Leseprobe

151 T he Vi su al R e pres e ntati on of B öhme’s P hi l o s ophy 5 Dionysius Andreas Freher, Untitled (The Generation of Fire), in: The Works of Jacob Behmen, the Teutonic Theosopher , so-called Law Edition (Eds. George Ward and Thomas Langcake), London 1764–1781, Copperplate engraving, handcoloured, Embassy of the Free Mind, Collection Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica fire in the middle (Figs. 4 and 5). Explaining the drawing, Freher wrote: that “these two eternal Principles [i. e. of Light and Darkness] I have several times, after my worthy Friend Jacob, represented in a figure of two semi-Circles, standing backwards to, and touching each other but in one point; and out of this point I made Rays of Light proceeding to the right hand, and flashes of Lightnings to the left. Now this one point denotes in those figures the Spirit of God, who is on the left hand a fiery Spirit of Wrath, and on the right a meek Spirit of flaming Love”. 4 Freher’s drawing thus seeks to underline the duality of fire, which is both the source of light (the “rays of light”) and a dangerous force (the “lightnings”); yet they are interconnected, representing the internal dynamics of Böhme’s God. The technique of the pop-up layers that Freher used for some of the images he devised and most notably in the Three Tables , was an original way of making Böhme’s ideas come alive by showing not just a set of thoughts, but their developments. In the Three Tables (copies of which are extant in both English and German), by opening the layers the reader can follow step-by-step Böhme’s account of