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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.
1SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS AND OTHER WRITINGS GONE WEST BY A SOLDIZE DOCTOR FOUR-DIMENSIONAL VISTAS BY CLAUDE BRAGDON THE DEAD HAVE NEVER DIED BY EDWAHD C, RANDALL At all booksellers NEW YORK: ALFRED • A • KNOPF 220 WEST FORTY-SECOND STREET SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS AND OTHER WRITINGS By JACOB BOHME NEWLY TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY JOHN ROLLESTON EARLE, M.A. NEW YORK ALFRED • A • KNOPF MCMXX COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc. FEINTED IN THK UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE READER
2We have written this work, not for the irrational animals who, in their exterior, have the form of man, but in their image, in spirit, are evil and wild beasts, which is disclosed and exhibited by their properties; but for the image of man, for those who are budding forth out of the animal image with a human image that belongs to God's kingdom, and who would fain live and grow in the human image, in the right man. Those who are often and much hindered by the contrarious life, and thus are involved in the mixed life, and travail in desire for the birth of the holy life: for them are these wi'itings written. And we bid them not regard it as impossible to discern and to know such mystery ; and we give them this to consider of in a similitude. Let them imagine a life which is the outcome and growth of all lives, and is mixed. But let them also imagine another life to grow in it from all the lives, which, though it had grown from all the lives, was free from all the other lives, and yet possessed all the essential properties of those lives. This other new life (let them imagine) is illuminated with the light, and only in itself; so that it could behold all the other lives, and they (the other lives) could not see nor apprehend the new life. Thus is every one. 6 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS
3who, out of the mixed life, evil and good, is born again in and of God. This new image, born in the life of God, beholds all the natural lives, and nothing is strange or difficult to it; for it beholds onlyits root from which it grew. As a fair flower grows out of the rough earth, which is not like the earth but declares by its beauty the power of the earth, and how it is mixed of good and evil; so also is every man, who, out of the animal, wild, earthly nature and quality, is born again so as to become the right image of God. For those who are a growth of such a kind, and are shooting forth into the fair lily in the kingdom of God, and are in process of birth, have we written this book ; that they should strengthen their essences therein, bud in the life of God, and grow and bear fruit in the tree of paradise. And seeing all the children of God grow in this tree, and each is a twig of this same tree, we have wished to impart to our twigs and fellow-branches in our tree, in which we all are, and from which we all grow, our sap, savour and essence, that our tree of paradise may become great, and that we may rejoice one with another. And we would urge all children, who are thus growing in this tree, friendly to ponder that each branch and twig helps to shelter the other from the storm, and we commend ourselves unto their love and growth. CONTENTS SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS PAGE Author's Preface to the Reader 5
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.
1SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS AND OTHER WRITINGS GONE WEST BY A SOLDIZE DOCTOR FOUR-DIMENSIONAL VISTAS BY CLAUDE BRAGDON THE DEAD HAVE NEVER DIED BY EDWAHD C, RANDALL At all booksellers NEW YORK: ALFRED • A • KNOPF 220 WEST FORTY-SECOND STREET SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS AND OTHER WRITINGS By JACOB BOHME NEWLY TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY JOHN ROLLESTON EARLE, M.A. NEW YORK ALFRED • A • KNOPF MCMXX COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc. FEINTED IN THK UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE READER
2We have written this work, not for the irrational animals who, in their exterior, have the form of man, but in their image, in spirit, are evil and wild beasts, which is disclosed and exhibited by their properties; but for the image of man, for those who are budding forth out of the animal image with a human image that belongs to God's kingdom, and who would fain live and grow in the human image, in the right man. Those who are often and much hindered by the contrarious life, and thus are involved in the mixed life, and travail in desire for the birth of the holy life: for them are these wi'itings written. And we bid them not regard it as impossible to discern and to know such mystery ; and we give them this to consider of in a similitude. Let them imagine a life which is the outcome and growth of all lives, and is mixed. But let them also imagine another life to grow in it from all the lives, which, though it had grown from all the lives, was free from all the other lives, and yet possessed all the essential properties of those lives. This other new life (let them imagine) is illuminated with the light, and only in itself; so that it could behold all the other lives, and they (the other lives) could not see nor apprehend the new life. Thus is every one. 6 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS
3who, out of the mixed life, evil and good, is born again in and of God. This new image, born in the life of God, beholds all the natural lives, and nothing is strange or difficult to it; for it beholds onlyits root from which it grew. As a fair flower grows out of the rough earth, which is not like the earth but declares by its beauty the power of the earth, and how it is mixed of good and evil; so also is every man, who, out of the animal, wild, earthly nature and quality, is born again so as to become the right image of God. For those who are a growth of such a kind, and are shooting forth into the fair lily in the kingdom of God, and are in process of birth, have we written this book ; that they should strengthen their essences therein, bud in the life of God, and grow and bear fruit in the tree of paradise. And seeing all the children of God grow in this tree, and each is a twig of this same tree, we have wished to impart to our twigs and fellow-branches in our tree, in which we all are, and from which we all grow, our sap, savour and essence, that our tree of paradise may become great, and that we may rejoice one with another. And we would urge all children, who are thus growing in this tree, friendly to ponder that each branch and twig helps to shelter the other from the storm, and we commend ourselves unto their love and growth. CONTENTS SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS PAGE Author's Preface to the Reader 5
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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