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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.
1therein thy new man dwelleth, and they cannot be divided asunder. 70. But if thou art wicked, then thy birth or geniture is not capable of heaven, but of the wrath, and remaineth in the other part of the astral birth or geniture, wherein the earnest and austere firesource riseth up, and bolts it up into death, so long till thou breakest through heaven, and livest with God. 71. For instead of thy heaven thou hast the wrathdevil sitting there; but if thou breakest through, then he must get him gone, and the Holy Ghost ruleth and reigneth in that seat; and in the other part, viz. the fierceness, the devil tempteth thee, for it is his nest; and the Holy Ghost opposeth him, and the new man lieth in his own heaven, hidden under the protection of the Holy Ghost, and the devil knoweth not the new man, for he is not in the devil's house, but in heaven, in the firmament of God. 72. This I write as a word which is generated in its heaven, where the holy Deity always generateth itself, and where the moving spirit riseth up in the flash of life; even there this word and this knowledge is generated, and risen up in the lovefire through the zealous spirit of God. 73. I know very well what the devil intendeth; for that part of the earnest and austere birth or geniture, wherein love and wrath are set opposite the one to the other, seeth into his very heart. For when he cometh with his fierce and hellish temptation, like a fawning dog, then he setteth upon us with his wrath, in that part wherein the austere birth and geniture standeth, and therein the heaven is set in opposition to him, and there the fair bride is known.
274. For he stingeth through the old man, with an intent to spoil or destroy the new; but when the new riseth against him, then the hellhound retireth, and then the new man feeleth very well what advice or counsel the hellhound hath darted or spit into the astral birth, and then is it time for a clean sweep. 75. But I find that the most cunning devil is set against me; he will raise scorners and mockers, who will say that I intend by mine own conceit to grope, dig deep, and search out the Deity. Yes, Mr Scorner, thou art an obedient son to the devil, thou hast great cause to mock God's children. As if I were able, in mine own power, to fathom the depth of the Deity! No! but the Deity searcheth the ground in me: Or, dost thou think that I am strong enough to stand against it? 76. Indeed, thou proud man, the Deity is a very meek, simple and quiet still being, and gropeth not in the bottom of hell and death, but in his heaven,* where there is nothing but a unanimous meekness; therefore it is not meet for me to stand against it. * " the Deity . . . gropeth not in the bottom of hell and death, but in his heaven." Gropeth (grübelt), "rake into, rummage, hypercritically search into," and also " brood." A free though not inadequate rendering of this clause would be, " the Deity . . . doth not grope or bestir himself anxiously in the bottom of hell and death, but broodeth in his heaven." 77. But behold! it is not I that have made way for this, but thy desire and highly raised lofty lust hath moved the Deity to reveal to thee the desire of thy heart, in the highest simplicity in the greatest depth, that it may be a witness against thee, and a denunciation of the earnest severe day of God.
378. This I speak to thee as a word of the earnest severity of God, which is generated or born in the flash of life. THE TWENTYFIFTH CHAPTER Of the whole Body of the Stars and of their Birth or Geniture; that is, the whole Astrology, or the whole Body of this World. 1. THE learned and highly experienced masters of astrology, or the starry art, are come so high and deep in their understanding, that they know the course and effects of the stars, what their conjunction, influence, and breaking through of their powers and virtues denoteth and produceth; and how thereby wind, rain, snow, and heat are caused; * also good and evil, pros perity and adversity, life and death, and all the drivings and agitations in this world. * "are caused"—empöret (gebäret). See Ch. 3, par. 67. 2. Indeed it hath a true foundation, which, in the spirit, I know to be so; but their knowledge standeth only in the house of death, in the outward comprehensibility or palpability, and in the beholding with the eyes of the body; but the root of this tree hath hitherto remained hidden from them. 3. Neither is it my purpose to write of the branches of the tree, and to invert or disprove their knowledge; neither do I build upon their ground, but I leave their knowledge to sit in its own seat, seeing I have not studied it. But, in the spirit of my knowledge, I write concerning the
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.
1therein thy new man dwelleth, and they cannot be divided asunder. 70. But if thou art wicked, then thy birth or geniture is not capable of heaven, but of the wrath, and remaineth in the other part of the astral birth or geniture, wherein the earnest and austere firesource riseth up, and bolts it up into death, so long till thou breakest through heaven, and livest with God. 71. For instead of thy heaven thou hast the wrathdevil sitting there; but if thou breakest through, then he must get him gone, and the Holy Ghost ruleth and reigneth in that seat; and in the other part, viz. the fierceness, the devil tempteth thee, for it is his nest; and the Holy Ghost opposeth him, and the new man lieth in his own heaven, hidden under the protection of the Holy Ghost, and the devil knoweth not the new man, for he is not in the devil's house, but in heaven, in the firmament of God. 72. This I write as a word which is generated in its heaven, where the holy Deity always generateth itself, and where the moving spirit riseth up in the flash of life; even there this word and this knowledge is generated, and risen up in the lovefire through the zealous spirit of God. 73. I know very well what the devil intendeth; for that part of the earnest and austere birth or geniture, wherein love and wrath are set opposite the one to the other, seeth into his very heart. For when he cometh with his fierce and hellish temptation, like a fawning dog, then he setteth upon us with his wrath, in that part wherein the austere birth and geniture standeth, and therein the heaven is set in opposition to him, and there the fair bride is known.
274. For he stingeth through the old man, with an intent to spoil or destroy the new; but when the new riseth against him, then the hellhound retireth, and then the new man feeleth very well what advice or counsel the hellhound hath darted or spit into the astral birth, and then is it time for a clean sweep. 75. But I find that the most cunning devil is set against me; he will raise scorners and mockers, who will say that I intend by mine own conceit to grope, dig deep, and search out the Deity. Yes, Mr Scorner, thou art an obedient son to the devil, thou hast great cause to mock God's children. As if I were able, in mine own power, to fathom the depth of the Deity! No! but the Deity searcheth the ground in me: Or, dost thou think that I am strong enough to stand against it? 76. Indeed, thou proud man, the Deity is a very meek, simple and quiet still being, and gropeth not in the bottom of hell and death, but in his heaven,* where there is nothing but a unanimous meekness; therefore it is not meet for me to stand against it. * " the Deity . . . gropeth not in the bottom of hell and death, but in his heaven." Gropeth (grübelt), "rake into, rummage, hypercritically search into," and also " brood." A free though not inadequate rendering of this clause would be, " the Deity . . . doth not grope or bestir himself anxiously in the bottom of hell and death, but broodeth in his heaven." 77. But behold! it is not I that have made way for this, but thy desire and highly raised lofty lust hath moved the Deity to reveal to thee the desire of thy heart, in the highest simplicity in the greatest depth, that it may be a witness against thee, and a denunciation of the earnest severe day of God.
378. This I speak to thee as a word of the earnest severity of God, which is generated or born in the flash of life. THE TWENTYFIFTH CHAPTER Of the whole Body of the Stars and of their Birth or Geniture; that is, the whole Astrology, or the whole Body of this World. 1. THE learned and highly experienced masters of astrology, or the starry art, are come so high and deep in their understanding, that they know the course and effects of the stars, what their conjunction, influence, and breaking through of their powers and virtues denoteth and produceth; and how thereby wind, rain, snow, and heat are caused; * also good and evil, pros perity and adversity, life and death, and all the drivings and agitations in this world. * "are caused"—empöret (gebäret). See Ch. 3, par. 67. 2. Indeed it hath a true foundation, which, in the spirit, I know to be so; but their knowledge standeth only in the house of death, in the outward comprehensibility or palpability, and in the beholding with the eyes of the body; but the root of this tree hath hitherto remained hidden from them. 3. Neither is it my purpose to write of the branches of the tree, and to invert or disprove their knowledge; neither do I build upon their ground, but I leave their knowledge to sit in its own seat, seeing I have not studied it. But, in the spirit of my knowledge, I write concerning the
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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