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.
1account: Though indeed there is a certain number of them, whereby we know that they must enter again into the ether. 42. For in the eternal centre there is no number [or measure], but it is the omnipotence in the springing up without number; for that which can be numbered or comprehended, is not eternal; it hath a beginning and end: But we know that the spirit and soul of man hath no beginning and end, nor can it be numbered [or measured] : which we understand by the constellations of the mind, from whence so many thoughts arise, which are numberless; for out of one thought, in a while, there may go forth many more, as many as the stars in the firmament, wherein we highly know our eternity, and do most highly rejoice that we know it. 43. Understand us rightly, how this world is, in the ground and foundation of it. The eternal centre, and the birth of life, and the substantiality, are every where. If you make a small circle, as small as a little grain, [or kernel of seed], there is the whole birth of the eternal nature, and also the Number Three in Ternario sancto [contained] therein: but you include not, nor comprise, the eternal nature, much less the Number Three; but you comprehend the out-birth of the centre: the eternal nature is incomprehensible, as God also is.
244. When I take up any thing and carry it away, I do not carry away the eternity, much less God: and yet the eternity is in that very thing, but the thing is out-born, and stirreth not the eternity; and that which is out-born comprehendeth not the eternity, but the eternity comprehendeth that which is out-born, thoroughly, without stirring; for the eternity, as also the Deity, is in one place as well as in another, [every where] : for there is no place [in the eternity], but the out-birth maketh a place and room. Therefore God saith, I am A and O, the Beginning and the End. 45. This word maketh a beginning, and God in the Number Three [not without it] is the beginning, and it also maketh an end, and that is the eternity, and also God: For before [the time of] this world there was nothing but God, from eternity; and after this world, there will be nothing but God, in eternity: but the cause why we comprehend not this, is because there is no comprehensibility in God. For where there is a comprehensibility [as there is in the Trinity] there is beginning and end. And therefore we are shut up in darkness, that we might labour and manifest God; as we have mentioned to you concerning the seven forms of nature, what an eternal labour there is therein, so that one form generateth another, till they are all brought to light, and so the eternal is manifest in a threefold form, which otherwise would not be known.
346. And we declare unto you, that the eternal Being, and also this world, is like man: The eternity generateth nothing but that which is like itself; for there is nothing in it but is like it, and it is unchangeable, or else it would pass away, or it would come to be some other thing, and that cannot be. 47. And as you find man to be, just so is the eternity: consider man in body and soul, in good and evil, in joy and sorrow, in light and darkness, in power and weakness, in life and death: All is in man, both heaven and earth, stars, and elements; and also the Number Three of the Deity; neither can there be any thing named that is not in man; all creatures (both in this world, and in the angelical world) are in man. All of us, together with the whole essence of all essences, are but one body, having many members, each member whereof is a total: and each member hath but one several [peculiar, singular, individual faculty or office] work. 48. O Man! seek thyself, and thou shalt find thyself. Behold! thy whole man [consisteth of] Three Principles, one whereof is not without the other, one of them is not beside or above the other, but they are in one another as one, and they are but one thing; but according to the creation they are three. 49. You will say, how can that be? Adam's
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.
1account: Though indeed there is a certain number of them, whereby we know that they must enter again into the ether. 42. For in the eternal centre there is no number [or measure], but it is the omnipotence in the springing up without number; for that which can be numbered or comprehended, is not eternal; it hath a beginning and end: But we know that the spirit and soul of man hath no beginning and end, nor can it be numbered [or measured] : which we understand by the constellations of the mind, from whence so many thoughts arise, which are numberless; for out of one thought, in a while, there may go forth many more, as many as the stars in the firmament, wherein we highly know our eternity, and do most highly rejoice that we know it. 43. Understand us rightly, how this world is, in the ground and foundation of it. The eternal centre, and the birth of life, and the substantiality, are every where. If you make a small circle, as small as a little grain, [or kernel of seed], there is the whole birth of the eternal nature, and also the Number Three in Ternario sancto [contained] therein: but you include not, nor comprise, the eternal nature, much less the Number Three; but you comprehend the out-birth of the centre: the eternal nature is incomprehensible, as God also is.
244. When I take up any thing and carry it away, I do not carry away the eternity, much less God: and yet the eternity is in that very thing, but the thing is out-born, and stirreth not the eternity; and that which is out-born comprehendeth not the eternity, but the eternity comprehendeth that which is out-born, thoroughly, without stirring; for the eternity, as also the Deity, is in one place as well as in another, [every where] : for there is no place [in the eternity], but the out-birth maketh a place and room. Therefore God saith, I am A and O, the Beginning and the End. 45. This word maketh a beginning, and God in the Number Three [not without it] is the beginning, and it also maketh an end, and that is the eternity, and also God: For before [the time of] this world there was nothing but God, from eternity; and after this world, there will be nothing but God, in eternity: but the cause why we comprehend not this, is because there is no comprehensibility in God. For where there is a comprehensibility [as there is in the Trinity] there is beginning and end. And therefore we are shut up in darkness, that we might labour and manifest God; as we have mentioned to you concerning the seven forms of nature, what an eternal labour there is therein, so that one form generateth another, till they are all brought to light, and so the eternal is manifest in a threefold form, which otherwise would not be known.
346. And we declare unto you, that the eternal Being, and also this world, is like man: The eternity generateth nothing but that which is like itself; for there is nothing in it but is like it, and it is unchangeable, or else it would pass away, or it would come to be some other thing, and that cannot be. 47. And as you find man to be, just so is the eternity: consider man in body and soul, in good and evil, in joy and sorrow, in light and darkness, in power and weakness, in life and death: All is in man, both heaven and earth, stars, and elements; and also the Number Three of the Deity; neither can there be any thing named that is not in man; all creatures (both in this world, and in the angelical world) are in man. All of us, together with the whole essence of all essences, are but one body, having many members, each member whereof is a total: and each member hath but one several [peculiar, singular, individual faculty or office] work. 48. O Man! seek thyself, and thou shalt find thyself. Behold! thy whole man [consisteth of] Three Principles, one whereof is not without the other, one of them is not beside or above the other, but they are in one another as one, and they are but one thing; but according to the creation they are three. 49. You will say, how can that be? Adam's
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.