Posthumous portrait of Antoinette Bourignon, engraved by Battersby & Son for the ‘Light of the World’ 1786 abridged edition, edited by Joseph Whittingham Salmon for the Society for Promotion of the Heavenly Doctrines of the New Jerusalem (a.k.a. The Swedenborgian Society) in London, printed by R. Hindmarsh. The portrait’s artwork was originally made by Pierre Poiret.

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Today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA is part 1 of planned series devoted to Antoinette Bourignon de la Porte to honor her memory and bring back an echo of her singular voice.

The contextual introduction is composed of two parts: the first part gives us a historical, religious & philosophical context to the life of Antoinette Bourignon and is taken from Serge Hutin’s precious work, ‘Les Disciples Anglais de Jacob Boehme‘, published by Editions Denoël in 1960, excerpted from page 26 to 29. The second part of the introduction gives us another scholar’s opinion about Antoinette Bourignon’s relevance to the field of ideas of our contemporary society, and is taken from Marthe van der Does, in her seminal, ‘Antoinette Bourignon, sa vie & son oeuvre‘, published in 1974 by the Holland University Press. Excerpted from page 208 of the book’s concluding chapter.

Part 2 onwards of this planned sampler series will bring Antoinette Bourignon’s own texts that will delineate what a distinct and peculiar feminine voice Antoinette Bourignon has, originating from a time when women were not free, of their bodies, of their emotions and of their minds. She is more than ever relevant in our epoch, as we are witnessing dire regressions on basic human rights alongside a complete blindness to ethics and kindness, the violent and corrupt being systematically praised and rewarded.

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Introduction-Part 1-Serge Hutin in 1960

With Pierre Poiret and Mademoiselle Bourignon, we leave ‘proper boehmism per se‘. The influence of the quietist movement had been upon these two persons stronger than that of Jacob Boehme’s theosophy. But, we could not not mention them due to the great diffusion of their books in Great Britain, and especially among Jacob Boehme’s English disciples.

Pierre Poiret (1646-1719) born in Metz, was  a Calvinist pastor who had been enthusiastic very early about the philosophy of Rene Descartes. He held his ministry in Heidelberg in 1668 and then in Deux-Ponts in 1672. The reading of books from Tauler, Thomas a Kempis, and especially of Antoinette Bourignon converted him to mysticism. Chased away from the Palatinate by war, he took refuge in Amsterdam where he stayed a few months in 1676. He then left for Hamburg to actually meet Antoinette Bourignon, where he stayed with her and her entourage for eight years, submerged in the study of the mystical and theosophical authors. Persecuted by the local ecclesiastic authorities, he was obliged to settle in Holland, in Reynsburg (near Leiden), where he would die many years later in 1719.

Pierre Poiret is especially remembered for having edited the complete works of Madame Guyon and of Antoinette Bourignon, his two great inspirations. But if he was mainly influenced by quietism, he had been reading Jacob Boehme a lot. His influence was to be great all throughout Europe and he will be read assiduously by the ‘Philadelphians’ (Jane Lead, John Pordage, Thomas Bromley, Richard Roach, Francis Lee, etc…) and William Law.

If his greatest claim to fame lies in his revelation to the religious public of two important mystical figures of the XVII th century, he was, himself, quite an original theosopher, whose system-a great fresco of the Creation, of the Fall, and of the Redemption of the World-isn’t short of greatness.

Antoinette Bourignon, born in Lille, was first a devoted Catholic; but she was convinced to be directly illuminated by God and that she was ‘the light of the World‘, sent to reform the temporal and spiritual realities. She started to share her personal intuitions: Condemning all external religious organizations, she ended by accepting nothing but the internal illumination of the soul.

Antoinette Bourignon superimpose to the Boehmist theosophy her own experiences of a clear quietist nature and some original speculations. Due to her negation of the trinitarian dogma, she announces Swedenborg: alike him, she sees in God, not three persons, but one Unique person endowed with three ‘operations’, of three successive manifestations. Her theory of the birth of the world is borrowed from Jacob Boehme.

Antoinette Bourignon eagerly develops the Boehmist notion of Adam original Androgyny state:

‘There was in his belly a vessel where small eggs were born, and another vessel full of a liquor that were making the eggs fertile. And when Man was heated by the love of his God, his desire that there would be with him other creatures to praise, to love and to adore His great majesty together, would spread this love for God upon these eggs with unconceivable delights: And an egg being fertilized would come out and another perfect man would be born. This is how there will be a holy and immortal generation much unlike the generation sin has initiated by the mean of a woman, who was formed by God from the side of Adam where the eggs were and that women still have, according to the new discoveries of anatomy.’

The matrix was torn from Adam during the re-distribution, following the Fall, of the primitive androgyn. These consideration are bound with a rather original Christology: the Word was begotten by Adam when he was still in his hermaphrodite state of innocence. Jesus’ task was to teach humanity the means through which it can recover God’s favor, and be restored in its perfect condition that of before the Fall.

In order to be saved, we ought to completely detach ourselves from all the earthly things, to be aware that they are impermanent and that only God remains, as our being is immerged into Him; the only required qualification to preach Truth then must be the perfect union of the soul with God.

Antoinette Bourignon describes also the birth, after the end of our world, of the New Jerusalem, celestial dwelling of the Just; and she shows how after the Judgement, the earth will be transformed in an infernal prison, in which the individual wills of the damned will engage in a merciless struggle; but divine mercy will triumph ultimately and the outcasts will be freed.

We have seen how, Gichtel, Khulmann, Poiret and Antoinette Bourignon tend, in diverse ways, to ‘out-grow’ Boehme’s theosophy: thanks to personal illuminations, they complete and even outmatch those of the ‘Teutonic Philosopher’; they bear the influence of  doctrines such as Quietism in particular, that are external to Boehmism; they break with the Church and establish ‘separatist’ groups; they teach a rather exalted chiliasm…We will find again this infidelity to the Boehmist ideal with John Pordage, Mrs Lead and the other English ‘Philadelphians’.

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Introduction-Part 2- Marthe van der Does in 1974

‘We believe that a modern revalorisation of the place and status of Antoinette Bourignon in the literary and religious history is necessary. To many critics in the past have judged her unfairly, with biased intentions, in deforming her defects or her singular ideas, such as the origin of Adam and the future of Humanity, without having  taken the care to carefully read her work that does put her into a privileged place among the mystics of her time. Contrary to what her critics may have thought, her person and her works have not been erased by the trial of time, because in 1966, she could raise the attention of a Dutch scholar, Willem (Wim) Pieter Cornelis Knuttel in his ‘Catalogus van de Pamfletten-Verzameling berustende in de Koninklijke Bibliotheek’, The Hague: 1889-1920, in which he quotes Antoinette Bourignon and her fulfilled prophecy about Bruxelles’ great 1695 fire, fifteen years after her death. Another great scholar, Leszek Kolakowski, in 1969 devotes an entire chapter of which the importance we believe is quite significant, and most recently,  J.C. Riewald who was interested in her indirectly, quoted one of her most distinctive aspect of her doctrine that she summarizes like this: ‘I advise and I still do to all Christians who are eager to become true  disciples of Jesus-Christ to leave all of their works and trades, so to no labor anymore for perishable meat and for all things impermanent‘. And she rightly observes that it has been a tragedy for Antoinette Bourignon to meet so few people who would have been welcoming her teaching and her works, instead of long lasting persecution.

Some of her works can still today herald her ideas perfectly. Not that she cannot conquer a large following, that she did very well, but her popularity will always stay limited to a particular and discreet audience. Nevertheless, her works can still awake deep echoes in those people, nowadays, who are hungry of religious freedom, like Antoinette Bourignon was during her time.’

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‘Die berühmte Gottes gelernte Fräulein Antoinette Bourignon,

welche 22. voll. Theologica geschrieben.’

The famous God-learned Mademoiselle Antoinette Bourignon,

who wrote 22 volumes of theological works.

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Coming soon:

A Little Antoinette Bourignon Sampler:

Part 2- How We Ought To Speak Out Evil

& The Psychology Of Its Nine Gates

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