) 10 (Fig. 1). The presence of God in nature is thus as diffused and vital as the sap that flows inside the tree, making it alive. Böhme’s God has never left his creation after having formed the world, but still inhabits it. God is in nature, and Böhme even calls nature “the body of God” (“Leib Gottes”). Yet, even if God is in nature, one should not conclude that inside God there are natural things like water, earth or air ( Three Principles 1.5). As the tree-metaphor develops, it becomes clear that Böhme views nature as a battlefield in which different forces fight each other, and God is therefore himself involved in nature’s dynamism. For Böhme, all processes of natural change, such as growth and decay, are the result of a plurality of powers constantly opposing each other. This oppo- sition generates friction, fromwhich movement, and thus life derives. At the beginning of Aurora , Böhme mentions only two such powers, called “qualities”: a good and an evil one, and from their contrast everything is said to derive. Together, these two qual- ities are the fountain from which all things that exist flow ( Aurora 2.2): they stimulate all movements in nature, and therefore in nature they must always exist in combination and never individually, other- wise life itself would not be possible. All creatures, 3 The Alchemical Stages, in: Stephan Michelspacher, Cabala, Spiegel der Kunst und Natur in Alchymia ( Cabala, Mirror of Art and Nature in Alchemy), Augsburg 1615, Embassy of the Free Mind, Collection Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica from plants, to animals and humans, and even including minerals, host in themselves these two opposing powers. “There is nothing in nature in which good and evil are not present,” Böhme sums up ( Aurora 2.5). 11 But a quality for Böhme is not simply a prop- erty or feature of a thing. Instead he gives an original definition, calling a quality “the mobility, springing or urging of a thing” ( Aurora 1.3). 12 The word quality is an exemplary case of Böhme’s use of what he calls the language of nature, Natursprache . In the language of nature every word expresses perfectly its meaning, just as was the case with Adam’s use of language in the Garden of Eden, when he named the animals according to their real essences (Gen 2:19-20) (Fig. 2). Böhme claims to have access to the language of