Fetching
One moment.
Fetching
One moment.
Eleven books by a shoemaker of Görlitz who wrote, by his own account, because he could not help it. Ten of them stand here in the seventeenth-century English of John Sparrow, who translated Boehme within a generation of his death and whose prose is itself now four hundred years old; where that English has drifted out of reach, the facing pane carries a modern register — the same text with archaic inflection and spelling normalised by rule, never paraphrased. Nothing is reworded, and where no register appears beside a passage it is because the rules found nothing to change.
The eleventh book is not in English at all, and it is the reason this note exists.
Des trois principes de l'essence divine, printed at Paris in 1802, is the same work as Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence, which stands here as the second book — the same twenty-seven chapters in the same order, opening `Du premier principe de l'essence divine` against Sparrow's `Of the first Principle of the Divine Essence`. Its translator was Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, who gave the last years of his life to putting Boehme into French, and who has a shelf of his own in this Lycaeum.
That makes a closed circuit inside this archive, and it is worth naming plainly. Saint-Martin translates Boehme. La Iniciación, printed in Montevideo a hundred and forty years later, traces its own descent through Saint-Martin. A reader can therefore follow one thread from a German mystic of 1619, through the French philosopher who carried him into another language, to a Spanish-language monthly of the 1940s that claimed them both — and read every step of it in the original.
The two are shelved as one work rather than two because that is what they are. They are not set as facing panes: an English translation of 1619 and a French translation of 1802 are two independent readings of a lost German original, and pairing them line by line would assert a correspondence neither translator ever claimed.
1When we shall come together, over this narrow bridge of the fleshly working, to be in yonder green meadow to which the wrath of God does not reach, then we shall be fully requited for all our damages and hurts we have sustained ; though indeed at present the world accounts us for fools, and we must suffer the Devil to domineer, rush, and roar over us. Now observe : if thou fixest thy thoughts concerning heaven, and wouldst willingly conceive in thy mind what it is and where it is and how it is, thou needst not to cast thy thoughts many thousand miles off, for that place, that heaven, is not thy heaven. And though indeed that is united with CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 23 thy heaven as one body, and so together is but the one body of God, yet thou art not become a creature in that very place which is above many hundred thousand miles off, but thou art in the heaven of this world, which contains also in it such a Deep as is not of any human numbering. The true heaven is everywhere, even in that very place where thou standest and goest ; and so when thy spirit presses through the astral and the fleshly, and apprehends the innermost moving of God, then it is clearly in heaven.
2But that there is assuredly a pure glorious heaven in all the three movings aloft above the deep of this world, in which God's Being together with that of the holy angels springs up very purely, brightly, beauteously, and joyfully, is undeniable. And he is not born of God that denies it. Thou must know that this world in its innermost unfolds its properties and powers in union with the heaven aloft 24 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME above us ; and so there is one Heart, one Being, one Will, one God, all in all. The outermost moving of this world cannot comprehend the outermost moving of heaven aloft above this world, for they are one to the other as life and death, or as a man and a stone are one to the other. There is a strong firmament dividing the outermost of this world from the outermost of the upper heaven ; and that firmament is Death, which rules and reigns everywhere in the outermost in this world, and sets a great gulf between them. The second moving of this world is in the life ; it is the astral, out of which is generated the third and holy moving ; and therein love and wrath strive one with the other. For the second moving stands in the seven fountain spirits of this world, and is in all places and in all the creatures as in CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 25 man. But the Holy Ghost also rules and reigns in that second, and helps to generate the third, the holy moving.
3This, the third, is the clear and holy heaven which unites with the Heart of God, distinct from and above all heavens, as one heart. Therefore, thou child of man, be not discouraged, be not so timorous and pusillanimous ; if thou in thy zeal and earnest sincerity sowest the seed of thy tears, thou dost not sow it in earth but in heaven ; for in thy astral moving thou sowest, and in thy soulish moving thou reapest, and in the kingdom of heaven thou possessest and enjoy est it. If man's eyes were but opened he should see God everywhere in his heaven ; for heaven stands in the innermost moving everywhere. Moreover, when Stephen saw the heaven opened and the Lord Jesus at the right 26 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME hand of God, then his spirit did not first swing itself aloft into the upper heaven, but it penetrated into the innermost moving wherein heaven is everywhere. Neither must thou think that God is such a kind of Being as is only in the upper heaven, and that the soul, when it departs from the body, goes aloft many hundred thousand miles off. It needs not do that ; it is set in the innermost moving, and there it is with God and in God, and with all the holy angels, and can suddenly be above and suddenly beneath ; it is not hindered by any thing.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1When we shall come together, over this narrow bridge of the fleshly working, to be in yonder green meadow to which the wrath of God does not reach, then we shall be fully requited for all our damages and hurts we have sustained ; though indeed at present the world accounts us for fools, and we must suffer the Devil to domineer, rush, and roar over us. Now observe : if thou fixest thy thoughts concerning heaven, and wouldst willingly conceive in thy mind what it is and where it is and how it is, thou needst not to cast thy thoughts many thousand miles off, for that place, that heaven, is not thy heaven. And though indeed that is united with CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 23 thy heaven as one body, and so together is but the one body of God, yet thou art not become a creature in that very place which is above many hundred thousand miles off, but thou art in the heaven of this world, which contains also in it such a Deep as is not of any human numbering. The true heaven is everywhere, even in that very place where thou standest and goest ; and so when thy spirit presses through the astral and the fleshly, and apprehends the innermost moving of God, then it is clearly in heaven.
2But that there is assuredly a pure glorious heaven in all the three movings aloft above the deep of this world, in which God's Being together with that of the holy angels springs up very purely, brightly, beauteously, and joyfully, is undeniable. And he is not born of God that denies it. Thou must know that this world in its innermost unfolds its properties and powers in union with the heaven aloft 24 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME above us ; and so there is one Heart, one Being, one Will, one God, all in all. The outermost moving of this world cannot comprehend the outermost moving of heaven aloft above this world, for they are one to the other as life and death, or as a man and a stone are one to the other. There is a strong firmament dividing the outermost of this world from the outermost of the upper heaven ; and that firmament is Death, which rules and reigns everywhere in the outermost in this world, and sets a great gulf between them. The second moving of this world is in the life ; it is the astral, out of which is generated the third and holy moving ; and therein love and wrath strive one with the other. For the second moving stands in the seven fountain spirits of this world, and is in all places and in all the creatures as in CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 25 man. But the Holy Ghost also rules and reigns in that second, and helps to generate the third, the holy moving.
3This, the third, is the clear and holy heaven which unites with the Heart of God, distinct from and above all heavens, as one heart. Therefore, thou child of man, be not discouraged, be not so timorous and pusillanimous ; if thou in thy zeal and earnest sincerity sowest the seed of thy tears, thou dost not sow it in earth but in heaven ; for in thy astral moving thou sowest, and in thy soulish moving thou reapest, and in the kingdom of heaven thou possessest and enjoy est it. If man's eyes were but opened he should see God everywhere in his heaven ; for heaven stands in the innermost moving everywhere. Moreover, when Stephen saw the heaven opened and the Lord Jesus at the right 26 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME hand of God, then his spirit did not first swing itself aloft into the upper heaven, but it penetrated into the innermost moving wherein heaven is everywhere. Neither must thou think that God is such a kind of Being as is only in the upper heaven, and that the soul, when it departs from the body, goes aloft many hundred thousand miles off. It needs not do that ; it is set in the innermost moving, and there it is with God and in God, and with all the holy angels, and can suddenly be above and suddenly beneath ; it is not hindered by any thing.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
No commentary for this page.