Jacob Boehme was born in Poland, and was raised in a Christian family,as a young lad he became a shoemakers apprentice and stayed with the family who were not Christians, which opened his eyes to the world around him. It is recorded that he regularly studied the Bible yet also took time to read works by visionaries such as Paracelcus.
Boehme had numerous mystical experiences, the highlight of which occurred in 1600 when he received a vision which revealed to him the spiritual structure of the world and gave him a great understanding of good and evil and the ongoing relationship between man and God. It was not until twelve years after this that he started to write, but his writings gained mixed success, at one point he was even asked to leave his town. But by the time of his death in 1624, he had written many documents of various subjects such as 'Of the Last times' (1620) , 'Answers to forty questions regarding the soul' (1620) and 'The Supersensual Life' (1624)
I came across references to Boehme made by the famous John Wesley and others during the 18th century who looked upon Boehme's writings as a great source of knowledge, and indeed he was considered as the original thinker in the Lutherian tradition and maintained many followers after his death who became known as Behmenists. I am planning to get a hold of some translations of his writings and review them here at a later date.
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