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.
1have generated a fierce, hot, astringent, bitter, hard and stinking devilish spirit. 37. But now thou must not think that thereupon the whole nature or place of this world is become a mere bitter wrath of God. No; here lieth the point: the wrath doth not comprehend the innermost birth or geniture in nature, for the love of God is yet hidden in the centre, in the whole place of this world; and so the house which lord Lucifer is to be in is not fully separated, but there is still in all things of this world both love and wrath one in the other, and they always wrestle and strive one with the other. 38. But the devils cannot lay hold on the wrestling of the light, but only on the wrestling of the wrath, wherein they are executioners or hangmen, to execute the justice or law, which was pronounced in God's wrath against all wicked men. 39. Neither ought any man to say that he is generated in the wrathfire of the total corruption or perdition, out of God's predestinate purpose. No; the corrupted earth doth not stand in the total wrathfire of God, but only in its outward comprehensibility or palpability, wherein it is so hard, dry and bitter. 40. Whereby every one may perceive that this poison and fierceness doth not belong to the love of God, in which there is nothing but meekness. 41. Yet I do not say this, as if every man were holy as he cometh from his mother's womb, but as the tree is, so is its fruit. Yet if a mother beareth or bringeth forth a child of the devil, the fault is not God's, but the parents' wickedness.
242. Yet if a wild twig be planted in a sweet soil, and be engrafted with some other of a better and sweeter kind, then there groweth a mild tree, though the twig were wild. For here all is possible; the evil is as soon changed into good, as the good into evil. 43. For every man is free, and is as a god to himself; in this life man may change and alter himself either into wrath or into light. Such clothes or garments as a man puts on, transfigure him. And what manner of body soever man soweth into the earth, such a body also groweth up from it, though in another form, clarity and brightness, yet all according to the quality of the seed. 44. For if the earth were quite forsaken of God, then it could never bring forth any good fruit, but mere bad and evil fruit. But seeing the earth standeth yet in God's love, therefore his wrath will not burn therein eternally, but the love which hath overcome will spew out the wrathfire. 45. Then will the burning hell begin, when the love and the wrath shall be separated. In this world the love and the wrath are the one in the other in all creatures, and that which overcometh in the wrestling inheriteth the house by right, whether it be the kingdom of hell, or the kingdom of heaven. 46. I do not speak so, as if the beasts in their birth or geniture were to inherit the kingdom of heaven: No; for they are like the corrupted earth, evil and good; but if they be sown again into their mother the earth, then they are earth. 47. But the Salitter in a good beast will not therefore be left to the devil for a propriety, but
3will in the separated part, in the nature of God, eternally blossom— [" That is, their figure will stand as a " shadow upon the holy ground, in the " wonders, viz., in the eternal Magia:"] —and bring forth other heavenly figures. But the Salitter of the beast of God's wrath will, in the wrath of God, bear eternal hellish fruits. 48. For if the earth be once kindled, then in the wrath burneth the fire, and in the love the light; and then all will be separated, for the one cannot comprehend the other any more. 49. But in this present time everything hath a twofold source and quality; whatsoever thou buildest and sowest here in the spirit, be it with words, works or thoughts, that will be thy eternal house. 50. Thus thou seest and understandest out of what the earth and stones are come to be. But if that kindled Salitter should have continued to be thus in the whole deep of this world, then the whole place thereof would have been a dark valley; for the light was imprisoned, together with and in the third birth or geniture. 51. Not that the light of the heart of God in its innermost birth is imprisoned: No; but the lustre and the shining thereof, in the third birth or geniture, was incorporated with, and in, the outermost comprehensibility; and therefore it is that men are in love with all those things which stand in that Salitter. 52. But seeing the whole deep, in the third birth or geniture, was very dark in regard of the corrupted Salitter of the earth and stones, thereore the Deity could not endure it so to be, but created and compacted together the earth and
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.
1have generated a fierce, hot, astringent, bitter, hard and stinking devilish spirit. 37. But now thou must not think that thereupon the whole nature or place of this world is become a mere bitter wrath of God. No; here lieth the point: the wrath doth not comprehend the innermost birth or geniture in nature, for the love of God is yet hidden in the centre, in the whole place of this world; and so the house which lord Lucifer is to be in is not fully separated, but there is still in all things of this world both love and wrath one in the other, and they always wrestle and strive one with the other. 38. But the devils cannot lay hold on the wrestling of the light, but only on the wrestling of the wrath, wherein they are executioners or hangmen, to execute the justice or law, which was pronounced in God's wrath against all wicked men. 39. Neither ought any man to say that he is generated in the wrathfire of the total corruption or perdition, out of God's predestinate purpose. No; the corrupted earth doth not stand in the total wrathfire of God, but only in its outward comprehensibility or palpability, wherein it is so hard, dry and bitter. 40. Whereby every one may perceive that this poison and fierceness doth not belong to the love of God, in which there is nothing but meekness. 41. Yet I do not say this, as if every man were holy as he cometh from his mother's womb, but as the tree is, so is its fruit. Yet if a mother beareth or bringeth forth a child of the devil, the fault is not God's, but the parents' wickedness.
242. Yet if a wild twig be planted in a sweet soil, and be engrafted with some other of a better and sweeter kind, then there groweth a mild tree, though the twig were wild. For here all is possible; the evil is as soon changed into good, as the good into evil. 43. For every man is free, and is as a god to himself; in this life man may change and alter himself either into wrath or into light. Such clothes or garments as a man puts on, transfigure him. And what manner of body soever man soweth into the earth, such a body also groweth up from it, though in another form, clarity and brightness, yet all according to the quality of the seed. 44. For if the earth were quite forsaken of God, then it could never bring forth any good fruit, but mere bad and evil fruit. But seeing the earth standeth yet in God's love, therefore his wrath will not burn therein eternally, but the love which hath overcome will spew out the wrathfire. 45. Then will the burning hell begin, when the love and the wrath shall be separated. In this world the love and the wrath are the one in the other in all creatures, and that which overcometh in the wrestling inheriteth the house by right, whether it be the kingdom of hell, or the kingdom of heaven. 46. I do not speak so, as if the beasts in their birth or geniture were to inherit the kingdom of heaven: No; for they are like the corrupted earth, evil and good; but if they be sown again into their mother the earth, then they are earth. 47. But the Salitter in a good beast will not therefore be left to the devil for a propriety, but
3will in the separated part, in the nature of God, eternally blossom— [" That is, their figure will stand as a " shadow upon the holy ground, in the " wonders, viz., in the eternal Magia:"] —and bring forth other heavenly figures. But the Salitter of the beast of God's wrath will, in the wrath of God, bear eternal hellish fruits. 48. For if the earth be once kindled, then in the wrath burneth the fire, and in the love the light; and then all will be separated, for the one cannot comprehend the other any more. 49. But in this present time everything hath a twofold source and quality; whatsoever thou buildest and sowest here in the spirit, be it with words, works or thoughts, that will be thy eternal house. 50. Thus thou seest and understandest out of what the earth and stones are come to be. But if that kindled Salitter should have continued to be thus in the whole deep of this world, then the whole place thereof would have been a dark valley; for the light was imprisoned, together with and in the third birth or geniture. 51. Not that the light of the heart of God in its innermost birth is imprisoned: No; but the lustre and the shining thereof, in the third birth or geniture, was incorporated with, and in, the outermost comprehensibility; and therefore it is that men are in love with all those things which stand in that Salitter. 52. But seeing the whole deep, in the third birth or geniture, was very dark in regard of the corrupted Salitter of the earth and stones, thereore the Deity could not endure it so to be, but created and compacted together the earth and
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.