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.
118. Mais si nous voulons traiter du monde paradisiaque 5 ainsi que du principe de ce monde , de sa puissance et de son merveilleux engendrement , et exprimer comment est la divine et éternelle sagesse, il nous est impossible de le prononcer j car la fontaine de l'abîme ne peut être saisie par aucun esprit soit ange , soit homme. C'est pour cela que Tin" commensurable sagesse , et réiernelle génération produit dans le paradis une prodigieuse et éternejle joie. Cet incommensurable pouvoir et cette sagesse ne nous sont connus à nous hommes que lorsque nous les considérons dans le troisième principe. Si nous contemplons le ciel étoile , les élémens, ainsi que les créatures , le bois, les plantes, l'herbe, nous voyons dans le monde matériel la similitude de l'incompréhensible monde paradisiaque. Car ce inonde dérive de la première racine dans laquelle ils sont l'un et l'autre , tant le monde matériel, que le monde angélique paradisiaque qui est impérissable et sans commencement 19. Et si nous réfléchissons et que nous pensions k l'origine des quatre élémens, nous trouvons, nous voyons, et nous sentons clairement en nous-mêmes cette origine, si toutefois nous sommes des hommes et non pas des animaux , pleins de mcchancelé , €t contestant contre Dieu et 1^ matrice de ce monde. CH. 5. C 71 )
2Car cette origine est aussi bien reconnoissable dans l'homme que dans la profondeur de ce monde , quoiqu'il paroisse très étonnant à un homme sans lumière , qu'il puisse parler de l'origine de l'air , du feu , de l'eau , de la terre , aussi bien que des astres , etc., et que même il regarde comme impossible d'en rien savoir. Il nage ainsi dans sa propre mère , et ne cherche pas à la connoître 5 et en effet il ne seroit pas bon pour lui qu'il la connut. Mais puisque la chute d'Adam noas a précipités dans cette mort , il nous est très important de la connoître pour nous enfuir loin de l'homme bestial , et ïvour vivre dans le vrai homme. 20. Si donc tu ouvres les yeux de ton esprit , tu verras comment le feu est dans l'eau , ce qui se montre dans un tems d'éclairs, et cependant il n'y a Va aucun feu qui soit durable , quoique ce soit néanmoins un vrai feu qui enflamme et détruit les maisons Tu verras là aussi comment il en sort un air d'une grande puissance, et comment l'un est dans l'autre ; en outre tu verras comment l'eau est aussi engendrée dans la tempête. 21. Mais tu ne trouveras pas ici maintenant cette tacine , tu ne dois la contempler que dans la matrice 5 là elle est manifeste , et tu la reconnoîtras dans toutes choses , car la matrice do ce monde est aans l'éternelle matrice , d'où le paradis et le ciel «ont provenus. 22. Or , comme l'éternelle matrice est un engendrement qui procède du lieu où se trouve dans Torigine , l'astringent , le ténébreux, le dur et l'angois-. ( 7* ) CH. s. ceux; de même aussi tu vois que lorsque l'esprit de Dieu allume la matrice intérieure , elle devient opérante et inqualijiante,
323. Car premièrement il y a dans l'origine l'astringent , qui tire à soi , qui concentre , et fait un froid ténébreux et aigu. Or, l'amertume ne peut souffrir la violence attirante , parce que la violence attirante fait dans le froid un aiguillon d'amertume qui lem~ péte et se garde de Tâpre mort. Mais comme il ne peut pas s'échapper de l'astringence, puisqu'elle est sa mère , dans laquelle il habite ^ alors il tempêta terriblement comme s'il vouloit briser l'astringence. Il pointe au-dessus de soi et obliquement , et cependant ne trouve aucun repos jusqu'à ce que la géjiération de l'astringence se tourne en une essence horriblement angoisseuse , comme un esprit de souffre, entièrement âpre , dure , piquante intérieurement , comme une roue tournante; et l'amertume s'élève promptement au-dessus de soi , d'où provient, uu éclair étincelant dont la ténébreuse astriugence s'effraie, en se précipitant en arrière comme étant vaincue ! et quand l'amertume a ainsi vaincu la mère , et la trouve comme à moitié morte , et adoucie , elle s'étonne beaucoup plus que la mère ; mais comme l'éruption se passe dans la mèreasUingenla qui maintenant est à moitié morte et adoucie, l'amertume perd son effroyable pouvoir, elle devient blanche , claire, et lumineuse ; et c'est l'enflamme<« ment ou la génération du feu , comme cela est exposé ci-dessus. Cher lecteur, ne regoide point ceci comme ua eu. 5. ( 7^ ) badinage , afin que cet engendrement , qui toutefois arrive justement de la même manière dans le commencement de ta vie , ne se trouble pas en toi ; et étends ta vue.
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.
118. But if we would treat of the paradisiac world 5 as well as of the principle of this world, of its power and of its marvellous begetting, and express how the divine and eternal wisdom is, it is impossible for us to pronounce it; for the fountain of the abyss cannot be seized by any spirit, whether angel or man. It is for that that the incommensurable wisdom, and the eternal generation produces in paradise a prodigious and eternal joy. That incommensurable power and that wisdom are known to us men only when we consider them in the third principle. If we contemplate the starry heaven, the elements, as well as the creatures, the wood, the plants, the grass, we see in the material world the similitude of the incomprehensible paradisiac world. For this world derives from the first root wherein they are both, as much the material world as the paradisiac angelic world which is imperishable and without beginning. 19. And if we reflect and think upon the origin of the four elements, we find, we see, and we feel clearly in ourselves that origin, if nevertheless we are men and not animals, full of wickedness, and contesting against God and 1the matrix of this world. CH. 5. C 71 )
2For that origin is as well recognisable in man as in the depth of this world, although it appear very astonishing to a man without light that he can speak of the origin of the air, of the fire, of the water, of the earth, as well as of the stars, etc., and that he even regards it as impossible to know anything of it. He swims thus in his own mother, and seeks not to know her 5 and in effect it would not be good for him that he knew her. But since the fall of Adam has precipitated us into this death, it is very important for us to know her in order to flee far from the bestial man, and to live in the true man. 20. If then thou openest the eyes of thy spirit, thou wilt see how the fire is in the water, which shows itself in a time of lightnings, and nevertheless there is there no fire which is durable, although it be nevertheless a true fire which inflames and destroys the houses. Thou wilt see there also how there issues from it an air of a great power, and how the one is in the other; moreover thou wilt see how the water is also begotten in the tempest. 21. But thou wilt not find here now that root; thou must contemplate it only in the matrix 5 there it is manifest, and thou wilt recognise it in all things, for the matrix of this world is in the eternal matrix, whence paradise and heaven proceeded. 22. Now, as the eternal matrix is a begetting which proceeds from the place where is found in the origin the astringent, the tenebrous, the hard and the anguish- ( 7* ) CH. s. ing; even so also thou seest that when the spirit of God kindles the interior matrix, it becomes operant and inqualifying.
323. For firstly there is in the origin the astringent, which draws to itself, which concentrates, and makes a tenebrous and sharp cold. Now, the bitterness cannot suffer the attracting violence, because the attracting violence makes in the cold a sting of bitterness which storms and guards itself from the harsh death. But as it cannot escape from the astringency, since she is its mother, wherein it dwells, then it storms terribly as if it would break the astringency. It points above itself and obliquely, and nevertheless finds no repose until the generation of the astringency turns into a horribly anguishing essence, like a spirit of sulphur, entirely harsh, hard, pricking interiorly, like a turning wheel; and the bitterness rises promptly above itself, whence proceeds a sparkling flash whereat the tenebrous astringency is affrighted, precipitating itself backward as being vanquished! and when the bitterness has thus vanquished the mother, and finds her as it were half dead, and softened, it is astonished much more than the mother; but as the eruption passes in the astringent mother who now is half dead and softened, the bitterness loses its frightful power, it becomes white, clear, and luminous; and it is the inflaming or the generation of the fire, as that is set forth above. Dear reader, regard not this as a eu. 5. ( 7^ ) trifling, in order that that begetting, which nevertheless arrives justly in the same manner in the beginning of thy life, may not be troubled in thee; and extend thy view.
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
Saint-Martin's French rendering of Boehme's 'Von den drei Principien göttlichen Wesens'. The same work stands in this estate in English as boehme:2. The title page also advertises 'L'Aurore naissante, du même Auteur' from the same booksellers — Saint-Martin's translation of the Aurora, whose English counterpart the estate holds as boehme:1. Reading the two versions against each other shows what a Martinist made of a German shoemaker's theosophy.
→ boehme:2
This work carries, in the author's own voice, both a set of hostile comparisons drawn against named peoples and an explicit refusal of any such boundary, and the Press publishes both rather than either alone. At Ch.25 §85 he calls the Jews blind; at Ch.17 §106 he warns of a coming visitation of the Jews and the Turks; and at Ch.26 §32-33, asked whence the Turks are grown, he answers "From thy perverted sense" — laying the rise of Mahomet at the door of christian pride and disputation. Against these stands Ch.25 §72, which opens the grace with no boundary at all: all men are invited to it, of whatever race, "whether Turks, Jews, Pagans, Christians", and no one is excluded. The same chapter that indicts turns the indictment inward at §105-106 — each believes not to dwell in Babel, and the author includes himself — and §33 concludes that God should be as near the one as the other. The contradiction is the author's, it is not resolved by him, and removing either half would misrepresent the work. Operator ruling, 2026-08-29.
This work carries, in the author's own voice, both a set of hostile comparisons drawn against named peoples and an explicit refusal of any such boundary, and the Press publishes both rather than either alone. At Ch.25 §85 he calls the Jews blind; at Ch.17 §106 he warns of a coming visitation of the Jews and the Turks; and at Ch.26 §32-33, asked whence the Turks are grown, he answers "From thy perverted sense" — laying the rise of Mahomet at the door of christian pride and disputation. Against these stands Ch.25 §72, which opens the grace with no boundary at all: all men are invited to it, of whatever race, "whether Turks, Jews, Pagans, Christians", and no one is excluded. The same chapter that indicts turns the indictment inward at §105-106 — each believes not to dwell in Babel, and the author includes himself — and §33 concludes that God should be as near the one as the other. The contradiction is the author's, it is not resolved by him, and removing either half would misrepresent the work. Operator ruling, 2026-08-29.
This work carries, in the author's own voice, both a set of hostile comparisons drawn against named peoples and an explicit refusal of any such boundary, and the Press publishes both rather than either alone. At Ch.25 §85 he calls the Jews blind; at Ch.17 §106 he warns of a coming visitation of the Jews and the Turks; and at Ch.26 §32-33, asked whence the Turks are grown, he answers "From thy perverted sense" — laying the rise of Mahomet at the door of christian pride and disputation. Against these stands Ch.25 §72, which opens the grace with no boundary at all: all men are invited to it, of whatever race, "whether Turks, Jews, Pagans, Christians", and no one is excluded. The same chapter that indicts turns the indictment inward at §105-106 — each believes not to dwell in Babel, and the author includes himself — and §33 concludes that God should be as near the one as the other. The contradiction is the author's, it is not resolved by him, and removing either half would misrepresent the work. Operator ruling, 2026-08-29.