8 - Conservative Behmenism

Summary

The trend towards female messianism which was discussed in the last chapter was not universal among Boehme's English disciples. On the contrary, some Behmenists seem to have reacted against the feminist trend in Behmenist thought. Three figures are particularly noteworthy in this respect: Edward Taylor, Francis Lee and William Law.

Little is known about the life of Edward Taylor (died c. 1684), an English gentleman living ‘in much Privacy and Retirement’ in Dublin. He seems to have spent his time in the study of Boehme, producing what might be regarded as a Behmenist textbook. There is nothing particularly noteworthy about Taylor's Behmenist sophiology or Christology. He identifies Boehme's Second Principle as ‘the Majestick, Sweet, Divine Love, Meek Light, and the Chast Virgin of God's Wisdom’. The Virgin Wisdom is also identified as Christ's ‘Heavenly Humanity’. Adam had exchanged the love of the Virgin ‘for the Lust of a Woman, which soon sway'd him to Mortality’. In Christ, however, ‘the Word of Wisdom which Adam turned from…became the Bride to the Humane Soul’. In many ways, Taylor's anthropology is also typical of that found in other Behmenists. Male and female represent the tinctures of fire and light, both being necessary for Adam to ‘have been God's compleat Image’. Taylor tells us that the man has ‘more of the first, or Souls Principle, the Woman more of the second or Spirits Principle’. This might lead us to expect that for Taylor, as for other Behmenists, the feminine was closely associated with the divine. On the contrary, Taylor was the most misogynistic of the English Behmenists.