In his notes on the theology of Jakob Böhme, Dr. Franz Hartmann thus sums up the mystic symbolism of the crucifixion: "The cross represents terrestrial life, and the crown of thorns the sufferings of the soul within the elementary body, but also the victory of the spirit over the elements of darkness. The body is naked, to indicate that the candidate for immortality must divest himself of all desires for terrestrial things. The figure is nailed to the cross, which symbolizes the death and surrender of the self-will, and that it should not attempt to accomplish anything by its own power, but merely serve as an instrument wherein the Divine will is executed. Above the head are inscribed the letters: I. N. R. J. whose most important meaning is: In Nobis Regnat Jesus (Within ourselves reigns Jesus). But this signification of this inscription can be practically known only to those who have actually died relatively to the world of desires, and risen above the temptation for personal existence; or, to express it in other words, those who have become alive in Christ, and in whom thus the kingdom of Jesus (the holy love-will issuing from the heart of God) has been established." One of the most interesting interpretations of the crucifixion allegory is that which identifies the man Jesus with the personal consciousness of the individual. It is this personal consciousness that conceives of and dwells in the sense of separateness, and before the aspiring soul can be reunited with the ever-present and all-pervading Father this personality must be sacrificed that the Universal Consciousness may be liberated.

(3) The Cross Surmounted by the Crown , indicates that the suffering of mortal existence, borne by the faithful disciple of Truth, will inevitably be...

It was my cross that the world did not accept, my apparent exaltation, my third baptism in a revealed image. When they had fled from the fire of the...

Therefore the Body of Christ is inferior to the Deity; and in these our human Essences he suffered Death, and his Deity of the holy Man in the pure El...

And the cruciform seal manifests the inaction of all the impulses of the flesh, and the God-imitated life looking away unflinchingly to the manly most...

Now, since the life of Christ is every way most bitter to nature and the Self and the Me (for in the true life of Christ, the Self and the Me and...

And when He had drawn men without ceasing for three and thirty years, He saw the beginnings of a movement and the redemption of all things that would ...

The third means of attraction is this--that as we see the sun draw up the mists from the earth to heaven, so the heart of our Lord Jesus Christ waxed...

This is the chief significance of the suffering of Christ for us, that we cast all our grief into the ocean of His suffering. If thou sufferest only...

And as the fierce [wrathful] Essence of the Anger of God pressed into Adam, whereby he entered into Death, of which God spoke, saying, If thou eatest ...

Could he not die some other Death, and so spring through Death with his heavenly Body?

"For the minds of those even who are deemed grave, pleasure makes waxen," according to Plato; since "each pleasure and pain nails to the body the...

Now, there are three natural means of attraction with which Christ on the Cross drew to Himself between the third and the ninth hour, more people...