🌑 What is the Ungrund?
The Ungrund is literally "without ground" – that which has no origin, lies beyond all duality, form, or comprehensibility.
In esotericism, the Ungrund refers to:
The primordial nothingness from which everything arises.
A kind of divine chaos or abyss before being.
A reality beyond being and non-being, from which even God emerges in his manifestation.
🌀 Jakob Böhme's Ungrund
Böhme, a mystic and shoemaker from Görlitz, spoke of the Ungrund as:
"an eternal nothingness, but also an eternal everything."
In his worldview:
The Ungrund is the primordial state in which God is still unmanifested.
Only through the will to revelation (the "longing impulse") does God emerge as Creator – and with him the world.
The Unground is thus prior to the Trinity, prior to light and darkness, prior to all being.
🕯️ The Unground in Esotericism
In modern esotericism and mysticism, the Unground is often equated with:
The Absolute in Eastern philosophies (e.g., Brahman in Vedanta).
The Emptiness (Shunyata) in Buddhism.
The Ain Soph in Kabbalah (the unknowable prior to the first light).
The Tao before naming in Daoism.
It is the groundlessness behind all reasons, an incomprehensible primal principle that can be directly experienced in mystical experience but cannot be rationally grasped.