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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.
117. As long as the soul is in this body, it may indeed make shift with the sun-mirror, for the sun has in its root the inner fire as the principle of the Father. From this fire the soul receives a lustre or mirror in the essence of the body, so that it is able thus in this earthly, transitory life to be in joy. But when the external mirror breaks, that is at an end ; and the soul's fire goes into the eternal house of mourning, into the centre of darkness. 18. The soul has in the time of the outer body three mirrors or eyes of all the three worlds. The mirror to which it turns itself, by that does it see. But it has no more than one as a natural right, namely the fire-flash, the fourth form of the dark world, where the two inward worlds separate (one into the darkness, the other into the hght), and where its eternal origin is. The world into which THE FIFTH POINT 81 the soul introduces its will, in the same it receives also substance, viz. a spiritual body. For this substance becomes for the soul's fire a food, or matter of its burning.
219. And therefore God has introduced the soul into flesh and blood, that it might not so easily become susceptible of the wrath-essence. Thus it has its delight meanwhile in the mirror of the sun, and rejoices in the sidereal essence. Presented to it is ( 1 ) the light-world in its true fire, ( 2 ) the dark world in the fire-root, (3) the outer elemental world in the astral source. Among them hovers the great mj^stery of the soul's fire. 20. The world to which the soul unites and abandons itself, from that it receives substance in its imagination. But because it has in Adam turned itself to the spirit of this world, and carried its imagination into the same, its highest desire is now in the essence of the sun and stars, and by this desire it draws the spirit of the outer world with its substance of four elements continually into itself, and has its greatest joy therein; in which it is in a strange lodging as guest, for the abyss is beneath it, and there is great danger. 21. Here external Reason says: God has created the soul in flesh and blood in the outer world, what harm can that do it? This Reason knows no more of the soul's origin than a cow does of a new stable door. She looks at it, and it seems to her to be strange ; so also to external Reason the inner world seems to be something strange. 22. It finds itself in the outer world, and aspires 82 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS
3after that which the outer world has ; and yet finds in itself the inner world, which continually arraigns the soul before God's wrath. It finds also the light-world, to which the inward desires of the soul's principle look. It feels indeed the longing after God, but the outer world hinders this and covers it up; so that the desire after God's world cannot kindle fire in itself. If that were done, then would the hght- world be manifest in the first principle, and the noble image of God would be revealed. 23. This is also hindered by the devil, who possesses the root of this world in the soul's fire. He is always holding up to the soul evil earthly things, or moving the root in the centre of Nature in the fierce wrath; so that the poor soul enkindles itself either in the wrath-fire in the evil poisonsource, or else in fear and doubt of God's love. He has then carried the day, and sets before the soul external power, authority and honour, also the splendour and pomp of the outer world. Then the soul bites at this, and tickles itself therein with imagination; and yet cannot truly enjoy the same, for it is only a borrowed mirror.
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.
117. As long as the soul is in this body, it may indeed make shift with the sun-mirror, for the sun has in its root the inner fire as the principle of the Father. From this fire the soul receives a lustre or mirror in the essence of the body, so that it is able thus in this earthly, transitory life to be in joy. But when the external mirror breaks, that is at an end ; and the soul's fire goes into the eternal house of mourning, into the centre of darkness. 18. The soul has in the time of the outer body three mirrors or eyes of all the three worlds. The mirror to which it turns itself, by that does it see. But it has no more than one as a natural right, namely the fire-flash, the fourth form of the dark world, where the two inward worlds separate (one into the darkness, the other into the hght), and where its eternal origin is. The world into which THE FIFTH POINT 81 the soul introduces its will, in the same it receives also substance, viz. a spiritual body. For this substance becomes for the soul's fire a food, or matter of its burning.
219. And therefore God has introduced the soul into flesh and blood, that it might not so easily become susceptible of the wrath-essence. Thus it has its delight meanwhile in the mirror of the sun, and rejoices in the sidereal essence. Presented to it is ( 1 ) the light-world in its true fire, ( 2 ) the dark world in the fire-root, (3) the outer elemental world in the astral source. Among them hovers the great mj^stery of the soul's fire. 20. The world to which the soul unites and abandons itself, from that it receives substance in its imagination. But because it has in Adam turned itself to the spirit of this world, and carried its imagination into the same, its highest desire is now in the essence of the sun and stars, and by this desire it draws the spirit of the outer world with its substance of four elements continually into itself, and has its greatest joy therein; in which it is in a strange lodging as guest, for the abyss is beneath it, and there is great danger. 21. Here external Reason says: God has created the soul in flesh and blood in the outer world, what harm can that do it? This Reason knows no more of the soul's origin than a cow does of a new stable door. She looks at it, and it seems to her to be strange ; so also to external Reason the inner world seems to be something strange. 22. It finds itself in the outer world, and aspires 82 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS
3after that which the outer world has ; and yet finds in itself the inner world, which continually arraigns the soul before God's wrath. It finds also the light-world, to which the inward desires of the soul's principle look. It feels indeed the longing after God, but the outer world hinders this and covers it up; so that the desire after God's world cannot kindle fire in itself. If that were done, then would the hght- world be manifest in the first principle, and the noble image of God would be revealed. 23. This is also hindered by the devil, who possesses the root of this world in the soul's fire. He is always holding up to the soul evil earthly things, or moving the root in the centre of Nature in the fierce wrath; so that the poor soul enkindles itself either in the wrath-fire in the evil poisonsource, or else in fear and doubt of God's love. He has then carried the day, and sets before the soul external power, authority and honour, also the splendour and pomp of the outer world. Then the soul bites at this, and tickles itself therein with imagination; and yet cannot truly enjoy the same, for it is only a borrowed mirror.
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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