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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.
142. For thou needest not to ask, Where is God? [See Ch. 14, par. 127] Hearken, thou blind man; thou livest in God, and God is in thee; and if thou livest holily, then therein thou thyself art God. For wheresoever thou lookest, there, is God. 43. When thou beholdest the deep between the stars and the earth, canst thou say, That is not God, or, There God is not? O, thou miserable corrupted man! be instructed; for in the deep above the earth, where thou seest and knowest nothing, and sayest there is nothing, yet even there is the lightholy God in his Trinity, and he is generating there, as well as in the high heaven aloft above this world. 44 Or dost thou think that in or at the time of the creation of this world he departed and went away from his seat wherein he did sit from eternity? O no; that cannot be, for though he would himself do so, he cannot do it, for he himself is All: As little as a member of the body can be rent off from itself, so little also can God be divided, rent or separated from being everywhere. 45. But that there are so many formings, figurings or framings in him, is caused by his eternal birth or geniture, which first is threefold, and out of or from that Trinity or Ternary it generateth itself infinitely, immeasurably or inconceiveably. 46. Of these births or genitures I will here write, and shew to the children of the last world what God is; not out of any boasting or pride, thereby to disgrace or reproach anybody! No; the spirit will instruct thee, meekly and friendly, as a father doth his children; for the work is not
2from my fleshly reason, but the Holy Ghost's dear revelation, or breaking through in the flesh. 47. In my own faculties or powers I am as blind a man as ever was, and am able to do nothing; but in the spirit of God my innate [regenerated] spirit seeth through ALL, though not always with long stay or continuance; but only when the spirit of God's love breaketh through my spirit, then is the animated or soulish birth or geniture and the Deity one being, one comprehensibility, and one light. 48. Am I alone only so? No, but all men are so, be they Christians, Jews, Turks, or Heathen. In whomsoever love and meekness is, in them is also the light of God. If thou sayest, No, this is not so; consider: 49. Do not the Turks, Jews, and Heathen live in the same body or corporeity wherein thou livest, and do they not make use of that same power and virtue of body which thou usest; moreover, they have even the same body which thou hast, and the same God which is thy God is their God also? But thou wilt say, They know him not; also they honour him not. Answer. 50. Yes, dear man, now boast thyself that thou hast hit it well! Indeed thou, above others, knowest God! Behold, thou blind man, wherever love riseth up in meekness, there the heart of God riseth up. For the heart of God is generated in the meek water of the kindled light, be it in man, or anywhere else without man; it is everywhere generated in the centre, between the outermost and the innermost birth or geniture.
351. Whatsoever thou dost but look upon, there, is God, but in this world the comprehensibility standeth in the wrath, which the devil hath kindled; and in the hidden kernel, in the midst or centre of the wrath, the light or heart of God is generated, incomprehensibly as to the wrath; and so each of them remaineth in its seat. 52. Yet, for all that, I do no way approve or excuse the unbelief of the Jews, Turks, and Heathen, nor their stiffnecked stubbornness, nor their fierce wrath, furious malice and hatred against the Christians. No; these things are mere snares of the devil, whereby he allureth men to pride, covetousness, envy and hatred, that he may kindle in them the hellish fire: Neither can I say that these four sons of the devil are not domineering in Christendom, and, indeed, in every man. Now thou sayest, What then is the difference between Christians, Jews, Turks, and Heathen? Answer. 53. Here the spirit openeth both door and gate; * if thou wilt not see, then be blind. * "both door and gate" (Thür und Thor), that is, both small and great avenues of perception. The German Thür describes, principally, an ordinary door, while Thor means nearly always a large entrance, like city gates, etc. 54. I. The first difference, which God hath always held and maintained for all those who know what God is, and how they should serve him, is that they should be able by their knowledge to press through the wrath into God's love, and overcome the devil: But if they do it not, then they are no better than those that know it not. 55. But if he that knoweth not the way
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.
142. For thou needest not to ask, Where is God? [See Ch. 14, par. 127] Hearken, thou blind man; thou livest in God, and God is in thee; and if thou livest holily, then therein thou thyself art God. For wheresoever thou lookest, there, is God. 43. When thou beholdest the deep between the stars and the earth, canst thou say, That is not God, or, There God is not? O, thou miserable corrupted man! be instructed; for in the deep above the earth, where thou seest and knowest nothing, and sayest there is nothing, yet even there is the lightholy God in his Trinity, and he is generating there, as well as in the high heaven aloft above this world. 44 Or dost thou think that in or at the time of the creation of this world he departed and went away from his seat wherein he did sit from eternity? O no; that cannot be, for though he would himself do so, he cannot do it, for he himself is All: As little as a member of the body can be rent off from itself, so little also can God be divided, rent or separated from being everywhere. 45. But that there are so many formings, figurings or framings in him, is caused by his eternal birth or geniture, which first is threefold, and out of or from that Trinity or Ternary it generateth itself infinitely, immeasurably or inconceiveably. 46. Of these births or genitures I will here write, and shew to the children of the last world what God is; not out of any boasting or pride, thereby to disgrace or reproach anybody! No; the spirit will instruct thee, meekly and friendly, as a father doth his children; for the work is not
2from my fleshly reason, but the Holy Ghost's dear revelation, or breaking through in the flesh. 47. In my own faculties or powers I am as blind a man as ever was, and am able to do nothing; but in the spirit of God my innate [regenerated] spirit seeth through ALL, though not always with long stay or continuance; but only when the spirit of God's love breaketh through my spirit, then is the animated or soulish birth or geniture and the Deity one being, one comprehensibility, and one light. 48. Am I alone only so? No, but all men are so, be they Christians, Jews, Turks, or Heathen. In whomsoever love and meekness is, in them is also the light of God. If thou sayest, No, this is not so; consider: 49. Do not the Turks, Jews, and Heathen live in the same body or corporeity wherein thou livest, and do they not make use of that same power and virtue of body which thou usest; moreover, they have even the same body which thou hast, and the same God which is thy God is their God also? But thou wilt say, They know him not; also they honour him not. Answer. 50. Yes, dear man, now boast thyself that thou hast hit it well! Indeed thou, above others, knowest God! Behold, thou blind man, wherever love riseth up in meekness, there the heart of God riseth up. For the heart of God is generated in the meek water of the kindled light, be it in man, or anywhere else without man; it is everywhere generated in the centre, between the outermost and the innermost birth or geniture.
351. Whatsoever thou dost but look upon, there, is God, but in this world the comprehensibility standeth in the wrath, which the devil hath kindled; and in the hidden kernel, in the midst or centre of the wrath, the light or heart of God is generated, incomprehensibly as to the wrath; and so each of them remaineth in its seat. 52. Yet, for all that, I do no way approve or excuse the unbelief of the Jews, Turks, and Heathen, nor their stiffnecked stubbornness, nor their fierce wrath, furious malice and hatred against the Christians. No; these things are mere snares of the devil, whereby he allureth men to pride, covetousness, envy and hatred, that he may kindle in them the hellish fire: Neither can I say that these four sons of the devil are not domineering in Christendom, and, indeed, in every man. Now thou sayest, What then is the difference between Christians, Jews, Turks, and Heathen? Answer. 53. Here the spirit openeth both door and gate; * if thou wilt not see, then be blind. * "both door and gate" (Thür und Thor), that is, both small and great avenues of perception. The German Thür describes, principally, an ordinary door, while Thor means nearly always a large entrance, like city gates, etc. 54. I. The first difference, which God hath always held and maintained for all those who know what God is, and how they should serve him, is that they should be able by their knowledge to press through the wrath into God's love, and overcome the devil: But if they do it not, then they are no better than those that know it not. 55. But if he that knoweth not the way
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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