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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.
1life and sensibility from fire. It dwells in fire, and the fire apprehends it not. And this is the middle world. 35. Fire in the centrum naturae before its enkindling gives the dark world; but is in its enkindling in itself the world of light, when it separates into light and leaves the centre in darkness, for it is only a source in itself, and a cause of life. 36. It has creatures, but they are of the same fierce essence. They feel no pain; to them the light were a pain. But to the fallen devils, who in the principle were created in the world of light, to them the darkness is a pain, and fire a strength or might, for it is their right life, although according to many properties, by virtue of the centrum naturae, in accordance with that essence. 37. The third world is the outer, in which we dwell by the outer body with the external works and beings. It was created from the dark world and also from the light-world, and therefore it is evil and good, terrible and lovely. Of this property Adam was not to eat, nor imaginate thereinto; but the three worlds were to stand in him in order, that one might not comprehend the other, as in God himself. For Adam was created from all the three worlds, an entire image and similitude of God.
238. But seeing he has eaten of evil and good, and introduced the outer into the middle, the outer must now break off from the middle ; and a separation takes place, in which the outer must return into its aether, and the middle remains. 39. Thus, if one see a right man, he may say: THE FIRST POINT 41 I see here three worlds standing, but not moving. For the outer world moves by the outer body, but the outer body has no power to move the lightworld; it has only introduced itself into the world of light, whereby the light-world is become extinguished in man. He has, however, remained to be the dark world in himself; and the light-world stands in him immoveable, it is in him as it were hidden. 40. But if he be a right man by the new birth, then it stands in him as light shines through water, and makes the essence mobile and desireful, so that the essence buds. Thus it is with the new man in the Light. And as we cannot move the light of the sun, so neither can we move the eternal Light or the light-world. It stands still and shines through everything that is susceptible of it, whatsoever is thin like a nothing, as indeed fire and water are; though all is substantial, but in reference to the external as a nothing. 41. Thus each principle has its growth from itself; and that must be, else all were a nothing.
342. The principle of fire is the root, and it grows in its root. It has in its proprium sour, bitter, fierceness and anguish; and these grow in its proprium in poison and death into the anguishful stern hfe, which in itself gives darkness, owing to the drawing-in of the harshness. Its properties make sulphur, mercury and salt; though the fire's property makes not Sul in sulphur, but the will of freedom makes Sul in Phur, whilst the principle goes forward. 42 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 43. But what advances into its properties is only Phur, viz. sternness, with the other forms in the centre. This is the chief cause of hfe and of the being of all things. Though it is bad in itself, yet it is the most useful of all to life and the manifestation of life. For there could be no hfe without this property, and this principle is gi'ounded in the internal and external world; in the internal as imperceptible, in the external perceptible by its fierceness. 44. The second Principle has also its growth from itself, for fire streams forth in light with its properties. But the Light transforms the fierce wrathful properties into a desire of love and joy. And therefore the fire's essence and property is wholly transformed in the Light, so that out of anguish and pain comes a love-desire, out of the stinging and raging a friendly sensible understanding.
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.
1life and sensibility from fire. It dwells in fire, and the fire apprehends it not. And this is the middle world. 35. Fire in the centrum naturae before its enkindling gives the dark world; but is in its enkindling in itself the world of light, when it separates into light and leaves the centre in darkness, for it is only a source in itself, and a cause of life. 36. It has creatures, but they are of the same fierce essence. They feel no pain; to them the light were a pain. But to the fallen devils, who in the principle were created in the world of light, to them the darkness is a pain, and fire a strength or might, for it is their right life, although according to many properties, by virtue of the centrum naturae, in accordance with that essence. 37. The third world is the outer, in which we dwell by the outer body with the external works and beings. It was created from the dark world and also from the light-world, and therefore it is evil and good, terrible and lovely. Of this property Adam was not to eat, nor imaginate thereinto; but the three worlds were to stand in him in order, that one might not comprehend the other, as in God himself. For Adam was created from all the three worlds, an entire image and similitude of God.
238. But seeing he has eaten of evil and good, and introduced the outer into the middle, the outer must now break off from the middle ; and a separation takes place, in which the outer must return into its aether, and the middle remains. 39. Thus, if one see a right man, he may say: THE FIRST POINT 41 I see here three worlds standing, but not moving. For the outer world moves by the outer body, but the outer body has no power to move the lightworld; it has only introduced itself into the world of light, whereby the light-world is become extinguished in man. He has, however, remained to be the dark world in himself; and the light-world stands in him immoveable, it is in him as it were hidden. 40. But if he be a right man by the new birth, then it stands in him as light shines through water, and makes the essence mobile and desireful, so that the essence buds. Thus it is with the new man in the Light. And as we cannot move the light of the sun, so neither can we move the eternal Light or the light-world. It stands still and shines through everything that is susceptible of it, whatsoever is thin like a nothing, as indeed fire and water are; though all is substantial, but in reference to the external as a nothing. 41. Thus each principle has its growth from itself; and that must be, else all were a nothing.
342. The principle of fire is the root, and it grows in its root. It has in its proprium sour, bitter, fierceness and anguish; and these grow in its proprium in poison and death into the anguishful stern hfe, which in itself gives darkness, owing to the drawing-in of the harshness. Its properties make sulphur, mercury and salt; though the fire's property makes not Sul in sulphur, but the will of freedom makes Sul in Phur, whilst the principle goes forward. 42 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 43. But what advances into its properties is only Phur, viz. sternness, with the other forms in the centre. This is the chief cause of hfe and of the being of all things. Though it is bad in itself, yet it is the most useful of all to life and the manifestation of life. For there could be no hfe without this property, and this principle is gi'ounded in the internal and external world; in the internal as imperceptible, in the external perceptible by its fierceness. 44. The second Principle has also its growth from itself, for fire streams forth in light with its properties. But the Light transforms the fierce wrathful properties into a desire of love and joy. And therefore the fire's essence and property is wholly transformed in the Light, so that out of anguish and pain comes a love-desire, out of the stinging and raging a friendly sensible understanding.
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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