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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.
130. It is all magical; what the will of a thing wills, that it receives. A toad takes only poison into itself; though it sit in the best apothecary's shop; the like also does a serpent. Every thing takes only its own property into itself ; and though it eat the substance of a good property, yet it converts all in itself into its own property. Though a toad should eat honey, yet this becomes poison in it. As indeed the devil was an angel ; but when he willed nothing good, his heavenly essence became to him hellish poison, and his evil will remained evil one time as another. 31. We are therefore highly to consider our hfe. 98 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS what we would do and be at. We have evil and good in us. The one wherein we draw our will, its essence becomes active in us; and such a property we draw also from without into us. We have the two Mysteries, the divine and the devilish in us, of the two eternal worlds, and also of the outer world. What we make of ourselves, that we are; what we awaken in ourselves, that is moving in us. If we lead ourselves to good, then God's Spirit helps us; but if we lead ourselves to evil, then God's wrath and anger helps us. Whatever we will, of that property we obtain a leader, and thereinto we lead ourselves. It is not God's will that we perish, but his wrath's and our own will.
2And thus we understand the fifth point.. How a life perishes, and how out of good an evil comes, and out of evil a good, when the will turns round. THE SIXTH POINT Of the life of darkness, wherein the devils dwell; WHAT BIRTH AND QUALITY IT HATH. CHAPTER IX 1. The life of darkness is repugnant to all life of light; for the darkness gives fierce and hostile essence, and the life of light gives love-essence. 2. In the darkness there is in the essence only a perpetual stinging and breaking, each form being enemy to the other — a contrarious essence. Each form is a liar to itself, and one says to the other, that it is evil and adverse to it, that it is a cause of its restlessness and fierceness. Each thinks in itself: If only the other form were not, thou wouldst have rest; and yet each of them is evil and false. Hence it is, that all that is born of the dark property of wrath is lying, and is always lying against the other forms, saying they are evil; and yet it is itself a cause thereof, it makes them evil by its poisonous infection. 3. Thus are they all, and lying is their truth. When they speak lies, they speak from their own forms and properties. And so also are their creatures. Therefore Christ said: The devil is a liar and murderer from the beginning (John viii. 44). For each form desires to murder the other, 99 100 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS and yet there is no killing; but the greater the strife is, the greater becomes their murderous life.
34. And therefore it is called an eternal death and enmity, where nothing but contrariety arises. For there is nothing that could abolish the strife, nothing that could hold in check a single form. The more it were resisted, the greater would be the fierceness; hke a fire that is stirred, whereby it burns but the more. 5. Thus the fierce wrathful kingdom can be extinguished by nothing, save only by God's light, by which it becomes wholly gentle, lovely and full of joy. And neither can that be; for if the dark kingdom were to be kindled with the light, the light would have no root to its nature and property, no fire could be generated, neither were there any light, nor any power, but all were a nothing. 6. Hence the kingdom of wrath must be, for it is a cause of the fire-world and the light-world, and all is God's. But all is not acknowledged as or called God, as the dark world has another property, and the light-world is a cause of the fierceness and terror of the dark property; for the darkness is terrified at the light, and stands in eternal terror because the light -world dwells in it. It trembles eternally before the light, and yet cannot apprehend it ; but is only a cause of life and of movement. And thus all must be subservient to the glory of God. 7. The life of darkness has many forms ; it is not one and the same property. As we are to recognize by the creatures of this world, where one is always THE SIXTH POINT 101
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.
130. It is all magical; what the will of a thing wills, that it receives. A toad takes only poison into itself; though it sit in the best apothecary's shop; the like also does a serpent. Every thing takes only its own property into itself ; and though it eat the substance of a good property, yet it converts all in itself into its own property. Though a toad should eat honey, yet this becomes poison in it. As indeed the devil was an angel ; but when he willed nothing good, his heavenly essence became to him hellish poison, and his evil will remained evil one time as another. 31. We are therefore highly to consider our hfe. 98 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS what we would do and be at. We have evil and good in us. The one wherein we draw our will, its essence becomes active in us; and such a property we draw also from without into us. We have the two Mysteries, the divine and the devilish in us, of the two eternal worlds, and also of the outer world. What we make of ourselves, that we are; what we awaken in ourselves, that is moving in us. If we lead ourselves to good, then God's Spirit helps us; but if we lead ourselves to evil, then God's wrath and anger helps us. Whatever we will, of that property we obtain a leader, and thereinto we lead ourselves. It is not God's will that we perish, but his wrath's and our own will.
2And thus we understand the fifth point.. How a life perishes, and how out of good an evil comes, and out of evil a good, when the will turns round. THE SIXTH POINT Of the life of darkness, wherein the devils dwell; WHAT BIRTH AND QUALITY IT HATH. CHAPTER IX 1. The life of darkness is repugnant to all life of light; for the darkness gives fierce and hostile essence, and the life of light gives love-essence. 2. In the darkness there is in the essence only a perpetual stinging and breaking, each form being enemy to the other — a contrarious essence. Each form is a liar to itself, and one says to the other, that it is evil and adverse to it, that it is a cause of its restlessness and fierceness. Each thinks in itself: If only the other form were not, thou wouldst have rest; and yet each of them is evil and false. Hence it is, that all that is born of the dark property of wrath is lying, and is always lying against the other forms, saying they are evil; and yet it is itself a cause thereof, it makes them evil by its poisonous infection. 3. Thus are they all, and lying is their truth. When they speak lies, they speak from their own forms and properties. And so also are their creatures. Therefore Christ said: The devil is a liar and murderer from the beginning (John viii. 44). For each form desires to murder the other, 99 100 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS and yet there is no killing; but the greater the strife is, the greater becomes their murderous life.
34. And therefore it is called an eternal death and enmity, where nothing but contrariety arises. For there is nothing that could abolish the strife, nothing that could hold in check a single form. The more it were resisted, the greater would be the fierceness; hke a fire that is stirred, whereby it burns but the more. 5. Thus the fierce wrathful kingdom can be extinguished by nothing, save only by God's light, by which it becomes wholly gentle, lovely and full of joy. And neither can that be; for if the dark kingdom were to be kindled with the light, the light would have no root to its nature and property, no fire could be generated, neither were there any light, nor any power, but all were a nothing. 6. Hence the kingdom of wrath must be, for it is a cause of the fire-world and the light-world, and all is God's. But all is not acknowledged as or called God, as the dark world has another property, and the light-world is a cause of the fierceness and terror of the dark property; for the darkness is terrified at the light, and stands in eternal terror because the light -world dwells in it. It trembles eternally before the light, and yet cannot apprehend it ; but is only a cause of life and of movement. And thus all must be subservient to the glory of God. 7. The life of darkness has many forms ; it is not one and the same property. As we are to recognize by the creatures of this world, where one is always THE SIXTH POINT 101
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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