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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.
1the light were not so near him. Shame is therefore so great in him that he grows furious, and kindles his poisonous source more and more, so that his jSgure becomes increasingly horrible, and the divine image is not recognized in him. He aims only at how he may storm and rage against God, as if he were a foreign thing, or a foreign power, as if he had a foreign kingdom; whereas he is poor, and the dark kingdom is not his, but he is only a prisoner in it. It is God's abyss ; he is only a creature therein. He would be lord therein, and yet is but a juggler with the fierceness; although he must act according to the property. And this is also a wonder before the stern might of eternity. It is as a sport wherewith the stern might hath its dissipation, by which it is distinguished what evil or good, joy or sorrow, is; and that the creatures in the light-world have cause to humble themselves. And yet God created no devil, nor destined Lucifer for the dark world. But this is enmity in Lucifer, that he was an angel, and that the light is so near him that he became an apostate.
215. There is no pain in the creatures which have been created in the dark world ; for they are of the fierce wrathful property, and know nothing of the light. Fierceness is their strength and might, and enmity their will and life. The more evil and hostile a creature is in the dark world, the greater is its might. As the powerful tyrants of this world often exhibit their power in malignity, so that men 104 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS must fear them, or as tame animals are afraid of ferocious ones; so has this Hkewise a property in the dark world. 16. If we will rightly consider the property of the dark world, let us look upon the malice and pride of this world, which is a figure or type. For all malice, falsehood, pride and covetousness has its root from the dark world; it is the property of the dark world, whether it be recognized in men or beasts. 17. For this world rests upon the foundation of the dark world. The dark world gives to this world essence, will and quality. And had not the good been introduced also at creation, there would be no other doing or will in this world than in the dark world. But the divine power and the sun's hght hinder that. As is to be seen among men and beasts, how there is a biting, hating and striking, and an arrogant self-will, each wishing to rule over the other, to kill and devour the other, and elevate itself alone; also to trample upon everything with guile, wrath, malice and falsehood, and make itself lord.
318. In like manner the dark world has such a property. What all wicked men in this world do in their malice and falsehood, that also the devils do in the dark world; and what the poisonous evil worms and beasts in their malignity do, that also the other creatures do in the dark world. Though they are without such a body, yet they have such a property in their spiritual body ; and though they THE SIXTH POINT 105 have a body, yet it is after the fashion of spirit, as the devils have one. 19. The birth, being, essence and dominion of the dark world lies principally in the first four forms of Nature, viz. in the source of anguish, in an exceedingly strong and powerful dominion, where all in the essence is divulged. For gentleness is the enmity of the wrath-power, and each is against the other.
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.
1the light were not so near him. Shame is therefore so great in him that he grows furious, and kindles his poisonous source more and more, so that his jSgure becomes increasingly horrible, and the divine image is not recognized in him. He aims only at how he may storm and rage against God, as if he were a foreign thing, or a foreign power, as if he had a foreign kingdom; whereas he is poor, and the dark kingdom is not his, but he is only a prisoner in it. It is God's abyss ; he is only a creature therein. He would be lord therein, and yet is but a juggler with the fierceness; although he must act according to the property. And this is also a wonder before the stern might of eternity. It is as a sport wherewith the stern might hath its dissipation, by which it is distinguished what evil or good, joy or sorrow, is; and that the creatures in the light-world have cause to humble themselves. And yet God created no devil, nor destined Lucifer for the dark world. But this is enmity in Lucifer, that he was an angel, and that the light is so near him that he became an apostate.
215. There is no pain in the creatures which have been created in the dark world ; for they are of the fierce wrathful property, and know nothing of the light. Fierceness is their strength and might, and enmity their will and life. The more evil and hostile a creature is in the dark world, the greater is its might. As the powerful tyrants of this world often exhibit their power in malignity, so that men 104 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS must fear them, or as tame animals are afraid of ferocious ones; so has this Hkewise a property in the dark world. 16. If we will rightly consider the property of the dark world, let us look upon the malice and pride of this world, which is a figure or type. For all malice, falsehood, pride and covetousness has its root from the dark world; it is the property of the dark world, whether it be recognized in men or beasts. 17. For this world rests upon the foundation of the dark world. The dark world gives to this world essence, will and quality. And had not the good been introduced also at creation, there would be no other doing or will in this world than in the dark world. But the divine power and the sun's hght hinder that. As is to be seen among men and beasts, how there is a biting, hating and striking, and an arrogant self-will, each wishing to rule over the other, to kill and devour the other, and elevate itself alone; also to trample upon everything with guile, wrath, malice and falsehood, and make itself lord.
318. In like manner the dark world has such a property. What all wicked men in this world do in their malice and falsehood, that also the devils do in the dark world; and what the poisonous evil worms and beasts in their malignity do, that also the other creatures do in the dark world. Though they are without such a body, yet they have such a property in their spiritual body ; and though they THE SIXTH POINT 105 have a body, yet it is after the fashion of spirit, as the devils have one. 19. The birth, being, essence and dominion of the dark world lies principally in the first four forms of Nature, viz. in the source of anguish, in an exceedingly strong and powerful dominion, where all in the essence is divulged. For gentleness is the enmity of the wrath-power, and each is against the other.
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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