Aurora (Die Morgenröte im Aufgang)

Aurora is the first and most celebrated of Böhme's visionary works, an outpouring of mystical theology in Paracelsian and alchemical language. Its central concern is the origin of reality in the Ungrund, the groundless, will-less abyss of the Godhead that, through an eternal movement of self-desire, brings itself into being and generates the worlds.

The book argues by vision rather than system, tracing how the formless imagines and wills itself into manifestation, and how the same dynamic of imaginative desire operates in the human soul. By the direction of its imagination the soul turns toward light or toward darkness, shaping its own state.

By placing imagination and desire at the very origin of being, Böhme dignified imagination as a cosmogonic power. This conviction deeply influenced later idealism and the esoteric belief that inner imaginative acts are creative at the deepest level of reality.