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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.
114. The dark world has the great pain and anguish which gives birth to fire, so that the will longs after freedom, and freedom longs after manifestation, viz. after essences, and gives itself to fierceness that it may thus manifest itself. And it is brought thus into fire, so that from fierceness and freedom a fire arises. It gives itself to fierceness to swallow up in death ; but passes out of death with the received essences into a sphere of its own, as into a special world or source ; and dwells in itself unapprehended by death and the dark world, and is a light in itself. 15. Thus are death and fierceness a mother of THE SECOND POINT 51 fire, also a cause of the light-world ; a cause, moreover, of all the essence of the third principle, a cause of all the essences in all lives. How then should one principle fight against another, if each vehemently desires the other? 16. For the angelic light-world, and also this our \asible world, must have the essence of dark death for their life and source; there is a continual hunger after it. 17. But each principle makes the source according to its property. It gives to the evil its good, and unites itself Avith it, and of three makes one, so that there is no strife between the tlii'ee principles. But in the essence there is strife; and that must be, or all were a nothing.
218. But we are to consider whence enmity has its origin. God has in each principle created creatures from the nature and proprium of the principle, therein to remain. And if they remain not therein, but introduce another thing by their imagination into themselves, into their property, that is an enmity and torment to them, as to the devil and fallen man. Both these are gone out from the light -world; the devil into the abyss of the strong wrath-power through pride, and man into this world, into the mystery of multiscience, as into the wonders. 19. And now man has a difficulty and struggle to come out again; and this world, into which he has entered, holds him, for it will have him; and if he go out from it by force, it becomes hostile to him, assails him, and will not suffer him in itself. 52 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 20. Hence it is that the children of this world do hate, vex, strike, kill and drive from them the children of light, for the spu'it of this world impels them thereto. To which also the devil helps, for he knows that this world rests upon the abyss, and that he will receive the children of this world at the dissolution of this Mystery into his kingdom. Therefore he drives the children of God from this world, lest they introduce his children of this world along with them into the world of light.
321. But if man had been created for this world, he would certainly let him alone ; but he continually desires to recapture his royal seat which he had, and from which he was cast out ; and if he may in no wise obtain it, he would deny it to the children who are to possess it. 22. Now this is for man highly to consider, and not to be so blind. Every man has entered into the mystery of this world ; but he should not therefore as a prisoner enter also into the earthly craving of the confining of death, but should be a discerner and knower of the Mystery, and not the devil's butt and fool. He should by the imagination continually go out again into the lightworld for which he was created, in order that the light may give him lustre, that he may know himself and see the outer Mystery. Then he is a man. But if not, he is the devil's fool and the ape of the light-world. Just as an ape will be knowing and play with everything, and imitate everything, so it is with the earthly man, who is but an ape. His juggling tricks with the light- world, THE SECOND POINT 53
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.
114. The dark world has the great pain and anguish which gives birth to fire, so that the will longs after freedom, and freedom longs after manifestation, viz. after essences, and gives itself to fierceness that it may thus manifest itself. And it is brought thus into fire, so that from fierceness and freedom a fire arises. It gives itself to fierceness to swallow up in death ; but passes out of death with the received essences into a sphere of its own, as into a special world or source ; and dwells in itself unapprehended by death and the dark world, and is a light in itself. 15. Thus are death and fierceness a mother of THE SECOND POINT 51 fire, also a cause of the light-world ; a cause, moreover, of all the essence of the third principle, a cause of all the essences in all lives. How then should one principle fight against another, if each vehemently desires the other? 16. For the angelic light-world, and also this our \asible world, must have the essence of dark death for their life and source; there is a continual hunger after it. 17. But each principle makes the source according to its property. It gives to the evil its good, and unites itself Avith it, and of three makes one, so that there is no strife between the tlii'ee principles. But in the essence there is strife; and that must be, or all were a nothing.
218. But we are to consider whence enmity has its origin. God has in each principle created creatures from the nature and proprium of the principle, therein to remain. And if they remain not therein, but introduce another thing by their imagination into themselves, into their property, that is an enmity and torment to them, as to the devil and fallen man. Both these are gone out from the light -world; the devil into the abyss of the strong wrath-power through pride, and man into this world, into the mystery of multiscience, as into the wonders. 19. And now man has a difficulty and struggle to come out again; and this world, into which he has entered, holds him, for it will have him; and if he go out from it by force, it becomes hostile to him, assails him, and will not suffer him in itself. 52 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS 20. Hence it is that the children of this world do hate, vex, strike, kill and drive from them the children of light, for the spu'it of this world impels them thereto. To which also the devil helps, for he knows that this world rests upon the abyss, and that he will receive the children of this world at the dissolution of this Mystery into his kingdom. Therefore he drives the children of God from this world, lest they introduce his children of this world along with them into the world of light.
321. But if man had been created for this world, he would certainly let him alone ; but he continually desires to recapture his royal seat which he had, and from which he was cast out ; and if he may in no wise obtain it, he would deny it to the children who are to possess it. 22. Now this is for man highly to consider, and not to be so blind. Every man has entered into the mystery of this world ; but he should not therefore as a prisoner enter also into the earthly craving of the confining of death, but should be a discerner and knower of the Mystery, and not the devil's butt and fool. He should by the imagination continually go out again into the lightworld for which he was created, in order that the light may give him lustre, that he may know himself and see the outer Mystery. Then he is a man. But if not, he is the devil's fool and the ape of the light-world. Just as an ape will be knowing and play with everything, and imitate everything, so it is with the earthly man, who is but an ape. His juggling tricks with the light- world, THE SECOND POINT 53
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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