BOEHMEN, JACOB

The most celebrated of the Mystics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, born near Gorlitz, in 1575, and died in 1624. His system attracted, and continued to attract long after his death, many disciples in Germany. Among these, in time, were several Freemasons, who sought to incorporate the mystical dogmas of their founder with the teachings of Freemasonry, so as to make the Lodges merely schools of theosophy. Indeed, the Theosophic Rites of Freemasonry, which prevailed to a great extent about the middle of the last century in Germany and France, were indebted for most of their ideas to the mysticism of Jacob Boehmen.