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.
1118. For the four elements are in a Principle of another property [or source], also have another light, viz. the sun. But in the pure element the things of this world are only as a figure, which is not palpable; and there the four distinctions are in one, and that maketh no darkness. And there the liberty of God without nature shineth in the glance of the Majesty; but in the four out-births there is a darkness, for the things [thereof] are gross and palpable. 119. For the heaven, which is a distinction between the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of this world, is a. firmament with all forms of corporeity, and is the veil on our eyes, for we have firmamental eyes, and therefore we cannot see the kingdom of God. 120. And that is the heavy Fall of Adam, that his eyes and spirit entered into the outward, into the four elements, into the palpability, viz. into death, and there they were blind as to the kingdom of God. 121. For the outward, in the four out-births out of the [pure] element ( viz. the substance of the four elements), hath a beginning and end, and is corruptible: and therefore all things that live in it must corrupt.
2122. For the Principle of the outward world passeth away again; for it hath a limit, so that it goeth into its ether again, and the four elements into one again, and then God is manifested, and the virtue and power of God springeth up, as a paradise again in the [one, eternal] only element; and there the multiplicity or variety of things come into one again; but the figure of everything remaineth standing in the [one] only element. 123. For all things are come to a corporeal substance, (to [the manifestation of] God's works of wonder), that they might be seen eternally by the creatures, viz. angels and men: which, before the time of the world, were manifested only in the wisdom of God, and now shall stand in substantiality in the presence of God. 124. Ye dear children of God (in Christ Jesus) open the eyes of your mind: raise your mind up out of this world into the element before God, [that is, into the glassy sea, or angelical world] : and the creation shall be rightly shewn to you here; and let not the sophisters and jugglers befool you, and lead you astray. 125. For the paradise, which the souls of the holy children of God go into, (when the body deceaseth), is in the very place where the body deceaseth: it is also in the earth, it is in all the four elements; not divided, but entirely every where.
3126. For in the pure element (out of which the four elements proceed) is the paradise: it is a sprouting out from the substantiality before God: its life and understanding is the Holy Spirit of the Number Three of God; its light is the glance of the Majesty of the Number Three; the matter only is about the outward. When the four elements in man break, then is the soul already in the paradise, or in the abyss of the centre in the dark matrix, all according to that wherein the soul was grown in this [life] time upon earth. 127. If it have set its imagination [resolution and purpose] upon God, then it is grown in paradise, and the stuffed dark body hath but covered it, during this [life] time. 128. But if it be grown in the stern wrath, in falsehood and in pride, to fly out above paradise, then it flieth in high-mindedness in the stern matrix aloft over paradise out, and cannot get inwards into the meekness; and there it is in hell, with the proud devil. 129. For after this life, there is no regeneration more; for the four elements and the outward principle (wherein the genetrix stood in the working and creating) are gone; it hath no more to expect after this time, but only (when at the end of this time, this principle shall go into the ether, that the substantiality which hath been from eternity,
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.
1118. For the four elements are in a Principle of another property [or source], also have another light, viz. the sun. But in the pure element the things of this world are only as a figure, which is not palpable; and there the four distinctions are in one, and that maketh no darkness. And there the liberty of God without nature shineth in the glance of the Majesty; but in the four out-births there is a darkness, for the things [thereof] are gross and palpable. 119. For the heaven, which is a distinction between the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of this world, is a. firmament with all forms of corporeity, and is the veil on our eyes, for we have firmamental eyes, and therefore we cannot see the kingdom of God. 120. And that is the heavy Fall of Adam, that his eyes and spirit entered into the outward, into the four elements, into the palpability, viz. into death, and there they were blind as to the kingdom of God. 121. For the outward, in the four out-births out of the [pure] element ( viz. the substance of the four elements), hath a beginning and end, and is corruptible: and therefore all things that live in it must corrupt.
2122. For the Principle of the outward world passeth away again; for it hath a limit, so that it goeth into its ether again, and the four elements into one again, and then God is manifested, and the virtue and power of God springeth up, as a paradise again in the [one, eternal] only element; and there the multiplicity or variety of things come into one again; but the figure of everything remaineth standing in the [one] only element. 123. For all things are come to a corporeal substance, (to [the manifestation of] God's works of wonder), that they might be seen eternally by the creatures, viz. angels and men: which, before the time of the world, were manifested only in the wisdom of God, and now shall stand in substantiality in the presence of God. 124. Ye dear children of God (in Christ Jesus) open the eyes of your mind: raise your mind up out of this world into the element before God, [that is, into the glassy sea, or angelical world] : and the creation shall be rightly shewn to you here; and let not the sophisters and jugglers befool you, and lead you astray. 125. For the paradise, which the souls of the holy children of God go into, (when the body deceaseth), is in the very place where the body deceaseth: it is also in the earth, it is in all the four elements; not divided, but entirely every where.
3126. For in the pure element (out of which the four elements proceed) is the paradise: it is a sprouting out from the substantiality before God: its life and understanding is the Holy Spirit of the Number Three of God; its light is the glance of the Majesty of the Number Three; the matter only is about the outward. When the four elements in man break, then is the soul already in the paradise, or in the abyss of the centre in the dark matrix, all according to that wherein the soul was grown in this [life] time upon earth. 127. If it have set its imagination [resolution and purpose] upon God, then it is grown in paradise, and the stuffed dark body hath but covered it, during this [life] time. 128. But if it be grown in the stern wrath, in falsehood and in pride, to fly out above paradise, then it flieth in high-mindedness in the stern matrix aloft over paradise out, and cannot get inwards into the meekness; and there it is in hell, with the proud devil. 129. For after this life, there is no regeneration more; for the four elements and the outward principle (wherein the genetrix stood in the working and creating) are gone; it hath no more to expect after this time, but only (when at the end of this time, this principle shall go into the ether, that the substantiality which hath been from eternity,
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.