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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.
127. Not that one should not defend oneself against a murderer or thief, who would murder and THE THIRD POINT 63 steal. But where one sees that any is eager upon unrighteousness, one should set his fault openly with a good light before his eyes, and freely and of good will offer him the Christian richly-loving heart; that he may find actually and in fact, that it is done out of love-zeal to God, and that love and God's will are more to that man than the earthly nature, and that he purposely will not consent to anything passionate or evil being done; that he may see that the children of God do love more the love of God and do cleave more to it than to any temporal good; and that God's children are not at home in this world, but only pilgrims, who gladly relinquish everything of this world so that they may but inherit the kingdom of heaven. 28. All this the Spirit of God puts before the evil-doer in the Mfe's light, and exhorts him thereby to conversion. But if he will not, then the wrath of God makes hellish fire from it, and finally gnaws him, to see if even yet he would know himself and repent. Persisteth he in wickedness, then is he a wholly evil tree, grown in the wrath of God, and belongs to the abyss, to the dark world of anguish, to the dark God Lucifer; there he must devour his own abominations. So much on the third point. THE FOURTH POINT
2How THE HOLY AND GOOD TREE OF ETERNAL LIFE GROWS THROUGH AND OUT OF ALL THE GROWTHS OF THE THREE PRINCIPLES^ AND IS LAID HOLD OF BY NONE. CHAPTER V 1. A thing that dwells in itself can be grasped bynothing, for it dwells in nothing; there is nothing before it that can hold it in check, and it is free also from the thing without it. 2. And thus we give you to understand concerning the divine power and light, which dwells in itself and is comprehended in nothing; nothing touches it, unless it be of the property thereof. It is everywhere in Nature, yet Nature touches it not (understand, the outer Nature of the world). It shines therein as the sun in the elements. The sun shines in water, also in fire and through the air, and yet is not seized or held by any of them. It gives to all beings power, and makes the essential spirits lovely and joyous. It draws by its power essence out of the earth, and not only essence, but also the being of the essences, which gives out of the essence a body. 3. What the sun does in the third principle by transforming all hostile essence and quality into 64 THE FOURTH POINT 65 gentleness, that God's light does in the forms of the Eternal Nature.
34. It shines in them and also from them; that is, it kindles the forms of Nature, so that they all obtain the Light's will, and unite themselves and give themselves up wholly to the Light; that is, they sink down from their own essence and become as if they had no might in themselves, and desire only the Light's power and might. The Light accordingly takes their power and might into itself, and shines from this same power. And thus all the forms of Nature attain to the Light, and the Light together with Nature is but one will, and the Light remains lord. 5. Else, if the wills in the stern forms of Nature will be lord, there is a separation and an eternal enmity. For one form is always at enmity with the other; each elevates itself. And therefrom comes contrariety, that a creature is so evil, wrathful and hostile, that often life is at strife in itself.
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.
127. Not that one should not defend oneself against a murderer or thief, who would murder and THE THIRD POINT 63 steal. But where one sees that any is eager upon unrighteousness, one should set his fault openly with a good light before his eyes, and freely and of good will offer him the Christian richly-loving heart; that he may find actually and in fact, that it is done out of love-zeal to God, and that love and God's will are more to that man than the earthly nature, and that he purposely will not consent to anything passionate or evil being done; that he may see that the children of God do love more the love of God and do cleave more to it than to any temporal good; and that God's children are not at home in this world, but only pilgrims, who gladly relinquish everything of this world so that they may but inherit the kingdom of heaven. 28. All this the Spirit of God puts before the evil-doer in the Mfe's light, and exhorts him thereby to conversion. But if he will not, then the wrath of God makes hellish fire from it, and finally gnaws him, to see if even yet he would know himself and repent. Persisteth he in wickedness, then is he a wholly evil tree, grown in the wrath of God, and belongs to the abyss, to the dark world of anguish, to the dark God Lucifer; there he must devour his own abominations. So much on the third point. THE FOURTH POINT
2How THE HOLY AND GOOD TREE OF ETERNAL LIFE GROWS THROUGH AND OUT OF ALL THE GROWTHS OF THE THREE PRINCIPLES^ AND IS LAID HOLD OF BY NONE. CHAPTER V 1. A thing that dwells in itself can be grasped bynothing, for it dwells in nothing; there is nothing before it that can hold it in check, and it is free also from the thing without it. 2. And thus we give you to understand concerning the divine power and light, which dwells in itself and is comprehended in nothing; nothing touches it, unless it be of the property thereof. It is everywhere in Nature, yet Nature touches it not (understand, the outer Nature of the world). It shines therein as the sun in the elements. The sun shines in water, also in fire and through the air, and yet is not seized or held by any of them. It gives to all beings power, and makes the essential spirits lovely and joyous. It draws by its power essence out of the earth, and not only essence, but also the being of the essences, which gives out of the essence a body. 3. What the sun does in the third principle by transforming all hostile essence and quality into 64 THE FOURTH POINT 65 gentleness, that God's light does in the forms of the Eternal Nature.
34. It shines in them and also from them; that is, it kindles the forms of Nature, so that they all obtain the Light's will, and unite themselves and give themselves up wholly to the Light; that is, they sink down from their own essence and become as if they had no might in themselves, and desire only the Light's power and might. The Light accordingly takes their power and might into itself, and shines from this same power. And thus all the forms of Nature attain to the Light, and the Light together with Nature is but one will, and the Light remains lord. 5. Else, if the wills in the stern forms of Nature will be lord, there is a separation and an eternal enmity. For one form is always at enmity with the other; each elevates itself. And therefrom comes contrariety, that a creature is so evil, wrathful and hostile, that often life is at strife in itself.
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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