This card – Lord of Virtue – represents our trueness to our own inner needs and inspirations. It represents a point of inner balance where we are clear about the things we want to create in our lives, and confident in our ability to make our dreams come true. Out of this clarity and confidence arises a new quality of self-reliance and happiness.
We develop a new understanding of our virtues, our skills, our talents; we have a better view of what we have to offer and what we need in return. We become more aware of ourselves, and more in harmony with the Powers of Light.
When this card comes up in your reading, it is important that you cast aside doubts and fears, refusing to fall back into old habits. Instead you must turn your face to the future, trusting in your own power, making no compromises. Trust yourself, and everything else will fall into place.
Among the general public, Tillich was best known for his works The Courage to Be (1952) and Dynamics of Faith (1957), written in a popular style. In academic theology, he is best known for his major three-volume work Systematic Theology (1951–63), in which he developed his “method of correlation,” an approach that explores the symbols of Christian revelation as answers to the problems of human existence raised by existentialist analysis. Unlike mainstream interpretations of existentialism which emphasized the priority of existence over essence, Tillich considered existentialism “possible only as an element in a larger whole, as an element in a vision of the structure of being in its created goodness […].”[6]
When Tillich was four, his father became superintendent of a diocese in Bad Schönfliess (now Trzcińsko-Zdrój, Poland), a town of three thousand, where Tillich began primary school (Elementarschule). In 1898, Tillich was sent to Königsberg in der Neumark (now Chojna, Poland) to begin his gymnasium schooling. He was billeted in a boarding house and experienced a loneliness that he sought to overcome by reading the Bible while encountering humanistic ideas at school.[9]
In 1900, Tillich’s father was transferred to Berlin, resulting in Tillich’s switching in 1901 to a Berlin school, from which he graduated in 1904. Before his graduation, however, his mother died of cancer in September 1903, when Tillich was 17. Tillich attended several universities — the University of Berlin beginning in 1904, the University of Tübingen in 1905, and the University of Halle-Wittenberg from 1905 to 1907. He received his Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of Breslau in 1911 and his Licentiate of Theology degree at Halle-Wittenberg in 1912.[9] His PhD dissertation at Breslau was The Conception of the History of Religion in Schelling’s Positive Philosophy: Its Presuppositions and Principles.[10]
During his time at university, he became a member of the Wingolf Christian fraternity in Berlin, Tübingen and Halle.[11]
That same year, 1912, Tillich was ordained as a Lutheran minister in the Province of Brandenburg. On 28 September 1914 he married Margarethe (“Grethi”) Wever (1888–1968), and in October he joined the Imperial German Army as a chaplain during World War I. Grethi deserted Tillich in 1919 after an affair that produced a child not fathered by Tillich; the two then divorced.[12] During the war, Tillich served as a chaplain in the trenches, burying his closest friend and numerous soldiers in the mud of France. He was hospitalized three times for combat trauma, and was awarded the Iron Cross for bravery under fire. He came home from the war shattered.[13] Tillich’s academic career began after the war; he became a Privatdozent of Theology at the University of Berlin, a post he held from 1919 to 1924. On his return from the war he had met Hannah Werner-Gottschow, then married and pregnant.[14] In March 1924 they married; it was the second marriage for both. She later wrote a book entitled From Time to Time about their life together, which included their commitment to open marriage, upsetting to some; despite this, they remained together into old age.[15]
From 1924 to 1925, Tillich served as an Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Marburg, where he began to develop his systematic theology, teaching a course on it during the last of his three terms. While at Marburg, Tillich developed a professional relationship with both Rudolf Bultmann and Martin Heidegger.[16] From 1925 until 1929, Tillich was a Professor of Theology at the Dresden University of Technology and the University of Leipzig. Then, succeeding Max Scheler (who had died suddenly in 1928), Tillich held the post of “Professor of Philosophy and Sociology”[17] at the University of Frankfurt from 1929 to 1933. While at Frankfurt Tillich’s two assistants (both completing their doctorates under him) were Harald Poelchau and Theodor Adorno (in 1931 Leo Strauss had applied for the same position but was rejected).[18] During that period Tillich also “was instrumental in hiring Max Horkheimer as the Director of the Institut fr Sozialforschung and to a professorship in sociology at the University of Frankfurt.”[19] In Winter Term 1930-31 Tillich and Horkheimer together team-taught a course on John Locke; and during the several terms to immediately follow Tillich and Adorno together led seminars on Georg Simmel, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.[20] Along the way Tillich also remained in conversation with Erich Przywara.[21]
While at the University of Frankfurt, Tillich traveled throughout Germany giving public lectures and speeches that brought him into conflict with the Nazi movement. Ten weeks after Adolf Hitler became German Chancellor, on 13 April 1933 Tillich, along with Karl Mannheim and Max Horkheimer, were among the “first batch”[20] of prominent German academic “enemies of the Reich”[22] to be summarily dismissed from their tenured positions for solely ideological and/or racial reasons.[23][24]Reinhold Niebuhr visited Germany in the summer of 1933 and, already impressed with Tillich’s writings (in fact they had known one another since 1919),[17] contacted Tillich upon learning of his dismissal. Niebuhr urged Tillich to join the faculty at New York City’s Union Theological Seminary; Tillich accepted.[25][26]
At the age of 47, Tillich moved with his family to the United States. This meant learning English, the language in which he would eventually publish works such as the Systematic Theology. From 1933 until 1955 he taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he began as a Visiting Professor of Philosophy of Religion. During 1933–34 he was also a Visiting Lecturer in Philosophy at Columbia University.[9] Remarkably, “the faculty of Union [had] agreed to a 5% pay cut, at the height of the Great Depression, to bring the 47-year old Tillich and his family to the U.S.”[19]
Tillich acquired tenure at the Union Theological Seminary in 1937, and in 1940 he was promoted to Professor of Philosophical Theology and became an American citizen.[9] At Union, Tillich earned his reputation, publishing a series of books that outlined his idiosyncratic synthesis of Protestant Christian theology and existential philosophy. He published On the Boundary in 1936; The Protestant Era, a collection of his essays, in 1948; and The Shaking of the Foundations, the first of three volumes of his sermons, also in 1948. His collections of sermons gave him a broader audience than he had yet experienced.
Tillich’s most heralded achievements, though, were the 1951 publication of volume one of the Systematic Theology (University of Chicago Press), and the 1952 publication of The Courage to Be (Yale University Press).[27] The first volume of the systematic theology examines the inner tensions in the structure of reason and being, primarily through a study in ontology. These tensions, Tillich contends, show that the quest for revelation is implied in finite reason, and that the quest for the ground of being is implied in finite being. The publication of Systematic Theology, Vol. 1 brought Tillich international academic acclaim, prompting an invitation to give the prestigious Gifford Lectures in 1953–54 at the University of Aberdeen. The Courage to Be, which examines ontic, moral, and spiritual anxieties across history and in modernity, was based on Tillich’s 1950 Dwight H. Terry Lectureship and reached a wide general readership.[9]
These works led to an appointment at Harvard Divinity School in 1955, where he was University Professor,[28] among the (at the time) five highest ranking professors at Harvard. He was primarily a professor of undergraduates, because Harvard did not have a department of religion for them, but was thereby more exposed to the wider university and “most fully embodied the ideal of a University Professor.”[29] In 1959, Tillich was featured on the cover of Time magazine.[30]
In 1961, Tillich became one of the founding members of the Society for the Arts, Religion and Contemporary Culture, an organization with which he maintained ties for the remainder of his life.[31] During this period, he published volume two of the Systematic Theology, as well as the popular book Dynamics of Faith, both in 1957. Tillich’s career at Harvard lasted until 1962, when he was appointed John Nuveen Professor of Theology at the University of Chicago. He remained at Chicago until his death in 1965.
Volume three of Tillich’s Systematic Theology was published in 1963. In 1964, Tillich became the first theologian to be honored in Kegley and Bretall’s Library of Living Theology: “The adjective ‘great,’ in our opinion, can be applied to very few thinkers of our time, but Tillich, we are far from alone in believing, stands unquestionably amongst these few.”[32] A widely quoted critical assessment of his importance was Georgia Harkness‘ comment: “What Whitehead was to American philosophy, Tillich has been to American theology.”[33][34]
Tillich died on October 22, 1965, ten days after having a heart attack. In 1966, his ashes were interred in the Paul Tillich Park in New Harmony, Indiana. His gravestone inscription reads: “And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit for his season, his leaf also shall not wither. And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.” (Psalm 1:3)
Philosophy and theology
Being
Tillich used the concept of being (Sein) throughout his philosophical and theological work. Some of his work engaged with the fundamental ontology of Martin Heidegger.[35]
For “being” remains the content, the mystery, and the eternal aporia of thinking. No theology can suppress the notion of being as the power of being. One cannot separate them. In the moment in which one says that God is or that he has being, the question arises as to how his relation to being is understood. The only possible answer seems to be that God is being-itself, in the sense of the power of being or the power to conquer nonbeing.[36]
— Tillich
Tillich’s preliminary analysis of being ascends from the human subject‘s asking of the ontological question (“What is being itself?”), upwards to the highest categories of metaphysics.[37] He distinguishes among four levels of ontological analysis: self-world;[38] dynamics and form, freedom and destiny, and individualization and participation;[39] essential being and existential being;[40] and time, space, causality, and substance.[41]
Being plays a key role throughout Tillich’s Systematic Theology. In the opening to the second volume, Tillich writes:
When a doctrine of God is initiated by defining God as being-itself, the philosophical concept of being is introduced into systematic theology … It appears in the present system in three places: in the doctrine of God, where God is called the being as being or the ground and the power of being; in the doctrine of man, where the distinction is carried through between man’s essential and his existential being; and finally, in the doctrine of the Christ, where he is called the manifestation of the New Being, the actualization of which is the work of the divine Spirit.[42]
Throughout most of his work Tillich provides an ontological view of God as being-itself, the ground of being, and the power of being, one in which God is beyond essence and existence.[43] He was critical of conceptions of God as a being (e.g., the highest being), as well as of pantheistic conceptions of God as universal essence. Traditional medieval philosophical theology in the work of figures such as St. Anselm, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham tended to understand God as the highest existing being,[44] to which predicates such as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, goodness, righteousness, holiness, etc. may be ascribed. Arguments for and against the existence of God presuppose such an understanding of God. Tillich is critical of this mode of discourse, which he refers to as “theological theism,” and argues that if God is a being, even if the highest being, God cannot be properly called the source of all being. With respect to both God’s existence and essence, moreover, Tillich shows how difficulties beset Thomas Aquinas‘ attempt to “maintain the truth that God is beyond essence and existence while simultaneously arguing for the existence of God.”[45]
Though Tillich is critical of propositional arguments for the existence of God as found in natural theology, as he considers them objectifying of God, he nonetheless affirms the reality of God as the ground of being. A similar line of thought is found in the work of Eric Voegelin.[46] Tillich’s concept of God can be drawn out from his analysis of being. In Tillich’s analysis of being, all of being experiences the threat of nonbeing. Yet, following Heidegger, Tillich claims that it is human beings alone who can raise the question of being and therefore of being-itself.[47] This is because, he contends, human beings’ “infinite self-transcendence is an expression of [their] belonging to that which is beyond nonbeing, namely, to being-itself … Being-itself manifests itself to finite being in the infinite drive of the finite beyond itself.”[48]
Tillich addresses questions both ontological and personalist concerning God. One issue deals with whether and in what way personal language about the nature of God and humanity’s relationship to God is appropriate. In distinction to “theological theism”, Tillich refers to another kind of theism as that of the “divine-human encounter”. Such is the theism of the encounter with the “Wholly Other” (“Das ganz Andere”), as in the work of Karl Barth and Rudolf Otto. It implies a personalism with regard to God’s self-revelation. Tillich is quite clear that this is both appropriate and necessary, as it is the basis of the personalism of biblical religion altogether and of the concept of the “Word of God”,[49] but can become falsified if the theologian tries to turn such encounters with God as the Wholly Other into an understanding of God as a being.[50] In other words, God is both personal and transpersonal.[51]
Tillich’s ontological view of God has precedent in Christian theology. In addition to affinities with the concept of God as being-itself in classical theism, it shares similarities with Hellenistic and Patristic conceptions of God as the “unoriginate source” (agennetos) of all being.[52] This view was espoused in particular by Origen, one of a number of early theologians whose thought influenced Tillich’s. Their views in turn had pre-Christian precedents in middle Platonism. Aside from classical and Christian influences in Tillich’s concept of God, there is a dynamism in Tillich’s notion of “the living God,” reflecting some influence from Spinoza.[53]
Tillich combines his ontological conception of God with a largely existential and phenomenological understanding of faith in God, remarking that God is “the answer to the question implied in man’s finitude … the name for that which concerns man ultimately.”[54] This is notably manifest in his understanding of faith as ultimate concern. Following his existential analysis, Tillich further argues that theological theism is not only logically problematic, but is unable to speak into the situation of radical doubt and despair about meaning in life. This issue, he said, was of primary concern in the modern age, as opposed to anxiety about fate, guilt, death and condemnation.[55] This is because the state of finitude entails by necessity anxiety, and that it is our finitude as human beings, our being a mixture of being and nonbeing, that is at the ultimate basis of anxiety. If God is not the ground of being, then God cannot provide an answer to the question of finitude; God would also be finite in some sense. The term “God Above God,” then, means to indicate the God who appears, who is the ground of being, when the “God” of theological theism has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.[56] While on the one hand this God goes beyond the God of theism as usually defined, it finds expression in many religious symbols of the Christian faith, particularly that of the crucified Christ. The possibility thus exists, says Tillich, that religious symbols may be recovered which would otherwise have been rendered ineffective by contemporary society.
Tillich argues that the God of theological theism is at the root of much revolt against theism and religious faith in the modern period. Tillich states, sympathetically, that the God of theological theism
deprives me of my subjectivity because he is all-powerful and all-knowing. I revolt and make him into an object, but the revolt fails and becomes desperate. God appears as the invincible tyrant, the being in contrast with whom all other beings are without freedom and subjectivity. He is equated with the recent tyrants who with the help of terror try to transform everything into a mere object, a thing among things, a cog in a machine they control. He becomes the model of everything against which Existentialism revolted. This is the God Nietzsche said had to be killed because nobody can tolerate being made into a mere object of absolute knowledge and absolute control. This is the deepest root of atheism. It is an atheism which is justified as the reaction against theological theism and its disturbing implications.[57]
Another reason Tillich criticized theological theism was because it placed God into the subject-object dichotomy. The subject-object dichotomy is the basic distinction made in epistemology. Epistemologically, God cannot be made into an object, that is, an object of the knowing subject. Tillich deals with this question under the rubric of the relationality of God. The question is “whether there are external relations between God and the creature”.[58] Traditionally Christian theology has always understood the doctrine of creation to mean precisely this external relationality between God, the Creator, and the creature as separate and not identical realities. Tillich reminds us of the point, which can be found in Luther, that “there is no place to which man can withdraw from the divine thou, because it includes the ego and is nearer to the ego than the ego to itself”.[58]
Tillich goes further to say that the desire to draw God into the subject–object dichotomy is an “insult” to the divine holiness.[59] Similarly, if God were made into the subject rather than the object of knowledge (The Ultimate Subject), then the rest of existing entities then become subjected to the absolute knowledge and scrutiny of God, and the human being is “reified,” or made into a mere object. It would deprive the person of his or her own subjectivity and creativity. According to Tillich, theological theism has provoked the rebellions found in atheism and Existentialism, although other social factors such as the industrial revolution have also contributed to the “reification” of the human being. The modern man could no longer tolerate the idea of being an “object” completely subjected to the absolute knowledge of God. Tillich argued, as mentioned, that theological theism is “bad theology”.
The God of the theological theism is a being besides others and as such a part of the whole reality. He is certainly considered its most important part, but as a part and therefore as subjected to the structure of the whole. He is supposed to be beyond the ontological elements and categories which constitute reality. But every statement subjects him to them. He is seen as a self which has a world, as an ego which relates to a thought, as a cause which is separated from its effect, as having a definite space and endless time. He is a being, not being-itself[55]
Alternatively, Tillich presents the above-mentioned ontological view of God as Being-Itself, Ground of Being, Power of Being, and occasionally as Abyss or God’s “Abysmal Being”. What makes Tillich’s ontological view of God different from theological theism is that it transcends it by being the foundation or ultimate reality that “precedes” all beings. Just as Being for Heidegger is ontologically prior to conception, Tillich views God to be beyond being.[60] God is not a supernatural entity among other entities. Instead, God is the inexhaustible ground which empowers the existence of beings. We cannot perceive God as an object which is related to a subject because God precedes the subject–object dichotomy.[60]
Thus Tillich dismisses a literalistic Biblicism. Instead of rejecting the notion of personal God, however, Tillich sees it as a symbol that points directly to the Ground of Being.[61] Since the Ground of Being ontologically precedes reason, it cannot be comprehended since comprehension presupposes the subject–object dichotomy. Tillich disagreed with any literal philosophical and religious statements that can be made about God. Such literal statements attempt to define God and lead not only to anthropomorphism but also to a philosophical mistake that Immanuel Kant warned against, that setting limits against the transcendent inevitably leads to contradictions. Any statements about God are simply symbolic, but these symbols are sacred in the sense that they function to participate or point to the Ground of Being.
Tillich also further elaborated the thesis of the God above the God of theism in his Systematic Theology.
… (the God above the God of theism) This has been misunderstood as a dogmatic statement of a pantheistic or mystical character. First of all, it is not a dogmatic, but an apologetic, statement. It takes seriously the radical doubt experienced by many people. It gives one the courage of self-affirmation even in the extreme state of radical doubt.
— Tillich, Systematic Theology Vol. 2 , p. 12
… In such a state the God of both religious and theological language disappears. But something remains, namely, the seriousness of that doubt in which meaning within meaninglessness is affirmed. The source of this affirmation of meaning within meaninglessness, of certitude within doubt, is not the God of traditional theism but the “God above God,” the power of being, which works through those who have no name for it, not even the name God.
— Tillich, Systematic Theology Vol. 2 , p. 12
… This is the answer to those who ask for a message in the nothingness of their situation and at the end of their courage to be. But such an extreme point is not a space with which one can live. The dialectics of an extreme situation are a criterion of truth but not the basis on which a whole structure of truth can be built.
— Tillich, Systematic Theology Vol. 2 , p.12
Method of correlation
The key to understanding Tillich’s theology is what he calls the “method of correlation.” It is an approach that correlates insights from Christian revelation with the issues raised by existential, psychological, and philosophical analyses.[62]
Tillich states in the introduction to the Systematic Theology:
Theology formulates the questions implied in human existence, and theology formulates the answers implied in divine self-manifestation under the guidance of the questions implied in human existence. This is a circle which drives man to a point where question and answer are not separated. This point, however, is not a moment in time.[63]
The Christian message provides the answers to the questions implied in human existence. These answers are contained in the revelatory events on which Christianity is based and are taken by systematic theology from the sources, through the medium, under the norm. Their content cannot be derived from questions that would come from an analysis of human existence. They are ‘spoken’ to human existence from beyond it, in a sense. Otherwise, they would not be answers, for the question is human existence itself.[64]
For Tillich, the existential questions of human existence are associated with the field of philosophy and, more specifically, ontology (the study of being). This is because, according to Tillich, a lifelong pursuit of philosophy reveals that the central question of every philosophical inquiry always comes back to the question of being, or what it means to be, and, consequently, what it means to be a finite human being within being.[65] To be correlated with existential questions are theological answers, themselves derived from Christian revelation. The task of the philosopher primarily involves developing the questions, whereas the task of the theologian primarily involves developing the answers to these questions. However, it should be remembered that the two tasks overlap and include one another: the theologian must be somewhat of a philosopher and vice versa, for Tillich’s notion of faith as “ultimate concern” necessitates that the theological answer be correlated with, compatible with, and in response to the general ontological question which must be developed independently from the answers.[66][67] Thus, on one side of the correlation lies an ontological analysis of the human situation, whereas on the other is a presentation of the Christian message as a response to this existential dilemma. For Tillich, no formulation of the question can contradict the theological answer. This is because the Christian message claims, a priori, that the logos “who became flesh” is also the universal logos of the Greeks.[68]
In addition to the intimate relationship between philosophy and theology, another important aspect of the method of correlation is Tillich’s distinction between form and content in the theological answers. While the nature of revelation determines the actual content of the theological answers, the character of the questions determines the form of these answers. This is because, for Tillich, theology must be an answering theology, or apologetic theology. God is called the “ground of being” in part because God is the answer to the ontological threat of non-being, and this characterization of the theological answer in philosophical terms means that the answer has been conditioned (insofar as its form is considered) by the question.[64] Throughout the Systematic Theology, Tillich is careful to maintain this distinction between form and content without allowing one to be inadvertently conditioned by the other. Many criticisms of Tillich’s methodology revolve around this issue of whether the integrity of the Christian message is really maintained when its form is conditioned by philosophy.[69]
The theological answer is also determined by the sources of theology, our experience, and the norm of theology. Though the form of the theological answers are determined by the character of the question, these answers (which “are contained in the revelatory events on which Christianity is based”) are also “taken by systematic theology from the sources, through the medium, under the norm.”[64] There are three main sources of systematic theology: the Bible, Church history, and the history of religion and culture. Experience is not a source but a medium through which the sources speak. And the norm of theology is that by which both sources and experience are judged with regard to the content of the Christian faith.[70] Thus, we have the following as elements of the method and structure of systematic theology:
Content of which is the biblical message itself, for example:
Justification through faith
New Being in Jesus as the Christ
The Protestant principle
The criterion of the cross
As McKelway explains, the sources of theology contribute to the formation of the norm, which then becomes the criterion through which the sources and experience are judged.[73] The relationship is circular, as it is the present situation which conditions the norm in the interaction between church and biblical message. The norm is then subject to change, but Tillich insists that its basic content remains the same: that of the biblical message.[74] It is tempting to conflate revelation with the norm, but we must keep in mind that revelation (whether original or dependent) is not an element of the structure of systematic theology per se, but an event.[75] For Tillich, the present-day norm is the “New Being in Jesus as the Christ as our Ultimate Concern”.[76] This is because the present question is one of estrangement, and the overcoming of this estrangement is what Tillich calls the “New Being”. But since Christianity answers the question of estrangement with “Jesus as the Christ”, the norm tells us that we find the New Being in Jesus as the Christ.
There is also the question of the validity of the method of correlation. Certainly one could reject the method on the grounds that there is no a priori reason for its adoption. But Tillich claims that the method of any theology and its system are interdependent. That is, an absolute methodological approach cannot be adopted because the method is continually being determined by the system and the objects of theology.[77]
Life and the Spirit
This is part four of Tillich’s Systematic Theology. In this part, Tillich talks about life and the divine Spirit.
Life remains ambiguous as long as there is life. The question implied in the ambiguities of life derives to a new question, namely, that of the direction in which life moves. This is the question of history. Systematically speaking, history, characterized as it is by its direction toward the future, is the dynamic quality of life. Therefore, the “riddle of history” is a part of the problem of life.[78]
Absolute faith
Tillich stated the courage to take meaninglessness into oneself presupposes a relation to the ground of being: absolute faith.[79] Absolute faith can transcend the theistic idea of God, and has three elements.
… The first element is the experience of the power of being which is present even in the face of the most radical manifestation of non being. If one says that in this experience vitality resists despair, one must add that vitality in man is proportional to intentionality. The vitality that can stand the abyss of meaninglessness is aware of a hidden meaning within the destruction of meaning.
— Tillich, The Courage to Be, p.177
The second element in absolute faith is the dependence of the experience of nonbeing on the experience of being and the dependence of the experience of meaninglessness on the experience of meaning. Even in the state of despair one has enough being to make despair possible.
— Tillich, The Courage to Be, p.177
There is a third element in absolute faith, the acceptance of being accepted. Of course, in the state of despair there is nobody and nothing that accepts. But there is the power of acceptance itself which is experienced. Meaninglessness, as long as it is experienced, includes an experience of the “power of acceptance”. To accept this power of acceptance consciously is the religious answer of absolute faith, of a faith which has been deprived by doubt of any concrete content, which nevertheless is faith and the source of the most paradoxical manifestation of the courage to be.
— Tillich, The Courage to Be, p.177
Faith as ultimate concern
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Tillich believes the essence of religious attitudes is what he calls “ultimate concern”. Separate from all profane and ordinary realities, the object of the concern is understood as sacred, numinous or holy. The perception of its reality is felt as so overwhelming and valuable that all else seems insignificant, and for this reason requires total surrender.[80] In 1957, Tillich defined his conception of faith more explicitly in his work, Dynamics of Faith.
Man, like every living being, is concerned about many things, above all about those which condition his very existence … If [a situation or concern] claims ultimacy it demands the total surrender of him who accepts this claim … it demands that all other concerns … be sacrificed.[81]
Tillich further refined his conception of faith by stating that, “Faith as ultimate concern is an act of the total personality. It is the most centered act of the human mind … it participates in the dynamics of personal life.”[82]
An arguably central component of Tillich’s concept of faith is his notion that faith is “ecstatic”. That is to say:
It transcends both the drives of the nonrational unconsciousness and the structures of the rational conscious … the ecstatic character of faith does not exclude its rational character although it is not identical with it, and it includes nonrational strivings without being identical with them. ‘Ecstasy’ means ‘standing outside of oneself’ – without ceasing to be oneself – with all the elements which are united in the personal center.[83]
In short, for Tillich, faith does not stand opposed to rational or nonrational elements (reason and emotion respectively), as some philosophers would maintain. Rather, it transcends them in an ecstatic passion for the ultimate.[84]
It should also be noted that Tillich does not exclude atheists in his exposition of faith. Everyone has an ultimate concern, and this concern can be in an act of faith, “even if the act of faith includes the denial of God. Where there is ultimate concern, God can be denied only in the name of God”[85]
Tillich’s ontology of courage
In Paul Tillich’s work The Courage to Be he defines courage as the self-affirmation of one’s being in spite of a threat of nonbeing. He relates courage to anxiety, anxiety being the threat of non-being and the courage to be what we use to combat that threat. For Tillich, he outlines three types of anxiety and thus three ways to display the courage to be.
1) The Anxiety of Fate and Death a. The Anxiety of Fate and Death is the most basic and universal form of anxiety for Tillich. It relates quite simply to the recognition of our mortality. This troubles us humans. We become anxious when we are unsure whether our actions create a causal damnation which leads to a very real and quite unavoidable death (42-44). “Nonbeing threatens man’s ontic self-affirmation, relatively in terms of fate, absolutely in terms of death” (41). b. We display courage when we cease to rely on others to tell us what will come of us, (what will happen when we die etc.) and begin seeking those answers out for ourselves. Called the “courage of confidence” (162-63).
2) The Anxiety of Guilt and Condemnation a. This anxiety afflicts our moral self-affirmation. We as humans are responsible for our moral being, and when asked by our judge (whoever that may be) what we have made of ourselves we must answer. The anxiety is produced when we realize our being is unsatisfactory. “It [Nonbeing] threatens man’s moral self-affirmation, relatively in terms of guilt, absolutely in terms of condemnation” (41). b. We display courage when we first identify our sin; despair or whatever is causing us guilt or afflicting condemnation. We then rely on the idea that we are accepted regardless. “The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself as accepted in spite of being unacceptable” (164).
3) The Anxiety of Meaninglessness and Emptiness a. The Anxiety of Meaninglessness and Emptiness attacks our being as a whole. We worry about the loss of an ultimate concern or goal. This anxiety is also brought on by a loss of spirituality. We as beings feel the threat of non-being when we feel we have no place or purpose in the world. “It [Nonbeing] threatens man’s spiritual self-affirmation, relatively in terms of emptiness, absolutely in terms of meaninglessness” (41). b. We display the courage to be when facing this anxiety by displaying true faith, and by again, self-affirming oneself. We draw from the “power of being” which is God for Tillich and use that faith to in turn affirm ourselves and negate the non-being. We can find our meaning and purpose through the “power of being” (172-73).
Tillich writes that the ultimate source of the courage to be is the “God above God,” which transcends the theistic idea of God and is the content of absolute faith (defined as “the accepting of the acceptance without somebody or something that accepts”) (185).
Political views
Tillich espoused socialist politics, and became involved in religious socialist circles after World War I. He co-wrote a pamphlet in 1919 which advocated that Christian leaders with socialist leanings should “enter into the socialist movement in order to pave the way for a future union of Christianity and the socialist social order”.[86] The Fellowship of Socialist Christians was organized in the early 1930s by Reinhold Niebuhr and others with similar views. Later it changed its name to Frontier Fellowship and then to Christian Action. The main supporters of the Fellowship in the early days included Tillich, Eduard Heimann, Sherwood Eddy and Rose Terlin. In its early days the group thought capitalist individualism was incompatible with Christian ethics. Although not Communist, the group acknowledged Karl Marx‘s social philosophy.[87] Tillich was sympathetic towards the young Marx‘s theory of alienation as well as his idea of historical materialism, but was opposed to rigid understandings of historical determinism that claimed the victory of socialism was inevitable, as espoused by many vulgar Marxists.[86]
Tillich’s book The Socialist Decision was published in the early 1930s, during the rise of Nazism, and it was immediately censored by the Nazi regime. In the book, Tillich characterised Nazism as a form of political romanticism, which he defined as an attachment to a “myth of origin (that) envisions the beginnings of humankind in elemental, superhuman figures of various kinds” that he contended formed the basis for right-wing politics more generally. Tillich identified three basic origin myths in romantic politics: blood, soil and social group. He argued that these origin myths served to legitimate established social hierarchies by idealising the past and promoting a cyclical view of history that denied the possibility of progress and enlightenedreform: “the origin (myth) embodies the law of cyclical motion: whatever proceeds from it must return to it. Wherever the origin is in control, nothing new can happen”. He also contended that whilst political romanticism could be critical of capitalism and industrial society, it could still be used by the capitalist class to advance their interests. Tillich more precisely described Nazism as form of revolutionary romanticism, which he counterposed to conservative romanticism. He stated that whilst the latter “defend(s) the spiritual and social residues of the bond of origin… and whenever possible (seeks) to restore past forms”, the former “tries to gain a basis for new ties to the origin by a devastating attack on the rational system”.[86]
Tillich viewed liberalism as intertwined with capitalism, arguing that it granted freedom to the capitalist class without liberating the masses, and believing it had a key role in dismantling traditional social bonds, including religious ones, as well as advancing colonialism and slavery. However, he was positive about liberalism’s individualism, rationalism and egalitarianism, and believed that it was inseparable from democracy, despite tensions between the two. He considered that the connection between liberalism and capitalism needed to be severed in order for liberalism’s aspirations for freedom to be realised, advocating for an embrace of democratic socialism as an alternative.[86]
Isaac Julien: Once Again… (Statues Never Die) – Photographs
Exhibition 2 May–4 June 2023 Tuesday–Saturday: 10am–6pm Special opening for London Gallery Weekend: Sunday 4 June: 10am–5pm 16 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW
Isaac Julien’s latest work Once Again… (Statues Never Die) is the focus of this exhibition of newly conceived photographic works.
Once Again… (Statues Never Die) is an immersive five-screen installation by artist and filmmaker Sir Isaac Julien. Commissioned by the Barnes Foundation in celebration of its centenary, the work explores the relationship between Dr. Albert C. Barnes, who was an early US collector and exhibitor of African material culture, and the famed philosopher and cultural critic Alain Locke, known as the ‘Father of the Harlem Renaissance’.
Aspects of the film are expanded upon in Julien’s new series of photographic works.
‘These images encapsulate this diasporic dream-space; they are about the imaginative possibilities.’ — Isaac Julien
The portraits of André Holland as Alain Locke and Alex Part as his alter ego in Diasporic Dream-Space No. 1 and Diasporic Dream-Space No. 2 create a stunning visual diptych of two figures suspended in time under the falling snow, and this changing weather is where, as bell hooks writes, ‘a culture of infinite possibility is ready to receive us. This is artistic freedom as pure and unsullied as falling snow – as snow so deep it remains undisturbed – a whiteout.’ These images encapsulate this diasporic dream-space; they are about the imaginative possibilities.
These and other photographic artworks contain visual references to Julien’s seminal film Looking for Langston, 1989, whose pioneering theme of the queer subculture of 1920s Harlem is further explored in Once Again… (Statues Never Die) through its reflection on the relationship between Alain Locke and the sculptor Richmond Barthé. For this, Barthé’s sculptures were staged at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA).
Inkjet print on Canson Platine Fibre Rag 150 x 200 cm 59 x 78 3/4 in Edition of 6 plus 2 artist’s proofs
In his research for Looking for Langston, Julien came across an archival image of Richmond Barthé and Alain Locke in an art gallery. Richmond Barthé (1901–1989) was a well-known African American sculptor who established his first studio in Harlem in 1930 and had a successful career throughout his lifetime.
Iolaus / In the Life alludes to a colloquialism ‘in the life’ – a Black gay term from that period (‘you’re in the life’) – and is a reference to Locke’s and Barthé’s romantic engagement as occasional lovers. Julien refers to these photographs as ‘echoes’. Iolaus is Hercules’ nephew famed for being one of the Argonauts and is also the name Barthé gave to his house when he relocated to Jamaica, having become disillusioned with New York City, fame and the art world.
Inkjet print on Canson Platine Fibre Rag 150 x 225 cm 59 x 88 5/8 in Edition of 6 plus 2 artist’s proofs
Duality of existence – of being simultaneously in life and in a dream – is a theme of works such as Night Rain, which take us back to the weather, to the environment that Langston Hughes inhabited. His poem Harlem (also known as A Dream Deferred) was first published in 1951 in Hughes’ book Montage of a Dream Deferred.
Inkjet print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Ultrasmooth 225 x 150 cm 88 5/8 x 59 in Edition of 6 plus 2 artist’s proofs
Music and rhythm are alluded to in a number of the works in the series. Julien thinks of the melody behind Sonata in Red as being a song of a late hour in 1920s Harlem, while André Holland as Alain Locke lays his shadow on the wall behind him as he descends the stairs to meet his lover in the notes of the night, a direct homage to Julien’s 1989 film Looking for Langston; in this work he returns to the site of that film.
Inkjet print on Canson Platine Fibre Rag 150 x 200 cm 59 x 78 3/4 in Edition of 6 plus 2 artist’s proofs
Works such as Statues Never Die contain references to Black Athena history, the African presence in the ancient civilisations, and to Albert Barnes’s interest in art collecting. These images interweave Grecian and Roman idioms with classical Nubian sculpture. They speak of the importance of the spaces between when portraying objects and people in still life and sculpture. The figure is becoming a statue, becoming an object – also becoming a classical mythological hero. The works are a testimony to the plurality of media in the history of Black art and in Julien’s work, in painting and sculpture, film and photography.
Inkjet print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Ultrasmooth 50 x 75 cm 19 3/4 x 29 1/2 in Edition of 6 plus 2 artist’s proofs
A series of photographic still life works is dedicated to the archival periodicals of the 1920s. Mask is a visual reference to The African Art Issue of the Opportunity magazine from May 1924 with A Note on African Art by Alain Locke followed by The Temple by Albert C. Barnes. This issue also featured articles by Claude McKay, Paul Guillaume and a poem by Langston Hughes.
The visual motif of the photograph Harlem Mecca is the special edition of Survey Graphic magazine entitled Harlem, Mecca of the New Negro. Published in March 1925, the same year as Alain Locke’s influential anthology The New Negro, the periodical’s first article Enter the New Negro introduces the theme of the ‘Old’ versus the ‘New Negro’, a motif that Locke explores in The New Negro, the definitive text of the Harlem Renaissance. The cover featured the renowned tenor and composer Roland Hayes (1887–1977) in a portrait by Winold Reiss (1886–1953), who also created a portrait of Locke in the same year.
In The Conversation, standing between a copy of Harlem, Mecca… and Opportunity on an antique table in the middle of a room, is a typewriter with a green lamp illuminating the sheet of paper tucked into it, which shows the beginning of a conversation, a dialogue, or perhaps a love letter. It’s a poetic visual reference to the correspondence between Locke and Barnes; to all the Black literary figures of the 1920s who started writing the first pages of their prominent books under just such a yellow glow, but also to the intimate and often secret desire; to letters never sent and passion never fulfilled.
Inkjet print on Canson Platine Fibre Rag 150 x 200 cm 59 x 78 3/4 in Edition of 6 plus 2 artist’s proofs
Orisa’s Return is inspired by the writings of the novelist, playwright and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka. Orisa is an African spirit who has a key role in the Yoruba religion. In his book Beyond Aesthetics, Soyinka looks at the politics and aesthetics of collecting African art. The figure in Orisa’s Return symbolises a curator, a keeper, someone with a relationship to the spiritual objects. The work is also about the alienation effect, the clinical gaze, as all of the objects that have been taken are labelled and either displayed in glass vitrines or kept in storage.
Inkjet print on Canson Platine Fibre Rag 150 x 200cm Edition of 6 plus 2 artist’s proofs
‘The camera holds the moment of a calm triumph, of introspection and haunting memory, as Alice Smith embodies the beautiful as a necessary act of political resistance and lets all worldly things go.’ — Isaac Julien
‘Once again, I defend my open heart, no question. My old ways, bad old days pass me by like the weather,’ the celebrated American vocalist Alice Smith sings in the piece written and composed for Julien’s five-screen moving image installation Once Again… (Statues Never Die). Smith is the central motif of the photographic artwork Once Again. Time is seen here as repetition; as a revisit, a return. In the photograph, the camera holds a moment of a calm triumph, of introspection and haunting memory, as Alice Smith embodies the beautiful as a necessary act of political resistance and lets all worldly things go.
About the artist
Born in 1960, Isaac Julien lives and works in London and Santa Cruz, California. He has been making films and producing film installations for over forty years, including Once Again… (Statues Never Die) (2022), Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement (2019), Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass (2019), Stones Against Diamonds (2015), PLAYTIME (2014), Ten Thousand Waves (2010), Western Union: Small Boats (2007), Fantôme Afrique (2005), True North (2004), Baltimore (2003), Paradise Omeros (2002), Vagabondia (2000), and Long Road to Mazatlan (1999).
Opening at Tate Britain in April 2023, Isaac Julien: What Freedom Is To Me reveals the scope of Julien’s pioneering work in film and installation from the early 1980s through to the present day. This major exhibition is on view 26 April–20 August 2023. Other current and recent international solo and group exhibitions include: Isaac Julien: PLAYTIME, PalaisPopulaire, Germany; Isaac Julien: Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA (2023); Isaac Julien: Once Again… (Statues Never Die), Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglas, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, USA; Isaac Julien, Goslar Kaiserring, Mönchehaus Museum, Goslar, Germany; Details of Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898 – 1971, Academy Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now, Tate Britain, London, UK (2022); Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, USA; Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco (2021); Isaac Julien: Lina Bo Bardi. A Marvellous Entanglement, MAXXI, Rome, Italy (2020) touring to Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Charlotte NC, USA; Galeria Helga de Alvear, Madrid, Spain; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Australia (2021-2022); Isaac Julien: Western Union: Small Boats, Neuberger Museum, New York; Masculinities: Liberation through Photography, Barbican Art Gallery, London, travelling to Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, among others (2020); Baltimore at the Baltimore Museum of Art (2019-2020); Isaac Julien: Frederick Douglass: Lessons of the Hour, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2019; Looking for Langston at Tate Britain (2019); Playtime at LACMA (2019); Black Refractions: Highlights from the Studio Museum in Harlem at the Gibbes Museum (2019). Also in 2019, Julien’s Playtime was featured as part of Ruby City’s inaugural programme.
Previously, Julien has had solo exhibitions at venues including ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark (2018); The Whitworth, Manchester (2018); The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (2017); MAC Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2016), MUAC (Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo), Mexico City (2016); the De Pont Museum, Netherlands (2015); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013), Art Institute of Chicago (2013), Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2012), Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo (2012), Bass Museum, Miami, Florida, USA (2010), Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2009), Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea – Museu do Chiado, Lisbon, Portugal (2008), Kestnergesellschaft Hanover (2006), Pompidou Centre Paris (2005), and MoCA Miami (2005).
In 2022 Julien received Knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for the Platinum Jubilee year.
Julien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to the Arts in the Queen’s Birthday 2017 Honours List, and is the recipient of The Royal Academy of Arts Charles Wollaston Award 2017.
In 2019, Julien was appointed to the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Julien and independent curator and writer Mark Nash, the former head of contemporary art at the Royal College of Art in London, developed the Isaac Julien Lab at the UC Santa Cruz campus, which provides students with the opportunity to assist Julien and Nash with project research and the production of moving-image and photographic works in California and London.
Illustration of DNA and chromosomesLee Woodgate/Getty Images/Ikon Images
Ask many Americans these days and they will insist upon the scientific validity of a binary definition of sex. This line of thinking holds that there are only two sexes available for humans to inhabit: male or female.
As a doctorate-carrying scientist, however, I attest that this is false.
Biological sex can be defined in many ways. And when it is accurately defined, it’s never binary. How so, you might ask? Let me explain.
First, let’s start with what we can see — external genitals — the penis, testes, vulva and vagina. They must be binary, right? That’s how we assign sex at birth! I’m so sorry, but, nah. Think about the frequency of people with naturally red hair. Roughly the same frequency of people are born with intersex characteristics, which means their reproductive organs/genitalia are somewhere between what is typical of what we usually describe as male (testes, penis) or female (ovaries, uterus). People with intersex characteristics are not as rare as you may think or as some recent politically charged articles may lead you to believe. Science reminds us that sex, here defined as genital sex, is not binary.
Next, let’s consider the chromosome. XX and you’re a girl, XY and you’re a boy, right? Not necessarily. To put it briefly, chromosomes can have really beautiful and varied arrangements. People can be born not just with XX and XY, but also XYY, XXX, XXY or XO. Chromosomal sex is not binary.
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Let’s move on to hormonal sex. What I can tell you about this, friends, is that the levels of estrogen and testosterone in bodies is a distribution — just like you have ranges for things like thyroid functioning levels. And guess what? Cis men (men assigned male at birth) and cis women (women assigned female at birth) have both testosterone and estrogen. The same is true for trans men (men assigned female at birth), trans women (women assigned male at birth) and nonbinary folks (people who do not identify singularly as male or female). Estrogen is made from testosterone, and it’s always happening in all of our bodies. Some bodies do it at a slower rate than others. Hormonal sex is a distribution, not a binary.
Now, let’s consider the most reductive definition of sex. The gametes. What are gametes? Reproductive cells. Eggs and sperm. Sounds binary, right? As a human, you either produce eggs or sperm, yeah? Nah. On average, most cis women and trans guys are born with all of the eggs they may eventually ovulate with. But some are born without them. Some have their ovaries removed. So, they have no gametes. What about them? Cis men and trans women don’t even start producing sperm until the onset of puberty. So, before puberty, they have no gametes. None. Some cis men are sterile. What about them? As you can see, some people, for these reasons, don’t produce or have gametes at all. Therefore, there are three states: no gametes, eggs or sperm. It’s a triplet, a trifecta. Gametic sex is not binary.
Fine. All those ways we categorize sex are not binary, you may be agreeing or conceding. But gender surely is, yes? Men are from Mars and women are from Venus, right? Nah. Here we now refer to sex of the mind, or what I’d like to call cerebral sex. This is one way to think about gender — how we, in our heads, think about ourselves and how we fit into our society and culture. While a doctor may need to know your genital or hormonal sex, society at large should always respect, define or treat people based on their cerebral sex. Cerebral sex, or gender, is the biological sex that may be furthest from the binary. Here we refer you to the lived experiences of your community members — they may be trans men, trans women, nonbinary folks and two-spirit people, amongst many other genders that are just a Google away. Don’t “believe” that these genders “exist”? They exist because people inhabit them, and because our brains and lived experiences have dictated them. Your gender exists because you inhabit yours. Cerebral sex/gender is not binary.
Now, you may still be disagreeing with me. You might be thinking that the binary definitions of biological sex are the true definition and that the variations I’ve described are just “exceptions to the rule.” I challenge you, though — how good of a definition of biological sex can it be if it does not capture the lived biologies and experiences of millions of humans? I argue that my definitions of biological sex, each one I’ve provided, are more biologically accurate than a binary view of sex, no matter the definition you choose — they more fully encapsulate the truth of nature and humanity.
So, dear reader, next time someone asks you if sex is binary, ask them, “How are you defining sex?” If they can’t answer, explain to them the different ways we can define biological sex. Explain that, no matter how you define it, biological sex is nonbinary.
Ash Zemenick received their doctorate from UC Davis in 2017 and is the lead director and creator of Project Biodiversify and manager of UC Berkeley’s Sagehen Creek Field Station. Project Biodiversify (www.projectbiodiversify.org) runs workshops on inclusive teaching and develops teaching content to diversify biology education.
Boehmian theosophy The mystical being of the deity as the Ungrund (“unground”, the ground without a ground)[1]
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Jakob Böhme (/ˈbeɪmə, ˈboʊ-/;[2] German: [ˈbøːmə]; 24 April 1575 – 17 November 1624) was a German philosopher, Christian mystic, and LutheranProtestanttheologian. He was considered an original thinker by many of his contemporaries within the Lutheran tradition, and his first book, commonly known as Aurora, caused a great scandal. In contemporary English, his name may be spelled Jacob Boehme (retaining the older German spelling); in seventeenth-century England it was also spelled Behmen, approximating the contemporary English pronunciation of the German Böhme.
Böhme had a profound influence on later philosophical movements such as German idealism and German Romanticism.[3]Hegel described Böhme as “the first German philosopher”.
Biography
Böhme was born on 24 April 1575[4][5] at Alt Seidenberg (now Stary Zawidów, Poland), a village near Görlitz in Upper Lusatia, a territory of the Kingdom of Bohemia. His father, George Wissen, was Lutheran, reasonably wealthy, but a peasant nonetheless. Böhme was the fourth of five children. Böhme’s first job was that of a herd boy. He was deemed to be not strong enough for husbandry. When he was 14 years old, he was sent to Seidenberg, as an apprentice to become a shoemaker.[6] His apprenticeship for shoemaking was hard; he lived with a family who were not Christians, which exposed him to the controversies of the time. He regularly prayed and read the Bible as well as works by visionaries such as Paracelsus, Weigel and Schwenckfeld, although he received no formal education.[7] After three years as an apprentice, Böhme left to travel. Although it is unknown just how far he went, he at least made it to Görlitz.[6] In 1592 Böhme returned from his journeyman years. By 1599, Böhme was master of his craft with his own premises in Görlitz. That same year he married Katharina, daughter of Hans Kuntzschmann, a butcher in Görlitz, and together he and Katharina had four sons and two daughters.[7][8]
Böhme’s mentor was Abraham Behem who corresponded with Valentin Weigel. Böhme joined the “Conventicle of God’s Real Servants” – a parochial study group organized by Martin Moller. Böhme had a number of mystical experiences throughout his youth, culminating in a vision in 1600 as one day he focused his attention onto the exquisite beauty of a beam of sunlight reflected in a pewter dish. He believed this vision revealed to him the spiritual structure of the world, as well as the relationship between God and man, and good and evil. At the time he chose not to speak of this experience openly, preferring instead to continue his work and raise a family.[citation needed]
In 1610 Böhme experienced another inner vision in which he further understood the unity of the cosmos and that he had received a special vocation from God.[citation needed]
The shop in Görlitz, which was sold in 1613, had allowed Böhme to buy a house in 1610 and to finish paying for it in 1618. Having given up shoemaking in 1613, Böhme sold woollen gloves for a while, which caused him to regularly visit Prague to sell his wares.[6]
Aurora and writings
There are as many blasphemies in this shoemaker’s book as there are lines; it smells of shoemaker’s pitch and filthy blacking. May this insufferable stench be far from us. The Arian poison was not so deadly as this shoemaker’s poison.
— Gregorius Richter following the publication of Aurora.[9]
Joseph Mulder (Amsterdam 1686): Depiction of a possibly legendary episode in the life of Jakob Böhme. The Dutch caption reads: “Jakob Böhme with the preacher Gregor Richter in Görlitz, who was hostile to him in front of everyone, putting in a good word for a certain young baker from his followers. The gentleman became very angry about this, showed him the chamber door and threw one of his slippers at his head. But the good man meekly picked up the slipper, put it back on the foot of the angry preacher, and went on his way, wishing him every blessing.”
Twelve years after the vision in 1600, Böhme began to write his first book, Morgenröte im Aufgang (“Dawn of the Day in the East”). The book was given the name Aurora (sometimes translated into English as “The Day-spring”) by a friend. Böhme originally wrote the book for himself and it was never completed.[10] A manuscript copy of the unfinished work was lent to Karl von Ender, a nobleman, who had copies made and began to circulate them. A copy fell into the hands of Gregorius Richter [de], the chief pastor of Görlitz, who attacked it as being heretical,[why?] speaking against it from the pulpit, and threatened Böhme with exile if he continued working on it. Richter also wrote a pamphlet denouncing Böhme and his work.[11]
As a result, Böhme did not write anything for several years; however, at the insistence of friends who had read Aurora, he started writing again in 1618. In 1619 Böhme wrote De Tribus Principiis or The Three Principles of the Divine Essence. It took him two years to finish his second book, which was followed by many other treatises, all of which were copied by hand and circulated only among friends.[12]} In 1620 Böhme wrote The Threefold Life of Man, Answers to Forty Questions on the Soul, The Incarnation of Jesus Christ, The Six Theosophical Points, The Six Mystical Points, the Mysterium Pansophicum and Informatorium novissimorum (Of the Last Times). In 1621 Böhme wrote De Signatura Rerum (relying in part on the doctrine of signatures). In 1623 Böhme wrote On Election to Grace, On Christ’s Testaments, Mysterium Magnum, Clavis (“Key”). The year 1622 saw Böhme write some short works all of which were subsequently included in his first published book on New Year’s Day 1624, under the title Weg zu Christo (The Way to Christ).[8]
The publication caused another scandal and following complaints by the clergy, Böhme was summoned to the Town Council on 26 March 1624. The report of the meeting was that:
Jacob Boehme, the shoemaker and rabid enthusiast, declares that he has written his book To Eternal Life, but did not cause the same to be printed. A nobleman, Sigismund von Schweinitz, did that. The Council gave him warning to leave the town; otherwise the Prince Elector would be apprised of the facts. He thereupon promised that he would shortly take himself off.[13]
I must tell you, sir, that yesterday the pharisaical devil was let loose, cursed me and my little book, and condemned the book to the fire. He charged me with shocking vices; with being a scorner of both Church and Sacraments, and with getting drunk daily on brandy, wine, and beer; all of which is untrue; while he himself is a drunken man.”
— Jacob Böhme writing about Gregorius Richter on 2 April 1624.[14]
Böhme left for Dresden on 8 or 9 May 1624, where he stayed with the court physician for two months. In Dresden he was accepted by the nobility and high clergy. His intellect was also recognized by the professors of Dresden, who in a hearing in May 1624, encouraged Böhme to go home to his family in Görlitz.[7] During Böhme’s absence his family had suffered due to the Thirty Years’ War.[7]
Once home, Böhme accepted an invitation to stay with Herr von Schweinitz, who had a country-seat. While there Böhme began to write his last book, the 177 Theosophic Questions. Böhme fell terminally ill with a bowel complaint forcing him to travel home on 7 November. Gregorius Richter, Böhme’s adversary from Görlitz, had died in August 1624, while Böhme was away. The new clergy, still wary of Böhme, forced him to answer a long list of questions when he wanted to receive the sacrament. He died on 17 November 1624.[15]
In this short period, Böhme produced an enormous amount of writing, including his major works De Signatura Rerum (The Signature of All Things) and Mysterium Magnum. He also developed a following throughout Europe, where his followers were known as Behmenists.
The son of Böhme’s chief antagonist, the pastor primarius of Görlitz Gregorius Richter, edited a collection of extracts from his writings, which were afterwards published complete at Amsterdam with the help of Coenraad van Beuningen in the year 1682. Böhme’s full works were first printed in 1730.
Theology
Böhme’s cosmogony: The Philosophical Sphere or the Wonder Eye of Eternity (1620).
The chief concern of Böhme’s writing was the nature of sin, evil and redemption. Consistent with Lutheran theology, Böhme preached that humanity had fallen from a state of divine grace to a state of sin and suffering, that the forces of evil included fallen angels who had rebelled against God, and that God’s goal was to restore the world to a state of grace.[citation needed]
There are some serious departures from accepted Lutheran theology, such as his rejection of justification by faith alone, as in this passage from The Way to Christ:
For he that will say, I have a Will, and would willingly do Good, but the earthly Flesh which I carry about me, keepeth me back, so that I cannot; yet I shall be saved by Grace, for the Merits of Christ. I comfort myself with his Merit and Sufferings; who will receive me of mere Grace, without any Merits of my own, and forgive me my Sins. Such a one, I say, is like a Man that knoweth what Food is good for his Health, yet will not eat of it, but eateth Poison instead thereof, from whence Sickness and Death, will certainly follow.[16]
Another place where Böhme may depart from accepted theology (though this was open to question due to his somewhat obscure, oracular style) was in his description of the Fall as a necessary stage in the evolution of the Universe.[17] A difficulty with his theology is the fact that he had a mystical vision, which he reinterpreted and reformulated.[17] According to F. von Ingen, to Böhme, in order to reach God, man has to go through hell first. God exists without time or space, he regenerates himself through eternity. Böhme restates the trinity as truly existing but with a novel interpretation. God, the Father is fire, who gives birth to his son, whom Böhme calls light. The Holy Spirit is the living principle, or the divine life.[18]
It is clear that Böhme never claimed that God sees evil as desirable, necessary or as part of divine will to bring forth good. In his Threefold Life, Böhme states: “[I]n the order of nature, an evil thing cannot produce a good thing out of itself, but one evil thing generates another.” Böhme did not believe that there is any “divine mandate or metaphysically inherent necessity for evil and its effects in the scheme of things.”[19] Dr. John Pordage, a commentator on Böhme, wrote that Böhme “whensoever he attributes evil to eternal nature considers it in its fallen state, as it became infected by the fall of Lucifer… .”[19] Evil is seen as “the disorder, rebellion, perversion of making spirit nature’s servant”,[20] which is to say a perversion of initial Divine order.
Jakob Böhme’s House in what was Görlitz but is now in a Polish town of Zgorzelec, where he lived from 1590 to 1610
Böhme’s correspondences in Aurora of the seven qualities, planets and humoral-elemental associations:
Dry – Saturn – melancholy, power of death;
Sweet – Jupiter – sanguine, gentle source of life;
Bitter – Mars – choleric, destructive source of life;
Fire – Sun/Moon – night/day; evil/good; sin/virtue; Moon, later = phlegmatic, watery;
Corpus – Earth – totality of forces awaiting rebirth.
In “De Tribus Principiis” or “On the Three Principles of Divine Being” Böhme subsumed the seven principles into the Trinity:
The “dark world” of the Father (Qualities 1-2-3);
The “light world” of the Holy Spirit (Qualities 5-6-7);
“This world” of Satan and Christ (Quality 4).
Cosmology
In one interpretation of Böhme’s cosmology, it was necessary for humanity to return to God, and for all original unities to undergo differentiation, desire and conflict—as in the rebellion of Satan, the separation of Eve from Adam and their acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil—in order for creation to evolve to a new state of redeemed harmony that would be more perfect than the original state of innocence, allowing God to achieve a new self-awareness by interacting with a creation that was both part of, and distinct from, Himself. Free will becomes the most important gift God gives to humanity, allowing us to seek divine grace as a deliberate choice while still allowing us to remain individuals.[citation needed]
Marian views
Böhme believed that the Son of God became human through the Virgin Mary. Before the birth of Christ, God recognized himself as a virgin. This virgin is therefore a mirror of God’s wisdom and knowledge.[18] Böhme follows Luther in that he views Mary within the context of Christ. Unlike Luther, he does not address himself to dogmatic issues very much, but to the human side of Mary. Like all other women, she was human and therefore subject to sin. Only after God elected her with his grace to become the mother of his son, did she inherit the status of sinlessness.[18]Mary did not move the Word, the Word moved Mary, so Böhme, explaining that all her grace came from Christ. Mary is “blessed among women” but not because of her qualifications, but because of her humility. Mary is an instrument of God; an example of what God can do: It shall not be forgotten in all eternity, that God became human in her.[21]
Böhme, unlike Luther, did not believe that Mary was the Ever Virgin. Her virginity after the birth of Jesus is unrealistic to Böhme. The true salvation is Christ, not Mary. The importance of Mary, a human like every one of us, is that she gave birth to Jesus Christ as a human being. If Mary had not been human, according to Böhme, Christ would be a stranger and not our brother. Christ must grow in us as he did in Mary. She became blessed by accepting Christ. In a reborn Christian, as in Mary, all that is temporal disappears and only the heavenly part remains for all eternity. Böhme’s peculiar theological language, involving fire, light and spirit, which permeates his theology and Marian views, does not distract much from the fact that his basic positions are Lutheran.[21]
Influences
Idealized portrait of Böhme from Theosophia Revelata (1730)
18th-century illustration by Dionysius Andreas Freher for the book The Works of Jacob Behmen
Behmenism, also Behemenism or Boehmenism, is the English-language designation for a 17th-century EuropeanChristian movement based on the teachings of German mystic and theosopher Jakob Böhme (1575-1624). The term was not usually applied by followers of Böhme’s theosophy to themselves, but rather was used by some opponents of Böhme’s thought as a polemical term. The origins of the term date back to the German literature of the 1620s, when opponents of Böhme’s thought, such as the Thuringianantinomian Esajas Stiefel, the Lutheran theologian Peter Widmann and others denounced the writings of Böhme and the Böhmisten. When his writings began to appear in England in the 1640s, Böhme’s surname was irretrievably corrupted to the form “Behmen” or “Behemen”, whence the term “Behmenism” developed.[b] A follower of Böhme’s theosophy is a “Behmenist”.
Behmenism does not describe the beliefs of any single formal religious sect, but instead designates a more general description of Böhme’s interpretation of Christianity, when used as a source of devotional inspiration by a variety of groups. Böhme’s views greatly influenced many anti-authoritarian and Christian mystical movements, such as the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), the Philadelphians,[35] the Gichtelians, the Society of the Woman in the Wilderness (led by Johannes Kelpius), the Ephrata Cloister, the Harmony Society, Martinism, and Christiantheosophy. Böhme was also an important source of German Romantic philosophy, influencing Schelling and Franz von Baader in particular.[30] In Richard Bucke‘s 1901 treatise Cosmic Consciousness, special attention was given to the profundity of Böhme’s spiritual enlightenment, which seemed to reveal to Böhme an ultimate nondifference, or nonduality, between human beings and God. Böhme is also an important influence on the ideas of the English Romantic poet, artist and mystic William Blake. After having seen the William Law edition of the works of Jakob Böhme, published between 1764 and 1781, in which some illustrations had been included by the German early Böhme exegetist Dionysius Andreas Freher (1649–1728), William Blake said during a dinner party in 1825 “Michel Angelo could not have surpassed them”.[36]
Despite being based on a corrupted form of Böhme’s surname, the term Behmenism has retained a certain utility in modern English-language historiography, where it is still occasionally employed, although often to designate specifically English followers of Böhme’s theosophy.[c] Given the transnational nature of Böhme’s influence, the term at least implies manifold international connections between Behmenists.[37] In any case, the term is preferred to clumsier variants such as “Böhmeianism” or “Böhmism”, although these may also be encountered.
Jun 4, 2023 #rondesantisThird in a series of new videos titled – A Spotlight on…. In this video we look at Ron DeSantis, current Governor of Florida and prospective Republican Candidate for the USA Presidency in 2024. A controversial figure who seems to either be loved or hated. Looking at who he is, what drives him, his chances of getting the nomination, of taking down Donald Trump and Joe Biden. What he thinks of both of them and how far he can go. Seeing what I can feel, get and see intuitively – because this is one of my joys, reading cards, taking a birds eye view and linking in to energies. Over the course of this series we will look at many different characters from all walks of life. Please do not throw hate at anyone that I cover – the intention of these videos is to dive into clairvoyance, channelling and intuition – and look at the individuals ENERGY, what they stand for, their qualities, some numerology and more. Of course we will have our favourites of those we prefer – but let’s try to always give every person featured a fair chance. All souls are equal. @AmandaEllis #rondesantis#rondesantispsychic#rondesantistarot Spotlight on… Series playlist (includes: RFK Jr and Marianne Williamson) Piers Morgan Full Interview with Ron DeSantis • Piers Morgan vs R…
ThinkingAllowedTV Mar 19, 2013 Great news!! Now watch every title and guest in the Thinking Allowed Collection, complete and commercial free. More than 350 programs now streaming. Visit http://thinkingallowed.vhx.tv Start today. Cancel any time. Use promo code THINKNOW for a 50% discount on your first month. http://www.thinkingallowed.com/2rmay…. NOTE: This is the full broadcast portion of the 88-minute DVD interview. Existential psychology emphasizes philosophic rather than psychopathological aspects of the human condition. In this animated, two-part discussion, Dr. May proposes that genuine growth comes from confronting the pain of existence rather than escaping into banal pleasures or shallow, positive thinking. Genuine joy, he says, can emerge from an appreciation of life’s agonies. The late psychotherapist Rollo May was a recipient of the Distinguished Career Award of the American Psychological Association and a founding sponsor of the Association for Humanistic Psychology. He was author of numerous classic works including Love and Will, Psychology and the Human Dilemma, Freedom and Destiny, Dreams and Symbols, The Meaning of Anxiety and Man’s Search for Himself.
A European spacecraft around Mars sent its first livestream from the red planet to Earth on Friday to mark the 20th anniversary of its launch, but rain in Spain interfered at times.
The European Space Agency broadcast the livestream with views courtesy of its Mars Express, launched by a Russian rocket from Kazakhstan in 2003.
It took nearly 17 minutes for each picture to reach Earth, nearly 200 million miles (300 million kilometers) away, and another minute to get through the ground stations.
The transmission was disrupted at times by rainy weather at the deep space-relay antenna in Spain.
Still, enough images made it through to delight the European space officials hosting the hourlong livestream. The initial views showed about one-third of Mars, which gradually grew bigger in the frames before shrinking again as the spacecraft circled the planet. White clouds could clearly be seen in some of the shots.
“If you were currently sitting on board Mars Express … this is what you would be seeing,” said Simon Wood, the mission’s spacecraft operations engineer. “We typically don’t normally get images in this way.”
Pictures and other data usually are stored aboard the spacecraft and later transmitted to Earth, according to Wood, when the spacecraft’s antenna can be pointed this way.
Near real-time footage from so far away is “rather rare,” according to ESA. The agency pointed to the live broadcasts by the Apollo moonwalkers more than a half-century ago and, more recently, live snippets from spacecraft deliberately crashing into the moon and an asteroid.
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“These missions were all pretty close to home and others farther away sent perhaps an image or two in near real-time. When it comes to a lengthy livestream from deep space, this is a first,” ESA said in a statement before the event.
The rain on the plains in Spain cut into the number of pictures shown. ESA devoted only an hour to the livestream because it did not want to overload the spacecraft’s batteries.
Mars Express traveled to the red planet with a lander, dubbed Beagle-2, which lost contact with Earth as it attempted to touch down on the Martian surface.
More than a decade later, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured pictures of Beagle-2. Although it made it to the surface, the lander’s solar panels didn’t fully unfurl.
On June 4th, 2023, we have a Full Moon at 13° Sagittarius.
Every time we have a Full Moon in Sagittarius – and that’s once a year – the expansion, truth-seeking Sagittarius inside each one of us lits up.
Ruled by Jupiter, Sagittarius wants to find THE truth. Not any truth – but that type of truth that it’s absolute and encompasses all truths.
Sagittarius is our quest for meaning. Half-answers, half-truths are unsatisfactory to Sagittarius. There must be ONE truth that is so encompassing, that when found, it answers all life’s mysteries.
Perhaps that’s why big things like religion, philosophy, morals, or law are archetypally connected to Sagittarius.
If Sagittarius doesn’t have that deep inner knowing, if things don’t ‘click’ or fall into place, Sagittarius will keep searching.
Full Moons in Sagittarius are an invitation to connect with that energy – with the truth-seeker inside each one of us.
Full Moon In Sagittarius – The Aspects
Of course, not all Full Moons in Sagittarius are the same. The Full Moon always makes different aspects with different planets, so there are no two Sagittarius Full Moons exactly the same.
This time, the Full Moon in Sagittarius is trine Mars in Leo, and square Saturn in Pisces.
There’s so undenying friction coming from the Saturn square. The aspect is separating, so we are well aware of where the friction is coming from. But then there’s also the freeing, go-ahead energy of the Mars trine.
This Full Moon in Sagittarius reminds me of the saying:
“The truth will set you free – but first, it will piss you off”.
There’s something about the nature of truth that’s always a bit annoying at first. Finding “the truth” means we discover something that goes against what we believed to be true. And that’s uncomfortable. But ultimately, because there is such a thing as “the truth” – the real truth, in Sagittarius terms, will always set us free.
There’s something about the nature of truth – whether it’s pleasant, or unpleasant – that feels right, and sets us free.
Why? Because truth – in Sagittarius terms – means an alignment with the universe. When we live in truth – we live in alignment – and this feels right. When we live a lie – we live in misalignment – and this feels wrong.
I love this saying because it captures very well our everyday journeys to adulthood, when we embark on micro-journeys of self-discovery, learning from our experiences every single day.
The ruler of the Full Moon, Jupiter, is conjunct the North Node. There is a door waiting to be opened. There is a threshold waiting to be crossed. Jupiter conjunct the North Node is an invitation to do things differently. We can no longer tell ourselves the same old story. Deep inside, we know it’s time to move on.
Mercury is conjunct Uranus, inviting us to trust the divine download. Or our gut, how a Taurus would call it.
Sagittarius vs. Taurus – Quincunx-Based Signs
We have a Full Moon in Sagittarius and 4 planets in Taurus. This is a very interesting dynamic. Sagittarius and Taurus are quincunx-based signs, which means they don’t have much in common.
Sagittarius loves to go on a journey. Sagittarius is a mutable, fire sign who loves to be inspired and follow the crumb breads.
The destination? That matters less, it’s the process of discovery that keeps Sagittarius interested. Is the “not knowing what’s next” that keeps the Sagittarian heart fluttering. Sagittarius is that drive we all have inside of us to go on an adventure – of course, so we can find THE TRUTH.
It’s this Sagittarian spirit of adventure that has inspired our ancestors to sail across the world. It’s the Sagittarius part of our chart that keeps the airlines busy.
Of course, not all of us have the means to travel the world. But we can find the same call to adventure inside a captivating book, or a lecture, or a point of view that expands our perspective and makes us see the world in a new light.
What about Taurus? Taurus is a very practical, down-to-earth sign. Taurus is not interested in Sagittarian dreamy ideals – Taurus is concerned with the here and now, with the practicalities of everyday life.
So what happens when we have 2 signs in quincunx? The quincunx signs have nothing in common – so to get along, they will have to find a creative solution. They have to marry the unmarriable.
But the greatest breakthroughs in life happen exactly when 2 things seemingly irreconcilable are imagined to merge.
The Sabian symbol of the Full Moon in Sagittarius is “The Great Pyramid And The Sphinx”. This is a metaphor for our spiritual ancestry – of our ability to give Taurus shape, to give Taurus form to our Sagittarian ideals.
The Full Moon in Sagittarius is asking us some very important questions: What are practical ways you can bring your Sagittarian ideal to life? How can you get, one step at a time, closer to your Truth?
Deciphering Aspects In The Natal Chart
If you resonate with Astro Butterfly’s approach to astrology you will love the “Deciphering Aspects In the Natal Chart” course. All the transit reports you read in this newsletter are based on a deep understanding of aspects.
It all starts with the aspects!
The Full Moon itself is an aspect (opposition) between the Sun and the Moon. All transits are geometrical aspects planets form with each other on their journey around the Sun.
No aspects = no movement = no life.
This time the Moon in Sagittarius connects with Saturn and Mars. Next year, it will connect with other planets, telling us a different story, teaching us different lessons.
When we understand how planets communicate with each other through aspects, we understand ourselves and the world around us at a very deep level. We get in sync with the universe.
If you want to go on a beautiful learning adventure, join us now:
The Sagittarius Full Moon spotlights the recognition of a wider range of feelings, possibly discovering their greater meaning and rising above them. At times, the very basic but often intense experiences of sadness, anger, and fear, in particular, become tiresome, even exhausting. And we get fed up with living on those planes. Something could occur soon that allows a step up from them, and we start to view matters in a new way.
What was once a source of irritation becomes a casual curiosity; we question why we felt so wound up before, yet not now. Maybe someone lets us down over an arrangement, yet we see that the freed-up time turns out to be of benefit. Or we feel confident that the person had a genuine reason, and that there’ll be another chance to link up. These developments could seem a far cry from the depths of disappointment or secret doubts of self-worth based around another’s choices or actions.
A Full Moon provides counterplay between the Moon and the Sun, the latter of which is in Gemini — a sign linked to toying with ideas and plans. Playing with possibilities and potentials can feel more fun or intriguing than taking a definite action. But failing to launch something clear can frustrate Sagittarius. Hence, tension during this lunation may result because we — or someone around us — can’t make up our mind. But the Moon trines Mars in Leo, so there’s clearly an option for definite, swift action. It will be up to us whether we spot it and act on it, since trines suggest a lack of pressure or motivation. So perhaps we need to feel moved to act or be able to spot the benefit in so doing.
The Moon also squares Saturn in Pisces. The square between two zodiac signs of a similar quality — in this case mutable — can seem puzzling, until we remember that the elements of those signs matter too. Sagittarius fire versus Pisces water explains possible clashes. Maybe Saturn in Pisces wants to take a meandering route towards collecting concrete evidence and pinning down facts, for example, whilst the Sagittarian Moon intuitively senses the answers through flashes of inspiration and wonders why so much time is being wasted!
Squares can indicate inner tension rather than external pressure, so we might be fighting two different internal impulses. Once we recognize the creative potential of meeting on the corner of these, without an aggressive and dangerous collision, we’ll see that each side has something valuable to offer.
The Moon’s dispositor, Jupiter in Taurus, seeks a lasting solution. Fast progress may only seem truly desirable if the pathway includes longevity in the overall impact. Maybe it is worthwhile to check out some Saturn in Pisces-style facts after all! And especially since Jupiter sextiles Saturn, suggesting there’s a benefit in going the extra mile. However, Jupiter squares Pluto, emphasizing conflict. Since Pluto is in Aquarius, we might be stuck on an issue of principle. Yet, difficult Pluto aspects are often an indication that something has passed its most useful point, and it could be time to let go and move on. With release comes sudden progress!
This article is from the Mountain Astrologer by Diana McMahon Collis
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