Leseprobe

98 B öhme’s T houg ht 2 Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert after Maarten van Heemskerck, Jacob Wrestling the Angel, from the Series “The Story of Jacob,” 1549, Etching, Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staat- liche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Inv. no. A 35384 ladder represents the long and arduous ascent into heaven that believers must undertake to achieve rebirth (Fig. 3). Böhme underscores that his faith struggle was difficult, but the moment of illumination or the “breakthrough of the spirit” (“Durchbruch des Geistes”) came suddenly. Böhme compares it to a stroke of lightning and calls it the “flash of life” (“plitz des lebens”) ( Aurora 8. 216, 3–6). He recalls how, from one second to the next, the deepest mysteries of the cosmos were revealed to him: “Then I saw and recognized the Being of all Being, the ground and the abyss: […] the birth of the Holy Trinity, the originat- ing and the first state of this world and all creatures through Divine Wisdom […] I saw and recognized the whole Being in evil and in good, how each orig- inated in the other” ( Epistles 12.8). 85 In this context, Böhme cites Scripture about spiritual rebirth: “I tell