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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.
1itself be lord, then it cannot lay hold of plurality otherwise than in a dark, stern sourness, in the dark world. But if it desire to plunge into the nothing, into freedom, it must abandon itself to fire; and then it sinks down in the death of the first principle, and buds forth out of the anguish of fire in the light. For when it abandons itself, the eternal will to Nature (which is God the Father) leads it out through fire into himself. For with the abandoning it falls unto the first will to Nature, who brings it by the other will, which is his Son or Heart, out of the anguishful Nature, and places it with the Son's will in freedom beyond the torment of fire. There it obtains, instead of plurality, all; not for its own glory or power, but for God's glory and power; God is in it both its will and its doing. 7. But whatever will itself be lord in fire, that goeth into its own number, into its essence which itself is; and whatever surrenders its power, surrenders also its fire-burning, and falls unto that which is a cause of fire, viz. unto the eternal will of God. 8. Thus it has fallen into freedom out of its fire of torment, and freedom kindles its fire. Its fire is now become a light and a clear mirror, for it has yielded itself up to Freedom, viz. to God. And thus its fire is a semblance and reflection of the Majesty of God.
29. But that which will not, but will itself be lord, that remains its own; it cannot bring itself in its own forms higher than to fire, moreover only to THE FIFTH POINT 79 the flash; for no clear fire can burn in it, seeing it has in itself no clear substance for fire. The centrum naturae has nothing in itself from which a clear brightness is able to arise ; but the freedom out of Nature is a cause of such shining. Whatever yields itself up to Nature, yet desires not Nature's property but freedom, that becomes enkindled in its flash of life by freedom, in the way the second Principle has enkindled itself. 10. Thus we understand how a life perishes, that is, how it introduces itself in anguish and torment into darkness ; namely, when it will be its own lord and desires plurality. If it will not give itself up to death, then it cannot attain any other world. 11. For every life arises in the torment of anguish, in Nature, and has no light in itself, except it enter into that which gives birth to Nature ; there it receives light. 12. For all that is in Nature is dark and in anguish, as is to be recognized by this world. Were the sun to be taken away, there would be nothing but anguish and darkness. And therefore God put himself in motion, so as to give a light to this world, that the external life might be in light.
313. But as regards the inner life of the soul, it has another form. This inner life can the external not attain. Hath the soul's fire not God's light, neither can the soul's will enter into God's light; it must remain in the darkness of the Eternal Nature. 14. External Reason thinks, if the outward eye sees, that is good; there is no other seeing possible. 80 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS Bad enough, forsooth! When the poor soul borrows the external mirror, and must make shift with this alone, where is its seeing? When the external mirror breaks, wherewith will it see then? With the terrible fire-flash in the horror, in the darkness ; it can see nowhere else. 15. Therefore it often happens when the poor captive soul beholds itself in the inward root, and thinks what will follow when for it the external mirror breaks, that it is terrified, and plunges the body in fear and doubt. 16. For it can look nowhere where its eternal rest might be, but it finds that it is in itself in utter unrest, moreover in a darkness; it has the external mirror only by way of loan.
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.
1itself be lord, then it cannot lay hold of plurality otherwise than in a dark, stern sourness, in the dark world. But if it desire to plunge into the nothing, into freedom, it must abandon itself to fire; and then it sinks down in the death of the first principle, and buds forth out of the anguish of fire in the light. For when it abandons itself, the eternal will to Nature (which is God the Father) leads it out through fire into himself. For with the abandoning it falls unto the first will to Nature, who brings it by the other will, which is his Son or Heart, out of the anguishful Nature, and places it with the Son's will in freedom beyond the torment of fire. There it obtains, instead of plurality, all; not for its own glory or power, but for God's glory and power; God is in it both its will and its doing. 7. But whatever will itself be lord in fire, that goeth into its own number, into its essence which itself is; and whatever surrenders its power, surrenders also its fire-burning, and falls unto that which is a cause of fire, viz. unto the eternal will of God. 8. Thus it has fallen into freedom out of its fire of torment, and freedom kindles its fire. Its fire is now become a light and a clear mirror, for it has yielded itself up to Freedom, viz. to God. And thus its fire is a semblance and reflection of the Majesty of God.
29. But that which will not, but will itself be lord, that remains its own; it cannot bring itself in its own forms higher than to fire, moreover only to THE FIFTH POINT 79 the flash; for no clear fire can burn in it, seeing it has in itself no clear substance for fire. The centrum naturae has nothing in itself from which a clear brightness is able to arise ; but the freedom out of Nature is a cause of such shining. Whatever yields itself up to Nature, yet desires not Nature's property but freedom, that becomes enkindled in its flash of life by freedom, in the way the second Principle has enkindled itself. 10. Thus we understand how a life perishes, that is, how it introduces itself in anguish and torment into darkness ; namely, when it will be its own lord and desires plurality. If it will not give itself up to death, then it cannot attain any other world. 11. For every life arises in the torment of anguish, in Nature, and has no light in itself, except it enter into that which gives birth to Nature ; there it receives light. 12. For all that is in Nature is dark and in anguish, as is to be recognized by this world. Were the sun to be taken away, there would be nothing but anguish and darkness. And therefore God put himself in motion, so as to give a light to this world, that the external life might be in light.
313. But as regards the inner life of the soul, it has another form. This inner life can the external not attain. Hath the soul's fire not God's light, neither can the soul's will enter into God's light; it must remain in the darkness of the Eternal Nature. 14. External Reason thinks, if the outward eye sees, that is good; there is no other seeing possible. 80 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS Bad enough, forsooth! When the poor soul borrows the external mirror, and must make shift with this alone, where is its seeing? When the external mirror breaks, wherewith will it see then? With the terrible fire-flash in the horror, in the darkness ; it can see nowhere else. 15. Therefore it often happens when the poor captive soul beholds itself in the inward root, and thinks what will follow when for it the external mirror breaks, that it is terrified, and plunges the body in fear and doubt. 16. For it can look nowhere where its eternal rest might be, but it finds that it is in itself in utter unrest, moreover in a darkness; it has the external mirror only by way of loan.
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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