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.

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.

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.

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.

[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] Twelve years after the vision in 1600, Böhme began to write his first book, Morgenröte im Aufgang ("Dawn of the Day in the East").

A copy fell into the hands of Gregorius Richter [de], the chief pastor of Görlitz, who attacked it as being heretical,[why?]

[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.

The new clergy, still wary of Böhme, forced him to answer a long list of questions when he wanted to receive the sacrament.

[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.

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.

[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.

[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.

Böhme's correspondences in Aurora of the seven qualities, planets and humoral-elemental associations: In "De Tribus Principiis" or "On the Three Principles of Divine Being" Böhme subsumed the seven principles into the Trinity: 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.

[21] Böhme's writing shows the influence of Neoplatonist and alchemical[a] writers such as Paracelsus, while remaining firmly within a Christian tradition.

Behmenism, also Behemenism or Boehmenism, is the English-language designation for a 17th-century European Christian movement based on the teachings of German mystic and theosopher Jakob Böhme (1575-1624).

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 was also an important source of German Romantic philosophy, influencing Schelling and Franz von Baader in particular.

Böhme is also an important influence on the ideas of the English Romantic poet, artist and mystic William Blake.

Böhme became important in intellectual circles in Protestant Europe, following from the publication of his books in England, Holland and Germany in the 1640s and 1650s.

A revival occurred late in that century with interest from German Romantics, who considered Böhme a forerunner to the movement.

Poets such as John Milton, Ludwig Tieck, Novalis, William Blake[41] and W. B. Yeats[42] found inspiration in Böhme's writings.

[45][46] In 2022, Jacob Boehme was officially added to the Episcopal Church liturgical calendar along with Johann Arndt with a feast day on 11 May.

[47] Cormac McCarthy's 1985 novel Blood Meridian includes three epigraphs, the second of which comes from Jacob Boehme: "It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing.