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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.
19. And as we understand that the earth has a great hunger and desire after the sun's power and light, in which it draws to itself and becomes susceptible of the sun's power and light, which without desire could not be; in like manner outer nature hungers after the inner, for the outward form arises from the inner. Thus outer nature receives in itself the form of the inner as a lustre or power; for it cannot seize the inward spirit, inasmuch as he dwells not in the outer, but possesses himself in himself in the inner. THE FOURTH POINT 73 10. But the outer nature receives by the mirror the form of the spirit, as water does the lustre of the sun. We are not to think that the inner is far from the outer, like the body of the sun is from the water; though neither is that so, that the sun is far from the water, for the water has the sun's essence and property, else it would not catch the sun's lustre. Although the sun is a corpus, yet the sun is also in the water, but not manifest ; the corpus makes the sun manifest in the water. And we are to know that the whole world would be nothing but sun, and the locus of the sun would be everywhere, if God was to kindle and manifest it; for every being in this world catches the sun's lustre. There is in all a min-or, that the power and form of the sun may be received in all that is animate and inanimate, in all the four elements and their essence and substance.
211. And so it is also with the inner light-world. It dwells in the outer world, and this receives power from it. It grows up in the outward power, and this knows nothing of it; and only feels the power, and the inward light it cannot behold; only in its life's mirror it receives the reflection thereof, for the inward power makes in the outward form a likeness of itself. 12. And thus then we are to recognize man. He is the inner and outer world (the cause, moreover, of the inner world in himself) , and, so far as belongs to him, also the dark world. He is all three worlds ; and if he remain standing in co-ordination, so that 74 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS he introduce not one world into the other, then he is God's likeness. 13. He should introduce the form or the mirror of the light-world into the outer world, and also into the inmost dark world, and bring the power of the middle or light-world into the mirror, and then he is suspectible of the divine light ; for essence seizes not the light, but the power of the light. But the mirror of power catches the light, as water does the sun ; for water is as a clear mirror in comparison with earth.
314. Now if water be mixed with earth, it no longer catches the sun's Hght ; so likewise the human spirit or soul catches not God's light, unless it remain pure and set its desire upon that which is pure, viz. upon the light; for what life imaginates after, that it receives. The life of man is the form of the two inward worlds. If life desire sulphur in itself, then is Phur out of Sul its darkening; but if it desire only Sul, then it receives the power of the light, and in the power the light with its property. For in Phur, viz. in fierce wrathful Nature, life cannot remain clear as a miiTor, but in Sul it can; for the life of man is a true mirror of the Deity, wherein God beholds himself. He gives his lustre and power to the human mirror, and finds himself in man, as also in angels and in the forms of heaven. 15. The light-world's essence is his finding or revelation, and the dark world's essence is his loss. He sees not himself in the dark world, for it has no mirror that were susceptible of the light. THE FOURTH POINT 75 All that imaginates after the dark world's essence and property, that receives the dark world's property, and loses the miiTor of God. It becomes filled with dark wrath ; hke as one mixes water with earth, and then the sun cannot shine therein. This water loses the mirror of the sun, and must withdraw again from the earth ; else it is nevermore any mirror of the sun, but is imprisoned in the wrathul dark earth.
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.
19. And as we understand that the earth has a great hunger and desire after the sun's power and light, in which it draws to itself and becomes susceptible of the sun's power and light, which without desire could not be; in like manner outer nature hungers after the inner, for the outward form arises from the inner. Thus outer nature receives in itself the form of the inner as a lustre or power; for it cannot seize the inward spirit, inasmuch as he dwells not in the outer, but possesses himself in himself in the inner. THE FOURTH POINT 73 10. But the outer nature receives by the mirror the form of the spirit, as water does the lustre of the sun. We are not to think that the inner is far from the outer, like the body of the sun is from the water; though neither is that so, that the sun is far from the water, for the water has the sun's essence and property, else it would not catch the sun's lustre. Although the sun is a corpus, yet the sun is also in the water, but not manifest ; the corpus makes the sun manifest in the water. And we are to know that the whole world would be nothing but sun, and the locus of the sun would be everywhere, if God was to kindle and manifest it; for every being in this world catches the sun's lustre. There is in all a min-or, that the power and form of the sun may be received in all that is animate and inanimate, in all the four elements and their essence and substance.
211. And so it is also with the inner light-world. It dwells in the outer world, and this receives power from it. It grows up in the outward power, and this knows nothing of it; and only feels the power, and the inward light it cannot behold; only in its life's mirror it receives the reflection thereof, for the inward power makes in the outward form a likeness of itself. 12. And thus then we are to recognize man. He is the inner and outer world (the cause, moreover, of the inner world in himself) , and, so far as belongs to him, also the dark world. He is all three worlds ; and if he remain standing in co-ordination, so that 74 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS he introduce not one world into the other, then he is God's likeness. 13. He should introduce the form or the mirror of the light-world into the outer world, and also into the inmost dark world, and bring the power of the middle or light-world into the mirror, and then he is suspectible of the divine light ; for essence seizes not the light, but the power of the light. But the mirror of power catches the light, as water does the sun ; for water is as a clear mirror in comparison with earth.
314. Now if water be mixed with earth, it no longer catches the sun's Hght ; so likewise the human spirit or soul catches not God's light, unless it remain pure and set its desire upon that which is pure, viz. upon the light; for what life imaginates after, that it receives. The life of man is the form of the two inward worlds. If life desire sulphur in itself, then is Phur out of Sul its darkening; but if it desire only Sul, then it receives the power of the light, and in the power the light with its property. For in Phur, viz. in fierce wrathful Nature, life cannot remain clear as a miiTor, but in Sul it can; for the life of man is a true mirror of the Deity, wherein God beholds himself. He gives his lustre and power to the human mirror, and finds himself in man, as also in angels and in the forms of heaven. 15. The light-world's essence is his finding or revelation, and the dark world's essence is his loss. He sees not himself in the dark world, for it has no mirror that were susceptible of the light. THE FOURTH POINT 75 All that imaginates after the dark world's essence and property, that receives the dark world's property, and loses the miiTor of God. It becomes filled with dark wrath ; hke as one mixes water with earth, and then the sun cannot shine therein. This water loses the mirror of the sun, and must withdraw again from the earth ; else it is nevermore any mirror of the sun, but is imprisoned in the wrathul dark earth.
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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