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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.
123. So also in man. Many a curse sticks which one wishes the other, when the other has provoked it, and is apt for it; as indeed is common among godless married people, one wishing the other the devil and hell-fire. If then they both be godless, should not then their godless will be realized to them, by their begetting godless childi'en? There is not anything that is good in them, what good thing then shall come out of them? What can God do to this? He sets his word and teaching before them, and announces to them their destruction. If they will not regard it, let them go whither they please. So too is their seed; and thus many a child is born a thistle and evil beast, and is baptized in the wrath of God. 24. For, of what essence the soul's spirit is, in such an essence it receives also the divine nature 96 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS in the covenant: one in the power of light, in love; another in the power of wrath, in darkness.
225. The covenant at baptism stands firm. Every child is baptized in the covenant; the Spirit of God baptizes each one, if we observe the customary form, but ki accordance with the child's property. Often the father and mother, as also the baptizer, are godless, and only evil beasts, and there is no real earnestness. The outward pomp and the money is the main point with them ; they despise the mystery. Here the child is wholly in the property of wrath. Who then shall baptize? None other than the wrath of God in his covenant, for that men do but make a mock of it. 26. Thus the source of wrath seizes the new spirit, works powerfully in it, and brings forth fruit to perdition. As St. Paul says of the other testament, that the wicked man receives it unto judgment, not discerning the Lord's body (1 Cor. xi. 29). That is, he distinguishes not in himself the heavenly part of his essence from the earthly, to put his will into the heavenly and offer this up to God ; but deems all common, as an ox eats the fodder.
327. Therefore the wrath of God springs in him, so that he doth not break off his will from the earthly and repent of his wickedness. His heavenly part cannot become partaker of God's body, because he cannot awaken the essence of the heavenly part. Thus it has no mouth to receive God's body, the mouth being shut up in death. The earthly part, however, receives Christ's body, but according to the property of wrath, according to the propTHE FIFTH POINT 97 erty of the dark world; for the testament must stand. 28. In like manner is baptism. According as the soul's essence is in being, so also does it enjoy God's covenant. It were better a wholly godless child were not baptized, and that a wicked man in his sins without conversion did not touch God's testament; for it brings them both only power to perdition. God's covenant is never moved without fruit. God works in his covenant according to his word. 29. As is the soul which moves the covenant, so is the medicament in the covenant, and in such a power the Spirit of God works in love and wrath; for he is the spirit of every life, and assimilates himself to every life. He is in every thing as the thing's will and property is, for one property seizes the other. What the soul wills, that he wills also, and thereinto the soul enters.
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.
123. So also in man. Many a curse sticks which one wishes the other, when the other has provoked it, and is apt for it; as indeed is common among godless married people, one wishing the other the devil and hell-fire. If then they both be godless, should not then their godless will be realized to them, by their begetting godless childi'en? There is not anything that is good in them, what good thing then shall come out of them? What can God do to this? He sets his word and teaching before them, and announces to them their destruction. If they will not regard it, let them go whither they please. So too is their seed; and thus many a child is born a thistle and evil beast, and is baptized in the wrath of God. 24. For, of what essence the soul's spirit is, in such an essence it receives also the divine nature 96 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS in the covenant: one in the power of light, in love; another in the power of wrath, in darkness.
225. The covenant at baptism stands firm. Every child is baptized in the covenant; the Spirit of God baptizes each one, if we observe the customary form, but ki accordance with the child's property. Often the father and mother, as also the baptizer, are godless, and only evil beasts, and there is no real earnestness. The outward pomp and the money is the main point with them ; they despise the mystery. Here the child is wholly in the property of wrath. Who then shall baptize? None other than the wrath of God in his covenant, for that men do but make a mock of it. 26. Thus the source of wrath seizes the new spirit, works powerfully in it, and brings forth fruit to perdition. As St. Paul says of the other testament, that the wicked man receives it unto judgment, not discerning the Lord's body (1 Cor. xi. 29). That is, he distinguishes not in himself the heavenly part of his essence from the earthly, to put his will into the heavenly and offer this up to God ; but deems all common, as an ox eats the fodder.
327. Therefore the wrath of God springs in him, so that he doth not break off his will from the earthly and repent of his wickedness. His heavenly part cannot become partaker of God's body, because he cannot awaken the essence of the heavenly part. Thus it has no mouth to receive God's body, the mouth being shut up in death. The earthly part, however, receives Christ's body, but according to the property of wrath, according to the propTHE FIFTH POINT 97 erty of the dark world; for the testament must stand. 28. In like manner is baptism. According as the soul's essence is in being, so also does it enjoy God's covenant. It were better a wholly godless child were not baptized, and that a wicked man in his sins without conversion did not touch God's testament; for it brings them both only power to perdition. God's covenant is never moved without fruit. God works in his covenant according to his word. 29. As is the soul which moves the covenant, so is the medicament in the covenant, and in such a power the Spirit of God works in love and wrath; for he is the spirit of every life, and assimilates himself to every life. He is in every thing as the thing's will and property is, for one property seizes the other. What the soul wills, that he wills also, and thereinto the soul enters.
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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