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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.
112. It is now in God's Principle: 6 the first wrathful fire cannot touch it in eternity, for it hath received another source, and is truly born again, and knoweth no more of the first life, for it is swallowed up in the magia. 13. The turba remaineth in the earthly body, and is again become that which it was before the body was, viz. a nothing, a magia, wherein all its essences stand in the figure as in a glass, but not corporeally, but after the manner of eternity; as we know that all the wonders before this world stood in a Mystery, viz. in the virgin of wisdom, but without substance. 1 Or dieth, or falleth away. 2 substance, or dross. 3 substantiality, the glance of the Majesty; the glorified body of Christ; and Adam's body before he slept; Sophia's wedding garment. 4 Or glorified body. 5 Viz. the elementary fire of the outward nature. 6 the fire of the wrath of the outward life. 14. Therefore we here understand, that this Mystery hath been so manifested in its parting, that it cannot be 1 extinguished in eternity; but it remaineth eternally in distinction and partition, and is beheld in the magia, in the separation, in that manner as it formed itself here. 15. Thus we may perceive what the 2 separation is, that the turba hath found the limit of the essence; for sickness to death is nothing else, but that the turba hath inflamed itself, and will destroy the essence; it is at the hmit, and will cast away that which is introduced 3 between.
216. And this is also the cause that the body dieth; the turba passeth into itself into the fire, and so the outward hfe is extinguished; for it withdraweth the fire of the soul, and so it passeth into its own 4 aether, and is at its limit. 17. And if the fire of the soul hath not the divine body in the spirit, nor in the will in the desire, then it is a dark fire, which burneth in anguish and great horror; for it hath nothing but the first four forms of nature in anguish. 18. And if the will be quite void of the power of humility, then there is no sinking down, or into itself, through death into hfe, but it is like a 5 tormenting furious wheel, which would continually fly aloft, and yet it goeth downwards on the other side; it hath the condition of fire, but not the burning of fire. 1 Or made one again. 2 Or parting of the soul from the body. 3 Or middle, between the beginning and the end. 4 Or receptacle. 5 anxious, mad, senseless, giddy wheel. 19. For the turba is the exceeding strong 1 harshness and bitterness: and the bitterness continually seeketh the fire, and would strike it up, but the astringency holdeth it captive; so that it is only a horrible anguish, and continually turneth itself like a wheel, and imagineth, but findeth nothing but itself: it draweth itself into itself, and impregnateth itself: it devoureth itself, and is its own substance.
320. It hath no other substance, but that which the spirit of the soul continually 2 made in the outward life, viz. covetousness, pride, cursing, swearing, reviling, backbiting, slandering, * 3 murder, hatred, 4 wrath, anger, falsehood; this is its food, sport, and 5 pastime; for the turba in the will taketh the substance with it: its works follow it. 21. And although it hath done some good, yet that is done only in 6 a glistering show and appearance, from an ambitious mind; and afterwards it continueth thus, in its aspiring, always endeavouring to climb up, it always elevateth itself, it would continually be above the meekness, and yet it neither knoweth it nor seeth it; it is an incessant elevation above God, and yet an eternal f depression; it seeketh a ground, and there is none: this is its life. 22. Yet if it had comprehended any purity of love in its will (as many a one that is converted at last in his end), then it thus sinketh into itself through the anguish; for the humble spark falleth down through death into life, and then the 7 source of the soul endeth: but it is a small twig budding forth into the kingdom of God. 1 Or astringency. 2 Or did, or wrought. 3 cruelty. 4 rage, or surliness. 5 work, or business. 6 Or hypocrisy. 7 Or pain. * "murder" (Neid), "envy." f "depression" (sincken), "sinking" or "descent" (see par. 26).
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.
112. It is now in God's Principle: 6 the first wrathful fire cannot touch it in eternity, for it hath received another source, and is truly born again, and knoweth no more of the first life, for it is swallowed up in the magia. 13. The turba remaineth in the earthly body, and is again become that which it was before the body was, viz. a nothing, a magia, wherein all its essences stand in the figure as in a glass, but not corporeally, but after the manner of eternity; as we know that all the wonders before this world stood in a Mystery, viz. in the virgin of wisdom, but without substance. 1 Or dieth, or falleth away. 2 substance, or dross. 3 substantiality, the glance of the Majesty; the glorified body of Christ; and Adam's body before he slept; Sophia's wedding garment. 4 Or glorified body. 5 Viz. the elementary fire of the outward nature. 6 the fire of the wrath of the outward life. 14. Therefore we here understand, that this Mystery hath been so manifested in its parting, that it cannot be 1 extinguished in eternity; but it remaineth eternally in distinction and partition, and is beheld in the magia, in the separation, in that manner as it formed itself here. 15. Thus we may perceive what the 2 separation is, that the turba hath found the limit of the essence; for sickness to death is nothing else, but that the turba hath inflamed itself, and will destroy the essence; it is at the hmit, and will cast away that which is introduced 3 between.
216. And this is also the cause that the body dieth; the turba passeth into itself into the fire, and so the outward hfe is extinguished; for it withdraweth the fire of the soul, and so it passeth into its own 4 aether, and is at its limit. 17. And if the fire of the soul hath not the divine body in the spirit, nor in the will in the desire, then it is a dark fire, which burneth in anguish and great horror; for it hath nothing but the first four forms of nature in anguish. 18. And if the will be quite void of the power of humility, then there is no sinking down, or into itself, through death into hfe, but it is like a 5 tormenting furious wheel, which would continually fly aloft, and yet it goeth downwards on the other side; it hath the condition of fire, but not the burning of fire. 1 Or made one again. 2 Or parting of the soul from the body. 3 Or middle, between the beginning and the end. 4 Or receptacle. 5 anxious, mad, senseless, giddy wheel. 19. For the turba is the exceeding strong 1 harshness and bitterness: and the bitterness continually seeketh the fire, and would strike it up, but the astringency holdeth it captive; so that it is only a horrible anguish, and continually turneth itself like a wheel, and imagineth, but findeth nothing but itself: it draweth itself into itself, and impregnateth itself: it devoureth itself, and is its own substance.
320. It hath no other substance, but that which the spirit of the soul continually 2 made in the outward life, viz. covetousness, pride, cursing, swearing, reviling, backbiting, slandering, * 3 murder, hatred, 4 wrath, anger, falsehood; this is its food, sport, and 5 pastime; for the turba in the will taketh the substance with it: its works follow it. 21. And although it hath done some good, yet that is done only in 6 a glistering show and appearance, from an ambitious mind; and afterwards it continueth thus, in its aspiring, always endeavouring to climb up, it always elevateth itself, it would continually be above the meekness, and yet it neither knoweth it nor seeth it; it is an incessant elevation above God, and yet an eternal f depression; it seeketh a ground, and there is none: this is its life. 22. Yet if it had comprehended any purity of love in its will (as many a one that is converted at last in his end), then it thus sinketh into itself through the anguish; for the humble spark falleth down through death into life, and then the 7 source of the soul endeth: but it is a small twig budding forth into the kingdom of God. 1 Or astringency. 2 Or did, or wrought. 3 cruelty. 4 rage, or surliness. 5 work, or business. 6 Or hypocrisy. 7 Or pain. * "murder" (Neid), "envy." f "depression" (sincken), "sinking" or "descent" (see par. 26).
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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