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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.
1worse than the other, also has its subsistence in a different source from the other; who nevertheless all live in the sun's power and light, by which they are meekened. 8. But if the sun were to be extinguished, then would the deep be wrathful and stinging. Then we should soon see the property of the dark world, how all creatures would become poisonous and evil. 9. For every hfe is rooted in poison. The light alone resists the poison, and yet is a cause that the poison lives and faints not. 10. We are therefore to recognize that the life of darkness is only a fainting poison, like a dying source; and yet there is no dying there. For the light-world stands opposed to the mirror of darkness, whereby the darkness is eternally in terror. 11. The dark life is like a terror, where the flash and terror is always mounting upwards, as if it would quit the life and fly out above it. And hence arises pride, so that the devil is always wishing to be above God ; it is his proprium, his life's figure is so, and he cannot do otherwise. Just as a poison rages and pierces, as if it would break loose from the member; 12. So is the hfe of darkness in itself. The poisonful essences make such an inward disposition, and from the disposition proceeds such a will-spirit. There is such a property therein, and consists of seven forms, according to the centre of Nature with its principle. As the life of joy con102 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS
2sists of seven forms by right of Nature, so also does the life of sorrowfulness. That which in the light gives joy, in the darkness gives sorrowfulness. 13. And yet it is not to be thought that the life of darkness therefore sinks down into misery, that it would forget itself as if it were sorrowful. There is no sorrowing; but what with us on earth is sorrowing according to this property, is in the darkness power and joy according to the property of the darkness. For sorrowfulness is a thing that is swalllowed up in death. But death and dying is the life of the darkness, just as anguish is the life of the poison. The greater the anguish becomes in the poison, the stronger becomes the poison-life, as is to be seen in the external poison.
314. We cannot, then, say of the devil that he sits in dejection, as if he were faint-hearted. There is no faint-heartedness in him, but a constant will to kindle the poison-source more, that his fierceness may become greater. For this fierceness is his strength, wherein he draws his will to mount above the thrones and inflame them. He would be a mighty lord in the poison-source, for it is the strong and great life. But the light is his misery and dread; that checks his bravery. He is terrified at the light; for it is his true poison, which torments him. Because he abandoned it, it now resists him. Of which he is ashamed, that he is thus a deformed angel in a strange image. He would be content with the source of wrath, if only THE SIXTH POINT 103
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.
1worse than the other, also has its subsistence in a different source from the other; who nevertheless all live in the sun's power and light, by which they are meekened. 8. But if the sun were to be extinguished, then would the deep be wrathful and stinging. Then we should soon see the property of the dark world, how all creatures would become poisonous and evil. 9. For every hfe is rooted in poison. The light alone resists the poison, and yet is a cause that the poison lives and faints not. 10. We are therefore to recognize that the life of darkness is only a fainting poison, like a dying source; and yet there is no dying there. For the light-world stands opposed to the mirror of darkness, whereby the darkness is eternally in terror. 11. The dark life is like a terror, where the flash and terror is always mounting upwards, as if it would quit the life and fly out above it. And hence arises pride, so that the devil is always wishing to be above God ; it is his proprium, his life's figure is so, and he cannot do otherwise. Just as a poison rages and pierces, as if it would break loose from the member; 12. So is the hfe of darkness in itself. The poisonful essences make such an inward disposition, and from the disposition proceeds such a will-spirit. There is such a property therein, and consists of seven forms, according to the centre of Nature with its principle. As the life of joy con102 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS
2sists of seven forms by right of Nature, so also does the life of sorrowfulness. That which in the light gives joy, in the darkness gives sorrowfulness. 13. And yet it is not to be thought that the life of darkness therefore sinks down into misery, that it would forget itself as if it were sorrowful. There is no sorrowing; but what with us on earth is sorrowing according to this property, is in the darkness power and joy according to the property of the darkness. For sorrowfulness is a thing that is swalllowed up in death. But death and dying is the life of the darkness, just as anguish is the life of the poison. The greater the anguish becomes in the poison, the stronger becomes the poison-life, as is to be seen in the external poison.
314. We cannot, then, say of the devil that he sits in dejection, as if he were faint-hearted. There is no faint-heartedness in him, but a constant will to kindle the poison-source more, that his fierceness may become greater. For this fierceness is his strength, wherein he draws his will to mount above the thrones and inflame them. He would be a mighty lord in the poison-source, for it is the strong and great life. But the light is his misery and dread; that checks his bravery. He is terrified at the light; for it is his true poison, which torments him. Because he abandoned it, it now resists him. Of which he is ashamed, that he is thus a deformed angel in a strange image. He would be content with the source of wrath, if only THE SIXTH POINT 103
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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