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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.
17. We find good and evil, and we find in all things the centrum naturae or the torture-chamber. But we find especially the spirit of the great world in two sources, viz. in heat and cold. THE FIRST POINT 33 Here, by cold we understand the centre of the sour sharp fierceness, and by heat the principle of fire, and yet they have but one origin from one another. 8. Fire arises from the fierceness of the cold, and cold from the centrum naturae, viz. from the sour sharp anguish, where the sourness (astringency) contracts so strongly into itself and makes substance. As we are to know that in the motion of the Father at creation it has made earth and stones, although there was no matter for this, but only His own being, which is generated in two principles, viz. in the light-world and world of death, in two desires. 9. That which the fierceness attained in the motion became shaped into the terrestrial globe. And we find therein a diversity of things, evil and good; and it often happens that from the worst may be made the best, because the centrum naturae is therein. If it be brought into fire, the pure child of the eternal Essence may be extracted from it; when it is liberated from death, as is to be seen in gold.
210. In this world, however, we cannot attain the eternal fire, and therefore also can develop nothing from this principle. That is want of the eternal fire, which we do not reach but in imagination only, by which a man has power to lead life out of death and bring it into the divine substantiality. This can be done only in man; but what is outside of man belongs to God, and remains unto the renovation, to the end of this time. 34 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 11. And thus we give j^ou to understand the nature and property of the principles. The first Principle lies in the fire of the will, and is a cause of the two others, also of life and understanding; and is an upholding of Nature, as weU as of all the properties of the Father. 12. The second Principle lies in light, as in the fire of desire. This desire makes substance from the property of the first principle. 13. The first and second principle are Father and Son in eternity. One dwells in the other, and yet each retains its property. There is no mixing in the essence; but one receives the other in desire, and the light dwells in the fire's desire, so that the fire's property gives its desire to the light, and the light to the fire.
314. Thus there is one being and not two, but two properties, whereof one is not the other, nor eternally can become so. As the spirit's property cannot be fire and hght, and yet proceeds from fire out of light, and could not subsist either from fire or from light alone. Fire alone can not give it, neither could light, but the two give it. It is the life of both, and is one being only, but three properties, whereof one is not the other, as is to be seen in fire, light and air. 15. The third Principle has just these properties. It has also fire, light and spirit, that is, air; and is in all particulars like to the eternal Being. But it has a beginning, and proceeds from the Eternal ; it is a manifestation of the Eternal, an awakening, image and similitude of the Eternal. It is not the THE FIRST POINT 35 Eternal; but an essence has arisen in the eternal Desire, which has manifested itself therein and brought itself into a being like the Eternal. 16. Reason says: God has made this world out of nothing. Answer : There was certainly for that no substance or matter that were outwardly palpable; but there was such a form in the eternal power in the will.
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.
17. We find good and evil, and we find in all things the centrum naturae or the torture-chamber. But we find especially the spirit of the great world in two sources, viz. in heat and cold. THE FIRST POINT 33 Here, by cold we understand the centre of the sour sharp fierceness, and by heat the principle of fire, and yet they have but one origin from one another. 8. Fire arises from the fierceness of the cold, and cold from the centrum naturae, viz. from the sour sharp anguish, where the sourness (astringency) contracts so strongly into itself and makes substance. As we are to know that in the motion of the Father at creation it has made earth and stones, although there was no matter for this, but only His own being, which is generated in two principles, viz. in the light-world and world of death, in two desires. 9. That which the fierceness attained in the motion became shaped into the terrestrial globe. And we find therein a diversity of things, evil and good; and it often happens that from the worst may be made the best, because the centrum naturae is therein. If it be brought into fire, the pure child of the eternal Essence may be extracted from it; when it is liberated from death, as is to be seen in gold.
210. In this world, however, we cannot attain the eternal fire, and therefore also can develop nothing from this principle. That is want of the eternal fire, which we do not reach but in imagination only, by which a man has power to lead life out of death and bring it into the divine substantiality. This can be done only in man; but what is outside of man belongs to God, and remains unto the renovation, to the end of this time. 34 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 11. And thus we give j^ou to understand the nature and property of the principles. The first Principle lies in the fire of the will, and is a cause of the two others, also of life and understanding; and is an upholding of Nature, as weU as of all the properties of the Father. 12. The second Principle lies in light, as in the fire of desire. This desire makes substance from the property of the first principle. 13. The first and second principle are Father and Son in eternity. One dwells in the other, and yet each retains its property. There is no mixing in the essence; but one receives the other in desire, and the light dwells in the fire's desire, so that the fire's property gives its desire to the light, and the light to the fire.
314. Thus there is one being and not two, but two properties, whereof one is not the other, nor eternally can become so. As the spirit's property cannot be fire and hght, and yet proceeds from fire out of light, and could not subsist either from fire or from light alone. Fire alone can not give it, neither could light, but the two give it. It is the life of both, and is one being only, but three properties, whereof one is not the other, as is to be seen in fire, light and air. 15. The third Principle has just these properties. It has also fire, light and spirit, that is, air; and is in all particulars like to the eternal Being. But it has a beginning, and proceeds from the Eternal ; it is a manifestation of the Eternal, an awakening, image and similitude of the Eternal. It is not the THE FIRST POINT 35 Eternal; but an essence has arisen in the eternal Desire, which has manifested itself therein and brought itself into a being like the Eternal. 16. Reason says: God has made this world out of nothing. Answer : There was certainly for that no substance or matter that were outwardly palpable; but there was such a form in the eternal power in the will.
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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