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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.
1thou wilt soon perceive its life, and active or operative quality: But so long as it is without or absent from the heat, it is captivated in death, and is cold, as any other root or piece of wood is. 101. Then thou seest that the body upon the root is dead also; for when the virtue is gone out of the root, then the body is but a dead carcass and can operate or effect nothing at all. And that is because the astringent spirit and the bitter have killed or destroyed the body of the water and attracted the fatness or unctuosity thereof to themselves; and thus they have drawn or sucked up the spirit thereof into the dead body. 102. Otherwise, if the sweet water could keep its unctuosity or fatness in its own power, and the astringent spirit and the bitter did rub themselves one with another very gently in the sweet water, then they would kindle the unctuosity or fatness in the sweet water, and then the light would instantly generate itself in the water, and would enlighten the astringent and the bitter quality. 103. Whereupon they would get their true life, and would be satisfied by the light, and rejoice highly therein, and from that living joy love would arise, and then the tone would rise up in the fireflash, through the rising up of the bitter quality in the astringent. If that were done there would be a heavenly fruit, just as it [the fruit] springeth up in heaven. 104. But thou art to know that the earth hath all the qualifying or fountain spirits. For through the devil's kindling the spirits of life were incorporated or compacted together also in death, and, as it were, captivated, but not quite murdered. 105. The first three, viz. the astringent, the sweet, and the bitter, belong to the imaging or
2forming of the body; and therein standeth the mobility, and the body or corporeity. And these now have the comprehensibility or palpability, and are the birth of the outermost nature. 106. The other three, viz. the heat, the love, and the tone, stand in the incomprehensibility, and are generated out of the first three; and this now is the inward birth, wherewith the Deity qualifieth, mixeth or uniteth. 107. If the first three were not congealed or benumbed in death they could kindle the heat, and then thou wouldst soon see a bright, shining, heavenly body, and thou wouldst see plainly where God is. 108. But seeing the first three qualities of the earth are congealed or benumbed in death, therefore they remain also a death, and cannot elevate there life into the light, but remain a dark valley, in which there standeth God's wrath, death, and hell, as also the eternal prison and source or torment of the devil. 109. Not that these three qualities of the outermost birth, in which the wrathfire standeth, are rejected and reprobated of the innermost; no, but only the outward palpable body, and therein the outward hellish source, quality or torment. 110. Here thou seest once more how the kingdom of God and the kingdom of hell hang one to the other, as one body, and yet the one cannot comprehend the other. For the second birth, viz. the heat, light, love, and the sound or tone, is hidden in the outermost, and maketh the outward moveable, so that the outward gathereth itself together, and generateth a body. 111. Though the body standeth in the outward
3palpableness, yet it is formed according to the kind and manner of the inward birth, for in the inward birth or geniture standeth the word, and the word is the sound or tone, which riseth up in the light in the fireflash through the bitter and astringent quality. 112. But seeing the sound of God's word must rise up through the astringent bitter death, and generate a body in the halfdead water, thereupon that body is good, and also evil, dead and also living; for it must instantly attract the sap of fierceness and the body of death, and stand in such a body and power, as doth the earth, its mother. 113. But that the life lieth hid under and in the death of the earth, as also in the children of the earth, I will here demonstrate to you. 114. Behold! man becometh weak, faint and sick, and if no remedy be used, then he soon falls into death. The sickness is caused either by some bitter and astringent herb which groweth out of the earth, or else is caused by an evil, mortiferous deadly water, or by several mixtures of earthly herbs, or by some evil stinking and rank flesh or meat, and surfeit from thence to loathing. 115. Now if a learned physician inquireth of the sick person from what his disease is proceeded, and taketh that which is the cause of the disease, whether it be flesh, water or herbs, and distils or burneth it to powder, according as the matter is, and so burneth away the outward poison thereof, which standeth in death; then, in that distilled water, or burnt powder, the astral birth remaineth in its seat, where life and death wrestle one with the other, and are both capable of being raised up; for the dead body is gone.
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.
1thou wilt soon perceive its life, and active or operative quality: But so long as it is without or absent from the heat, it is captivated in death, and is cold, as any other root or piece of wood is. 101. Then thou seest that the body upon the root is dead also; for when the virtue is gone out of the root, then the body is but a dead carcass and can operate or effect nothing at all. And that is because the astringent spirit and the bitter have killed or destroyed the body of the water and attracted the fatness or unctuosity thereof to themselves; and thus they have drawn or sucked up the spirit thereof into the dead body. 102. Otherwise, if the sweet water could keep its unctuosity or fatness in its own power, and the astringent spirit and the bitter did rub themselves one with another very gently in the sweet water, then they would kindle the unctuosity or fatness in the sweet water, and then the light would instantly generate itself in the water, and would enlighten the astringent and the bitter quality. 103. Whereupon they would get their true life, and would be satisfied by the light, and rejoice highly therein, and from that living joy love would arise, and then the tone would rise up in the fireflash, through the rising up of the bitter quality in the astringent. If that were done there would be a heavenly fruit, just as it [the fruit] springeth up in heaven. 104. But thou art to know that the earth hath all the qualifying or fountain spirits. For through the devil's kindling the spirits of life were incorporated or compacted together also in death, and, as it were, captivated, but not quite murdered. 105. The first three, viz. the astringent, the sweet, and the bitter, belong to the imaging or
2forming of the body; and therein standeth the mobility, and the body or corporeity. And these now have the comprehensibility or palpability, and are the birth of the outermost nature. 106. The other three, viz. the heat, the love, and the tone, stand in the incomprehensibility, and are generated out of the first three; and this now is the inward birth, wherewith the Deity qualifieth, mixeth or uniteth. 107. If the first three were not congealed or benumbed in death they could kindle the heat, and then thou wouldst soon see a bright, shining, heavenly body, and thou wouldst see plainly where God is. 108. But seeing the first three qualities of the earth are congealed or benumbed in death, therefore they remain also a death, and cannot elevate there life into the light, but remain a dark valley, in which there standeth God's wrath, death, and hell, as also the eternal prison and source or torment of the devil. 109. Not that these three qualities of the outermost birth, in which the wrathfire standeth, are rejected and reprobated of the innermost; no, but only the outward palpable body, and therein the outward hellish source, quality or torment. 110. Here thou seest once more how the kingdom of God and the kingdom of hell hang one to the other, as one body, and yet the one cannot comprehend the other. For the second birth, viz. the heat, light, love, and the sound or tone, is hidden in the outermost, and maketh the outward moveable, so that the outward gathereth itself together, and generateth a body. 111. Though the body standeth in the outward
3palpableness, yet it is formed according to the kind and manner of the inward birth, for in the inward birth or geniture standeth the word, and the word is the sound or tone, which riseth up in the light in the fireflash through the bitter and astringent quality. 112. But seeing the sound of God's word must rise up through the astringent bitter death, and generate a body in the halfdead water, thereupon that body is good, and also evil, dead and also living; for it must instantly attract the sap of fierceness and the body of death, and stand in such a body and power, as doth the earth, its mother. 113. But that the life lieth hid under and in the death of the earth, as also in the children of the earth, I will here demonstrate to you. 114. Behold! man becometh weak, faint and sick, and if no remedy be used, then he soon falls into death. The sickness is caused either by some bitter and astringent herb which groweth out of the earth, or else is caused by an evil, mortiferous deadly water, or by several mixtures of earthly herbs, or by some evil stinking and rank flesh or meat, and surfeit from thence to loathing. 115. Now if a learned physician inquireth of the sick person from what his disease is proceeded, and taketh that which is the cause of the disease, whether it be flesh, water or herbs, and distils or burneth it to powder, according as the matter is, and so burneth away the outward poison thereof, which standeth in death; then, in that distilled water, or burnt powder, the astral birth remaineth in its seat, where life and death wrestle one with the other, and are both capable of being raised up; for the dead body is gone.
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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