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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.
1heavy fall of Lucifer; which [was that] he put his will back again into the matrix of the fire, in the centre, and turned away from the will of the eternal Mind, which tendeth only to the Heart of God, and would domineer in the tincture of the root ( viz. in the matrix of the fire) over the Heart of God: for the fierce power of the fire delighted him more than the meekness in the still habitation; and therefore he was thrust back also, (into the dark matrix, into the anguishing mind), in the sinking down of death. 34. But to satisfy the high enquiring mind, and to fill its apprehension, concerning what moved Lucifer to this, we offer the matrix of the genetrix to be considered; and there you find all the forms, which can be found in the whole nature. 35. For you find there the sour, bitter, dark, tart, stinging, envious [properties or forms], which stand all in the centre of the genetrix, before the kindling of the light. 36. But when God set his will in the Fiat, and desired to create spirits, it was no other than as when God said to the matrix [or womb] of the Third Principle, of this world; Bring forth all sorts of beasts, fowls, fishes, and worms, every one after its kind: understand, that their body is according to the kind or quality of their essences, and so is the substance or essence in the body, which is their spirit; and so also it is with the high spirits: there
2went forth out of the eternal matrix, spirits, out of all essences, which are innumerable, to our account. 37. And as we have shewn you already, concerning the seven forms of the centre of the eternal nature, where every form is a several wellspring of nature; in like manner, out of every form, out of every wellspring, go forth spirits, according to the multiplicity of essences and properties, every one according to its kind. 38. And the uppermost principal dominion proceedeth from the headsource, which is the cause of the multiplicity therein, as the mind is a cause of the senses [or various thoughts] ; and we entreat you to consider the matrix earnestly; wherein you shall quickly know the conceived will of Lucifer, what it is in its original, how the creature hath imagined into the matrix, and suffered itself to be withheld there; and yet God created all spirits in the light. 39. For the tincture of the friendly habitation shone out of them all, and the Heart of God shone to them, [like the Lamb in the New Jerusalem], and they should put their imagination into it, and frame their will and power in verbo Domini, in the Word of the Lord. 40. But as they saw that the Verbum Domini,
3the Word of the Lord, in the centre, was as another [or second] birth out of the centre; and that they were generated out of the essences of the great fountain, which is the nature of eternity; they despised the humility, out of which the love and light is generated, and would domineer (in the fierce power, in the source of the fire) over the humility: for the matrix of the fire desired to have the dominion. 41. For we cannot know any otherwise, than that Lucifer was created in the fourth form of the matrix: for there stand the anger and love in opposition, and this is the strife and overcoming, where the light overcometh and holdeth the darkness captive. [The fourth form is in the midst of the seven forms, and may turn itself to the three in the anger, or to the three in the love of God, and is severally drawn and desired by each of the three.] 42. Also the wrath and zeal of the eternal nature of God, desired to be creaturely, and to shew forth its wonders; and therefore they [the spirits or fallen angels] were held in the fountain of their own [original] nature; and they have kindled the matrix of the fierceness of the anger and envy, so that now it is their eternal habitation. 43. The tincture (in their conceived will) is become false, because they would domineer (out of their pride) over the humility of the Heart of
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.
1heavy fall of Lucifer; which [was that] he put his will back again into the matrix of the fire, in the centre, and turned away from the will of the eternal Mind, which tendeth only to the Heart of God, and would domineer in the tincture of the root ( viz. in the matrix of the fire) over the Heart of God: for the fierce power of the fire delighted him more than the meekness in the still habitation; and therefore he was thrust back also, (into the dark matrix, into the anguishing mind), in the sinking down of death. 34. But to satisfy the high enquiring mind, and to fill its apprehension, concerning what moved Lucifer to this, we offer the matrix of the genetrix to be considered; and there you find all the forms, which can be found in the whole nature. 35. For you find there the sour, bitter, dark, tart, stinging, envious [properties or forms], which stand all in the centre of the genetrix, before the kindling of the light. 36. But when God set his will in the Fiat, and desired to create spirits, it was no other than as when God said to the matrix [or womb] of the Third Principle, of this world; Bring forth all sorts of beasts, fowls, fishes, and worms, every one after its kind: understand, that their body is according to the kind or quality of their essences, and so is the substance or essence in the body, which is their spirit; and so also it is with the high spirits: there
2went forth out of the eternal matrix, spirits, out of all essences, which are innumerable, to our account. 37. And as we have shewn you already, concerning the seven forms of the centre of the eternal nature, where every form is a several wellspring of nature; in like manner, out of every form, out of every wellspring, go forth spirits, according to the multiplicity of essences and properties, every one according to its kind. 38. And the uppermost principal dominion proceedeth from the headsource, which is the cause of the multiplicity therein, as the mind is a cause of the senses [or various thoughts] ; and we entreat you to consider the matrix earnestly; wherein you shall quickly know the conceived will of Lucifer, what it is in its original, how the creature hath imagined into the matrix, and suffered itself to be withheld there; and yet God created all spirits in the light. 39. For the tincture of the friendly habitation shone out of them all, and the Heart of God shone to them, [like the Lamb in the New Jerusalem], and they should put their imagination into it, and frame their will and power in verbo Domini, in the Word of the Lord. 40. But as they saw that the Verbum Domini,
3the Word of the Lord, in the centre, was as another [or second] birth out of the centre; and that they were generated out of the essences of the great fountain, which is the nature of eternity; they despised the humility, out of which the love and light is generated, and would domineer (in the fierce power, in the source of the fire) over the humility: for the matrix of the fire desired to have the dominion. 41. For we cannot know any otherwise, than that Lucifer was created in the fourth form of the matrix: for there stand the anger and love in opposition, and this is the strife and overcoming, where the light overcometh and holdeth the darkness captive. [The fourth form is in the midst of the seven forms, and may turn itself to the three in the anger, or to the three in the love of God, and is severally drawn and desired by each of the three.] 42. Also the wrath and zeal of the eternal nature of God, desired to be creaturely, and to shew forth its wonders; and therefore they [the spirits or fallen angels] were held in the fountain of their own [original] nature; and they have kindled the matrix of the fierceness of the anger and envy, so that now it is their eternal habitation. 43. The tincture (in their conceived will) is become false, because they would domineer (out of their pride) over the humility of the Heart of
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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