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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.
1as the difference between hell and heaven. Fire — anguish, effort, and conflict — it cannot escape; this is the manifestation of that will which is life. But it can choose between the torment of its own separate dark fire — the self-centred craving which is the essence of sin — and self-abandonment to the divine fire of God's unresting will towards perfection. The one sets up a whirlpool within the eternal process : the other contributes its store of energy and love to that universal work which transmutes the dark elements into the light, and heals the apparent cleavage between " nature" and "spirit." "Our whole teaching," says Boehme, " is nothing else than how a man should kindle in himself God's light- world." That world is here and now ; and his one aim was to open the eyes of other men to this encompassing and all-penetrating reality. All lies in the direction of the will : " What we make of ourselves, that we are," xxxii CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME
2For him, the universe was primarily a religious fact : its fiery energies, its impulse towards growth and change, were significant because they were aspects of the life of God. His cosmic vision was the direct outcome of spiritual experience ; he told it, because he wished to stimulate in all men the spiritual life, make them realize that " Heaven and Hell are present everywhere, and it is but the turning of the will either into God's love or into His wrath, that introduceth into them." When the restlessness of becoming, the anxious craving, which should lead both cosmic and human life to its bourne, is turned back on itself and becomes a fiery selfdevouring desire, a " wheel of anguish," the alchemic process goes wrong. Then is produced the condition which Boehme calls the turba ; and the turba is the essence of hell. But everyone who yields himself to the impulse of the Light stands by that very act in the heaven of God's INTRODUCTION xxxiii heart ; for " Heaven is nothing but a manifestation of the Eternal One, wherein all worketh and willeth in quiet love."
3Hence at the end of this vast dynamic vision, this astonishing harmony of the scientific and the Christian universe, we find that the imperatives which govern man's entry into truth are moral : patience, courage, love, and surrender of the will. These evangelical virtues are the condition of our knowledge of reality ; for though " God dwells in all things, nothing comprehends Him unless it be one with Him." This is the doctrine of all the great mystics, and they have proved its truth in their own lives. Such an attunement of human to divine life is the real object of Christianity : and we must not forget that Boehme was before all else a practical Christian, for whom his religion was a vital process, not merely a creed. He complained that the orthodox of his day were content to believe that Christ had once died for them ; but xxxiv CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME
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.
1as the difference between hell and heaven. Fire — anguish, effort, and conflict — it cannot escape; this is the manifestation of that will which is life. But it can choose between the torment of its own separate dark fire — the self-centred craving which is the essence of sin — and self-abandonment to the divine fire of God's unresting will towards perfection. The one sets up a whirlpool within the eternal process : the other contributes its store of energy and love to that universal work which transmutes the dark elements into the light, and heals the apparent cleavage between " nature" and "spirit." "Our whole teaching," says Boehme, " is nothing else than how a man should kindle in himself God's light- world." That world is here and now ; and his one aim was to open the eyes of other men to this encompassing and all-penetrating reality. All lies in the direction of the will : " What we make of ourselves, that we are," xxxii CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME
2For him, the universe was primarily a religious fact : its fiery energies, its impulse towards growth and change, were significant because they were aspects of the life of God. His cosmic vision was the direct outcome of spiritual experience ; he told it, because he wished to stimulate in all men the spiritual life, make them realize that " Heaven and Hell are present everywhere, and it is but the turning of the will either into God's love or into His wrath, that introduceth into them." When the restlessness of becoming, the anxious craving, which should lead both cosmic and human life to its bourne, is turned back on itself and becomes a fiery selfdevouring desire, a " wheel of anguish," the alchemic process goes wrong. Then is produced the condition which Boehme calls the turba ; and the turba is the essence of hell. But everyone who yields himself to the impulse of the Light stands by that very act in the heaven of God's INTRODUCTION xxxiii heart ; for " Heaven is nothing but a manifestation of the Eternal One, wherein all worketh and willeth in quiet love."
3Hence at the end of this vast dynamic vision, this astonishing harmony of the scientific and the Christian universe, we find that the imperatives which govern man's entry into truth are moral : patience, courage, love, and surrender of the will. These evangelical virtues are the condition of our knowledge of reality ; for though " God dwells in all things, nothing comprehends Him unless it be one with Him." This is the doctrine of all the great mystics, and they have proved its truth in their own lives. Such an attunement of human to divine life is the real object of Christianity : and we must not forget that Boehme was before all else a practical Christian, for whom his religion was a vital process, not merely a creed. He complained that the orthodox of his day were content to believe that Christ had once died for them ; but xxxiv CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME
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.
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