The Rainbow
The Confessions of Jacob Boehme
Extract from my introduction and translation of ‘The Confessions’.
In the physical world, the rainbow symbolises the spiritual world concealed within nature. It appears in the sky when the sun’s fiery rays shine through rain, separating light and darkness in its refractions. Understanding the physical properties of light helps us understand how a rainbow forms. The visible part of the light is contained within the electromagnetic spectrum or forcefield detectable by the human eye. Light moves through different elements at variable speeds. It travels faster than sound and is characterised by wavelengths determining the colour it manifests. Red has the longest wavelength, while orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo each have shorter wavelengths than red but are more extended than violet. When light waves of colour travel together, they merge into one colour: white. Likewise, prisms separate the original colour of light, white, into these component colours by causing wavelengths to bend at different rates, creating a spectrum. Therefore, the seven colours of the rainbow represent unity and diversity. Boehme believed that because people live beneath the rainbow, like the colours formed by wavelengths, we reflect the realms of spiritual light.
The ‘light world’ is generated from this reaction within the first Principle, which Boehme identified with the colour red, signifying the fire world of wrath. Its three Qualities represent spiritual birth, illumination, expression, and the totality of forces awaiting rebirth. This spirit life within it shines and renders the darkness luminous. Nonetheless, the harsh and dark Quality of the first Principle remains concealed within it and in all spirit beings. Similarly, the Godhead itself now retains qualities of both light and dark. This is how love mollifies wrath. Yet the latter continues to exist and remains necessary for the generation of life. For instance, in nature, we know that electrons wheel around the edges of atoms, causing static electricity to accumulate. Bohme refers to the fifth Quality in terms of the ‘true love fire’ separating itself from the painful fire of anguish, like electricity, which builds a sufficient force to flow as a current of energy. Thus, dark is illuminated by light, but it never becomes light itself. The light never becomes dark, and this is where divine love appears as a substantial being. In the sixth Quality, the united divine powers become differentiated and audible once undifferentiated and unmanifest in the fifth, just as unused electricity flows convert into kinetic energy or heat. For Boehme, the second Principle of the Son incarnated as a man in the sixth Principle. He equated this with white and yellow, signifying God’s purity and love.
“I understand that while my body is subject to the elements of the universe and therefore influenced by the spirit of this world, my primary focus and source of fulfilment is serving God. Though my mind is prone to sin, it will not always be bound by the spirit of this world. The Divine Wisdom, represented by the Virgin, has pledged to be with me through my suffering. Through the Son of Wisdom, she will deliver me. I must hold onto him, and he will lead me to the paradise she resides in. I am ready to take risks and overcome obstacles to find Wisdom and my true home. As she assured me when she appeared to me, I trust her faithful promise that she will transform all my sorrow into immense joy.
She came to comfort me and claim me as her own when I was lying on the mountain at midnight, with trees falling all around me, storms and winds beating down on me, and the Antichrist staring at me with his mouth open to devour me. In that moment of fear and uncertainty, I felt her comforting presence, a tangible expression of God’s love for me. He only has authority over me insofar as it concerns the temporary house of flesh, whose patron he is; beyond that, I couldn’t be happier and don’t care about him. He can take that away entirely, but I’m returning home.“
Boehme, ‘The Confessions’
Text © M.R. Osborne, Ninaki’s Highlights, 2025
