[THO] Jacob Boehme Redux

I can't imagine a more complicated time to be writing about than turn of the 17th century Upper Lusatia. Religiously you have the enforced Lutheranism (house by house baby!), duplicitious Crypto-Calvinists and Phillipists, wandering Anabaptists, entrenched Catholics, artillery inventing Hussites, hopeful Humanists and enough Silisian mystics to fill a large bathtub! Politically it is even more of a mess, the Turks at Europes doors, the inability of the Protestants to get along with each other, let alone the Catholic. This is the time of rising German nation states and the decline of the Holy Roman Empire. It is also a time of apocalyptic expectation, what Luther had done for the Gospel, science would soon do for philosophy, or so they though (Weeks, Boehme, 48). Now throw into this mix a self-taught cobbler mystic who felt compelled to put his thoughts to paper. At least I have no shortage of things to write about for this paper - the hard part is trying to tame this unruly beast!