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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.
133. And our whole teaching is nothing else than how man should kindle in himself God's light-world. For if this be kindled, so that God's light shines in the soul's spirit, then the whole body hath light, as Christ says : If the eye be light, then is the whole body light (JNIatt. vi. 22, 23) . He means the soul's eye. And if the wi'ath of the dark world be kindled, then are body and soul dark, and have only a lustre from the sun. If the divine light be kindled, it burns in love and meekness; and if the wrath of the dark world be kindled, it burns in stinging envy and hate, in fierce rage, and flees away in the external mirror of the smi's light into pride, and will always be mounting above the source of love, whereupon follows scorn and contempt of meekness and of all that is lowly. 34. And here man should prove or try himself, and recognize which world is lord in him. If he find that anger, wrath, envy, falsehood, lying and deceit is his desire; also pride, avarice, and continual greed of honour and earthly pleasure, that he is but a perpetual itch for wantonness and lewdness; then he may know with certainty that he burns with anger, wrath, envy, falsehood, lying and deceit in the dark, viz. in the dark world's fire. For this fire gives such essence, desire and will. 35. And the other desire, viz. earthly pleasure, 86 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS
2pride, thirst for honour, avarice, and the perpetual wanton bestial itch of concupiscence, is the fruit which grows out of the dark world in the outer world. 36. As love buds out of death (where the spirit of the will yields up itself to the fire of God, and sinks down as it were in death, but buds forth in God's kingdom with a friendly desire always to do well) ; so hath the will of wickedness given itself to perdition, viz. to wrathful, stern, eternal death, but buds forth with its twig in this corrupt world in outer nature, and bears such fruit. 37. By this should every one learn to know himself, he need only search for his distinctive property. To whatever his will constantly drives him, in that kingdom does he stand; and he is not a man as he accounts himself and pretends to be, but a creature of the dark world, viz. a greedy hound, a proud bird, a lustful animal, a fierce serpent, an envious toad full of poison. All these properties spring in him, and are his wood from which his fire burns. When the outer wood, or the substance of four elements, abandons him at his death, then the inner poisonous evil quality alone remains.
338. What figure now must stand in such a quality? None else but what was strongest amongst these properties ; this is figured in the helhsh Fiat in his form, as a venomous serpent, a dog or other beast. The property to which the spirit of the will has given itself up, that same property is afterward the soul's image. And this is one part. 39. Further, man should prove or try himself THE FIFTH POINT 8T in his desire ( for every man has these evil properties in him) , to see whether he finds in himself a constant longing to kill this poison and malignity; whether he be enemy to this poison; or whether he hath his delight in continually putting the false poison into operation, viz. in pride, covetousness, envy, hcentiousness, lying and deceit. 40. Now, if he find in himself that he hath his delight therein, and is always ready to put the same into practice, then he is not a man, as he accounts himself to be; but the devil in a strange form deceives him, so that he believes he is a man. But he bears not God's but the serpent's image; and is only in the external kingdom a likeness to an image of man, so long as he remains in this property so that this property is supreme lord.
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.
133. And our whole teaching is nothing else than how man should kindle in himself God's light-world. For if this be kindled, so that God's light shines in the soul's spirit, then the whole body hath light, as Christ says : If the eye be light, then is the whole body light (JNIatt. vi. 22, 23) . He means the soul's eye. And if the wi'ath of the dark world be kindled, then are body and soul dark, and have only a lustre from the sun. If the divine light be kindled, it burns in love and meekness; and if the wrath of the dark world be kindled, it burns in stinging envy and hate, in fierce rage, and flees away in the external mirror of the smi's light into pride, and will always be mounting above the source of love, whereupon follows scorn and contempt of meekness and of all that is lowly. 34. And here man should prove or try himself, and recognize which world is lord in him. If he find that anger, wrath, envy, falsehood, lying and deceit is his desire; also pride, avarice, and continual greed of honour and earthly pleasure, that he is but a perpetual itch for wantonness and lewdness; then he may know with certainty that he burns with anger, wrath, envy, falsehood, lying and deceit in the dark, viz. in the dark world's fire. For this fire gives such essence, desire and will. 35. And the other desire, viz. earthly pleasure, 86 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS
2pride, thirst for honour, avarice, and the perpetual wanton bestial itch of concupiscence, is the fruit which grows out of the dark world in the outer world. 36. As love buds out of death (where the spirit of the will yields up itself to the fire of God, and sinks down as it were in death, but buds forth in God's kingdom with a friendly desire always to do well) ; so hath the will of wickedness given itself to perdition, viz. to wrathful, stern, eternal death, but buds forth with its twig in this corrupt world in outer nature, and bears such fruit. 37. By this should every one learn to know himself, he need only search for his distinctive property. To whatever his will constantly drives him, in that kingdom does he stand; and he is not a man as he accounts himself and pretends to be, but a creature of the dark world, viz. a greedy hound, a proud bird, a lustful animal, a fierce serpent, an envious toad full of poison. All these properties spring in him, and are his wood from which his fire burns. When the outer wood, or the substance of four elements, abandons him at his death, then the inner poisonous evil quality alone remains.
338. What figure now must stand in such a quality? None else but what was strongest amongst these properties ; this is figured in the helhsh Fiat in his form, as a venomous serpent, a dog or other beast. The property to which the spirit of the will has given itself up, that same property is afterward the soul's image. And this is one part. 39. Further, man should prove or try himself THE FIFTH POINT 8T in his desire ( for every man has these evil properties in him) , to see whether he finds in himself a constant longing to kill this poison and malignity; whether he be enemy to this poison; or whether he hath his delight in continually putting the false poison into operation, viz. in pride, covetousness, envy, hcentiousness, lying and deceit. 40. Now, if he find in himself that he hath his delight therein, and is always ready to put the same into practice, then he is not a man, as he accounts himself to be; but the devil in a strange form deceives him, so that he believes he is a man. But he bears not God's but the serpent's image; and is only in the external kingdom a likeness to an image of man, so long as he remains in this property so that this property is supreme lord.
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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