b. “From such a revelation of powers in which the will of the eternal One contemplates itself, flows the understanding and the knowledge of the something [Ichts], since the eternal will contemplates itself in the something [Ichts].” “Ichts” is a play upon the word “Nichts” (nothing), for it is simply the negative; yet it is at the same time the opposite of nothing, since the Ich (Ego) of self-consciousness is contained in it. The Son, the something, is thus “I,” consciousness, self-consciousness: God is not only the abstract neutral but likewise the gathering together of Himself into the point of Being-for-self. The “other” of God is thus the image of God. “This similitude is the _Mysterium magnum_, viz. the creator of all beings and creatures; for it is the separator” (of the whole) “in the efflux of the will which makes the will of the eternal One separable—the separability in the will from which powers and qualities take their rise.” This separator is “constituted the steward of nature, by whom the eternal will rules, makes, forms and constitutes all things.” The separator is effectuating and self-differentiating, and Boehme calls this “Ichts,” likewise Lucifer, the first-born Son of God, the creaturely first-born angel who was one of the seven spirits. “But this Lucifer has fallen and Christ has come in his place.”[139] This is the connection of the devil with God, namely other-Being and then Being-for-self or Being-for-one, in such a way that the other is for one; and this is the origin of evil in God and out of God. This is the furthest point of thought reached by Jacob Boehme. He represents this Fall of Lucifer as that the “Ichts,” _i.e._ self-knowledge, the “I” [Ichheit] (a word which we find used by him), the inward imagining of self, the inward fashioning of self (the being-for-self), is the fire which absorbs all things. This is the negative side in the separator, the anguish; or it is the wrath of God. This divine wrath is hell and the devil, who through himself imagines himself into himself. This is very bold and speculative; Boehme here seeks to show in God Himself the sources of the divine anger. He also calls the will of the something [“Ichts”] self-hood; it is the passing over of the something [“Ichts”] into the nothing [Nichts], the “I” imagining itself within itself. He says: “Heaven and hell are as far removed from one another as day and night, as something and nothing.” Boehme has really here penetrated into the utmost depths of divine essence; evil, matter, or whatever it has been called, is the I = I, the Being-for-self, the true negativity. Before this it was the _nonens_ which is itself positive, the darkness; but the true negativity is the “I.” It is not anything bad because it is called the evil; it is in mind alone that evil exists, because it is conceived therein as it is in itself. “Where the will of God willeth in anything, there God is manifested, and in that manifestation the angels also dwell; but where