The Eternal Nothing: Exploring Jacob Boehme's Ungrund

Humble Beginnings

Jacob Boehme, was born in 1575 on the border between Germany and Poland. The fourth of five children born to Jacob and Ursula, Lutheran peasants of the ‘poorest sort, yet of sober and honest demeanour’. He tended cattle in his childhood and studied to a rudimentary level. In 1599 became a cobbler in the town of Gorlitz, yet just one year later at the age of 25, Boehme introduced a concept that has intrigued and inspired philosophers and theologians for centuries: the Ungrund, or the "non-ground." This idea, central to his mystical thought, represents a primordial state of nothingness that precedes all being, and from which all things emerge. The Ungrund is not simply an absence of existence, but a dynamic, active void, a "craving for something", akin to Schopenhauer's concept of “Will” in some respects. It is a concept that delves beyond the very heart of existence and has had a profound influence on subsequent philosophical and theological discourse.

Idealised portrait of Böhme from Theosophia Revelata (1730)

Note: Despite Boehme being regarded as ‘The father of Theosophy’, I will be focusing Boehme’s influence in philosophy/theology rather than other esoteric, kabbalistic, hermetic and/or mystic/theosophical traditions as that can be easily sought elsewhere online. I would much rather see Boehme’s work through the lens of philosophy, for there really is some great wisdom to be found by reading him, whether you are Christian or not. After all, Hegel called him the 'First German Philosopher'.

Boehme's Ungrund

"For the Ungrund hungers after the Something, and the Hunger is a Desire, viz. the first Verbum Fiat, or creating Power. For the Desire has nothing that it is able to make or conceive; it conceives itself, and impresses itself; it coagulates itself; it draws itself into itself, and comprehends itself, and brings itself from Abyss into Byss, and overshadows itself with its Magnetical Attraction; so that the Ungrund is filled, and yet remains as a Non-thing." (Mysterium Magnum, Jacob Boehme)

Boehme describes the Ungrund as an "eternal nothing" that forms an eternal beginning. It is a state of pure potentiality, a void that is pregnant with possibility. This nothingness is not static but is characterised by Sucht, a "craving" or longing for something to come into being. This craving is the driving force behind creation. The Ungrund is not a being or entity, but rather the source and origin of all things. It is the ground from which all things emerge, both good and evil. Boehme's vision of the Ungrund is deeply rooted in his own mystical experiences and is described using veiled language. This is partly due to the need to avoid persecution from fundamentalist Christians of his time, but also because as he describes, it is beyond grasping in the imagination.

The frontispiece of Nicolaus Tscheer’s True and Thorough Knowledge of the Great Secret of Godliness (1718) closely resembles others designed for editions of Jacob Boehme’s works. It shows the three principles, or worlds, according to Boehme: light, darkness and the visible world in which they clash.

"I can neither speak it nor write it down; But stammer it like a child that is learning to speak, and can by no means rightly call it forth to be known as the spirit giveth it" (Aurora, Jacob Boehme)

Boehme constantly reminds us of his struggles to put his visions into words and can only be represented in grounded earthly similitude. This goes not only for his concept of the Ungrund, but his exploration of all the higher realms of being, of which his system is as equally complex as it is intricate.
For someone as untrained and unlearned as Boehme was, you can see how the great English poet and mystic William Blake referred to Boehme as a 'divinely inspired man' of which his own 'prophetic works' take form only through reflections of Boehme's earlier writing. Boehme’s experience of the inner workings of the divine are what give him the label of ‘gnostic’, which is not to say he has any relation to any of the Gnosticism of early christianity, a tradition of which Boehme is often mistaken to be an extension of, but ultimately bears no resemblance to aside from their claim of direct spiritual knowledge.

When The Morning Stars Came Together (1804 – 1807) by William Blake

Boehme's concept of the Ungrund had a significant impact on a variety of thinkers, particularly within the traditions of German Idealism and Existentialism. FWJ Schelling, a key figure in German Idealism, was clearly influenced by Boehme's thought, particularly the Ungrund. Schelling saw it as essential for understanding the nature of freedom and existence. Schelling drew on Boehme's ideas to articulate his own philosophy, which attempted to unify nature and spirit. Schelling connects the idea of the Ungrund to the notion that all birth comes from darkness into light through the necessarily inherent dialectical nature of its being.

“All birth is birth from darkness into light; the seed kernel must be sunk into the earth and die in darkness so that the more beautiful shape of light may lift and unfold itself in the radiance of the sun.” (Philosophical Investigations into the essence of Human Freedom, FWJ Schelling)

In Schelling, Boehme’s Ungrund becomes more systematised metaphysically. However, Schelling’s ground is not non-ground (absolute nothingness), but rather a pre/un-conscious potency that is a necessary obscurity for existence (clarity). A fair question at this point is to ask whether they are both describing the same thing, despite one being groundless (Boehme) and the other grounded (Schelling), since they both contain the potential for being. The difference is largely based on their ontological status. For Boehme, the Ungrund is groundless and an indeterminate freedom and could theoretically have remained unmanifest if not for the divine freedom of the will of the Father to choose to become manifest. For Schelling, the ground of being is necessarily dialectical in nature, with the light necessarily moving toward self-realisation from obscurity of darkness.

"The first principle is that through which things are separated from God or through which they exist in the mere ground; since, however, an original unity indeed occurs between what is in the ground and what is prefigured in the understanding, and the process of creation involves only an inner transmutation or transfiguration of the initial principle of darkness into the light”. (Philosophical Investigations into the essence of Human Freedom, FWJ Schelling)

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

The Ungrund also resonates with themes found in Existentialist thought, particularly Paul Tillich who explores the themes of being and non-being. Tillich details the influence of Boehme’s negation of being in the Ungrund.

“Jacob Boehme, the Protestant mystic and philosopher of life, made the classical statement that all things are rooted in a Yes and a No. In Leibnitz' doctrine of finitude and evil as well as in Kant's analysis of the finitude of categorical forms nonbeing is implied. Hegel's dialectic makes negation the dynamic power in nature and history; and the philosophers of life, since Schelling and Schopenhauer, use "will" as the basic ontological category because it has the power of negating itself without losing itself. The concepts of process and becoming in philosophers like Bergson and Whitehead imply nonbeing as well as being. Recent Existentialists, especially Heidegger and Sartre, have put nonbeing (Das Nichts, le neant) in the center of their ontological thought; and Berdyaev, a follower of both Dionysius and Boehme, has developed an ontology of nonbeing which accounts for the "me-ontic" freedom in God and man.” (The Courage to Be, Paul Tillich)

The link between Boehme and Alfred North Whitehead is something I find fascinating. As far as I am aware, Whitehead hadn’t read Boehme directly, or at least there doesn’t seem to be any record of him doing so. But the influence, albeit indirect is certainly there. I won’t be going into Whitehead’s rich and complex philosophy in this blog but it is something I will explore in the future as I finish off another reading of his magnum opus Process and Reality. I am convinced that Boehme should belong to the tradition of process philosophy, which can trace its roots back to the pre-Socratic philosophy of Heraclitus.

Alfred North Whitehead

Feel free to ask if there are any particular themes related to this post that you would like me to explore further as i’d love to make this blog somewhere that I can dig into the works of Boehme and other thinkers more as it really helps with my understanding of them.
Disclaimer: While I have a degree in Philosophy I am not trying to present myself as an expert or a professional philosopher. I haven’t done any serious philosophical writing for about 10 years, so i’m always open to critiques and ways I can improve. I do hope you’ve taken something from this post though!

Recommended reading:
Jacob Boehme - The Aurora | Mysterium Magnum | The Three Principles of Divine Essence | The Signature of All Things