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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.
1278. Thus you see, also, how the true essentiality ariseth from the light; for it is the satiating of the will: the water ariseth from the meekness of the light, for the desire taketh hold of the meekness, and keepeth it, because it hath a good 1 relish: and so the meekness becometh essential, and it is an essence of the fire, a satiating of the desiring wrath, a quenching of the wrath, and a corporality of the fire: for when the body 2 is dead, then its spirit is in the beginning, in that which gave a beginning to it, it is in that glass. 279. Now then, as the source is twofold, so also the water is twofold, viz. an outward and an inward; the one belongeth to the spirit, the other to the outward life; the outward is, as it were, a death, and the inward is the life of the outward; for the outward standeth between wrath and paradise, in the 3 insunken death, and the inward is paradise itself, for the spirit groweth up therein out of the eternity. 280. You may very well see that this is true, as followeth: Observe the summer and winter, heat and cold, and your eyes will soon be opened, if you be born not externally only but internally, with a true magic will to find God; 4 for it is very 5 plain.
2281. For the water in the deep ariseth from the fire, not from the wrath, but from the light; for the light proceedeth from the fire, and hath a 6 seeking of its own; it seeketh a glass to behold itself in, and it seeketh a habitation, and draweth it 7 by its desire into itself, and dwelleth therein, and that which is drawn in is water, which receiveth the light; else if the light did not dwell in the water, the deep of the world could not comprehend the light: The water is the satiating of the desire of the light. 1 Or taste. 2 Or perisheth, or dieth, or corrupteth, or departeth. 3 death that is sunk down into the centre in a thing. 4 for that is done in the twinkling of an eye. 5 visible. 6 longing, sucking, drawing. 7 Or in. 282. And the water again seeketh the glass, and would have a house to dwell in, and that is flesh; as you see, the water receiveth the shadow of all bodily substances, so that the body may be seen in the water, and that is because *the seeking of the water hath captivated it. 283. Furthermore, you see herein the end of nature; for the eye fmdeth its life in the water, and so goeth back into the seventh form, and f seeth its body in the water: The outward desireth no more; this body desireth no other body more in the outward, but it looketh back after its mother, of which a 1 glass is a true example, which is water and fire, and it receiveth the image very clearly.
3284. And thus you see, that the end goeth back again and seeketh the beginning, and no further 2 in the outward. For this world hath a limit, and is X included in time, and hasteneth to the limit, and there the end findeth the beginning, and this world is as a model or glass in the beginning: By this you may find somewhat of the Mystery, and § remit yourselves well into the beginning, that you may be found to be a wonder in the love of God. 1 looking-glass. 2 Or outwardly. * "the seeking of the water hath captivated it." Both 1682 and 1730 eds. have "the seeking of the fire" (des Feuers Sucht), and Schiebler has reprinted the same. St Martin, while rendering the original literally, adds in a footnote that he considers Sparrow's substitution of "water" for "fire" correct. f "seeth its body," lit., "seeketh its body." X "included in time," lit., "shut up (geschlosseri) or held captive in time." § "remit yourselves well," etc. (schicket euch recht), "seek for," or "make right [straight] for the beginning." St Martin's rendering is, placez-vous juste. 285. And know that the second J kind of water is in the spirit: it is the glass of its father, of its maker, which dwelleth in the spirit, and is found only by its maker; itself findeth not itself: for so long as a thing goeth forward externally, there is no finding in the inward; but the spirit which dwelleth in the inward, that findeth itself in the outward.
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.
1278. Thus you see, also, how the true essentiality ariseth from the light; for it is the satiating of the will: the water ariseth from the meekness of the light, for the desire taketh hold of the meekness, and keepeth it, because it hath a good 1 relish: and so the meekness becometh essential, and it is an essence of the fire, a satiating of the desiring wrath, a quenching of the wrath, and a corporality of the fire: for when the body 2 is dead, then its spirit is in the beginning, in that which gave a beginning to it, it is in that glass. 279. Now then, as the source is twofold, so also the water is twofold, viz. an outward and an inward; the one belongeth to the spirit, the other to the outward life; the outward is, as it were, a death, and the inward is the life of the outward; for the outward standeth between wrath and paradise, in the 3 insunken death, and the inward is paradise itself, for the spirit groweth up therein out of the eternity. 280. You may very well see that this is true, as followeth: Observe the summer and winter, heat and cold, and your eyes will soon be opened, if you be born not externally only but internally, with a true magic will to find God; 4 for it is very 5 plain.
2281. For the water in the deep ariseth from the fire, not from the wrath, but from the light; for the light proceedeth from the fire, and hath a 6 seeking of its own; it seeketh a glass to behold itself in, and it seeketh a habitation, and draweth it 7 by its desire into itself, and dwelleth therein, and that which is drawn in is water, which receiveth the light; else if the light did not dwell in the water, the deep of the world could not comprehend the light: The water is the satiating of the desire of the light. 1 Or taste. 2 Or perisheth, or dieth, or corrupteth, or departeth. 3 death that is sunk down into the centre in a thing. 4 for that is done in the twinkling of an eye. 5 visible. 6 longing, sucking, drawing. 7 Or in. 282. And the water again seeketh the glass, and would have a house to dwell in, and that is flesh; as you see, the water receiveth the shadow of all bodily substances, so that the body may be seen in the water, and that is because *the seeking of the water hath captivated it. 283. Furthermore, you see herein the end of nature; for the eye fmdeth its life in the water, and so goeth back into the seventh form, and f seeth its body in the water: The outward desireth no more; this body desireth no other body more in the outward, but it looketh back after its mother, of which a 1 glass is a true example, which is water and fire, and it receiveth the image very clearly.
3284. And thus you see, that the end goeth back again and seeketh the beginning, and no further 2 in the outward. For this world hath a limit, and is X included in time, and hasteneth to the limit, and there the end findeth the beginning, and this world is as a model or glass in the beginning: By this you may find somewhat of the Mystery, and § remit yourselves well into the beginning, that you may be found to be a wonder in the love of God. 1 looking-glass. 2 Or outwardly. * "the seeking of the water hath captivated it." Both 1682 and 1730 eds. have "the seeking of the fire" (des Feuers Sucht), and Schiebler has reprinted the same. St Martin, while rendering the original literally, adds in a footnote that he considers Sparrow's substitution of "water" for "fire" correct. f "seeth its body," lit., "seeketh its body." X "included in time," lit., "shut up (geschlosseri) or held captive in time." § "remit yourselves well," etc. (schicket euch recht), "seek for," or "make right [straight] for the beginning." St Martin's rendering is, placez-vous juste. 285. And know that the second J kind of water is in the spirit: it is the glass of its father, of its maker, which dwelleth in the spirit, and is found only by its maker; itself findeth not itself: for so long as a thing goeth forward externally, there is no finding in the inward; but the spirit which dwelleth in the inward, that findeth itself in the outward.
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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