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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.
12. For the earthly tincture has no communion or fellowship with the heavenly in the light-world. We find, however, in the earth another tincture which has fellowship with the heavenly, as in the precious metals, but is hidden in them. 3. And we understand thus the motion and the Fiat of the two eternal worlds, viz. the dark world and the light-world: Each has longed after being; and as God put himself in motion once for all, one world could not be moved without the other. 4. For the dark world contains the first centre of Nature, and the light-world the other centre, viz. the heart of God, or the Word of power of the THE FOURTH POINT 71 Deity; and one world is not separated from the other. 5. Hereby we should recognize in what danger we stand, and think where we would plunge with our will. For if we plunge into the earthly craving, ■ it captures us; and then the qualification of the abyss is our lord, and the sun our temporal god. 6. But if we plunge with our will into the world out of this world, then the light-world captures our will, and God becomes our lord; and we abandon the earthly life of this world, and take with us whatever has come from the light-world into us, — understand, into Adam; the same is carried out of this world with the will which becomes one spirit with God.
27. Reason says: Where are then the three worlds? It would have absolutely a separation, in which one were beyond or above the other. That, however, cannot possibly be, else the eternal unfathomable Essence were bound to sever itself. But how can that sever itself which is a nothing, which has no place, which is itself all? That cannot enter into particular existence which has no ground, which cannot be comprehended, which dwells in itself and possesses itself; but it proceeds out of itself, and manifests itself out of itself. 8. It makes a thing out of itself, which in itself is but a will. In itself it is a spirit, but makes out of itself a form of spirit, and the form makes a being according to the property of the spirit. As indeed this world is a being, and the inward spirit 72 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS
3possesses it. He is in every place, yet the place comprehends him not, but he comprehends the place. The place knows nothing of him, but it feels him; for he is the power and the spirit in the place. His will goes through being, and being has no eyes to see him, but he is the seeing of the place; and is himself no place or position, but makes for himself an unfathomable position, where there is no measurement. He is all, and j^et also like to a nothing in comparison with the external. What he gives out of himself, that he possesses too ; he passes not into it, but he is there before being occupies the place. The place contains but a reflection of his will, as one sees one's form in a mirror, and yet cannot take hold upon it; or as the sunshine is not laid hold of in water, yet the water feels it and receives the lustre; or as the earth receives power from the sun, so that it brings forth fruit. In this way God dwells in all beings, and permeates and pervades all, yet is laid hold of by nothing.
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.
12. For the earthly tincture has no communion or fellowship with the heavenly in the light-world. We find, however, in the earth another tincture which has fellowship with the heavenly, as in the precious metals, but is hidden in them. 3. And we understand thus the motion and the Fiat of the two eternal worlds, viz. the dark world and the light-world: Each has longed after being; and as God put himself in motion once for all, one world could not be moved without the other. 4. For the dark world contains the first centre of Nature, and the light-world the other centre, viz. the heart of God, or the Word of power of the THE FOURTH POINT 71 Deity; and one world is not separated from the other. 5. Hereby we should recognize in what danger we stand, and think where we would plunge with our will. For if we plunge into the earthly craving, ■ it captures us; and then the qualification of the abyss is our lord, and the sun our temporal god. 6. But if we plunge with our will into the world out of this world, then the light-world captures our will, and God becomes our lord; and we abandon the earthly life of this world, and take with us whatever has come from the light-world into us, — understand, into Adam; the same is carried out of this world with the will which becomes one spirit with God.
27. Reason says: Where are then the three worlds? It would have absolutely a separation, in which one were beyond or above the other. That, however, cannot possibly be, else the eternal unfathomable Essence were bound to sever itself. But how can that sever itself which is a nothing, which has no place, which is itself all? That cannot enter into particular existence which has no ground, which cannot be comprehended, which dwells in itself and possesses itself; but it proceeds out of itself, and manifests itself out of itself. 8. It makes a thing out of itself, which in itself is but a will. In itself it is a spirit, but makes out of itself a form of spirit, and the form makes a being according to the property of the spirit. As indeed this world is a being, and the inward spirit 72 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS
3possesses it. He is in every place, yet the place comprehends him not, but he comprehends the place. The place knows nothing of him, but it feels him; for he is the power and the spirit in the place. His will goes through being, and being has no eyes to see him, but he is the seeing of the place; and is himself no place or position, but makes for himself an unfathomable position, where there is no measurement. He is all, and j^et also like to a nothing in comparison with the external. What he gives out of himself, that he possesses too ; he passes not into it, but he is there before being occupies the place. The place contains but a reflection of his will, as one sees one's form in a mirror, and yet cannot take hold upon it; or as the sunshine is not laid hold of in water, yet the water feels it and receives the lustre; or as the earth receives power from the sun, so that it brings forth fruit. In this way God dwells in all beings, and permeates and pervades all, yet is laid hold of by nothing.
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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