Fetching
One moment.
Fetching
One moment.
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.
129. But if it resolve rashly, and abandon itself wholly to the wrath, then the fierce wrath destroys the first image according to God. And if it cannot entirely, because the divine power hinders that. 108 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS then it would cast the whole man headlong; and many a one is plunged into despair in this anguish, so that he lays violent hands on himself. 30. Thus the soul with the image falls unto the wrathful, dark world; and the image is brought into a hellish figure, into a form of its property which it had here. So it fared also with the devils, who have lost their first image. 31 Every devil has an image according to his property, according to the figure of the wrath, in accordance with its quahty; like as there are horrible worms or evil beasts, and such a thing has also the lost soul to expect. 32. External Reason supposes that hell is far from us. But it is near us. Every one carries it in himself, unless he kill the hellish poison with God's power, and bud forth therefrom as a new twig, which the hellish quality cannot seize or touch (riigen).
233. Though indeed the fierceness of hell is recognized more in one place than in another, all according to the hellish dominion, where the upper dominion is powerful in various places in the locus of this world; all according to the fire enkindling of King Lucifer, as in many places of the earth, as also in the deep between the stars and the earth, is the hellish quality to be discerned above other places, where the inner fierceness extends to the external principle. Here then are distinct dominions of devils, also of the other hellish properties ; here the fierce wrath of God has strongly THE SIXTH POINT 109 inflamed itself, and now burns until the judgment of God. 34. Every man carries heaven and hell within hi min this world. The property which he awakens, the same burns in him, and of that fire is the soul susceptible. And when the body dies, the soul needs to go nowhither, but it is committed to the hellish dominion of which it is the property. Those devils who are of its property await it, and receive it into their dominion until the judgment of God. And though they are confined to no place, yet they belong to the same dominion, and the same quality they have everywhere. Wherever they go, they are in the same dominion and quality; for the abyss has no place, neither time nor space. As it was before the times of the world, when there was no place; so it is and remains so eternally in the abyss.
335. And though the place of this world was given to Lucifer for a kingdom (for he was created therein), yet he has been cast out from place and position, and dwells in the abyss, where he can never reach any place of the angehc kingdom; but is shut up in his own realm in the abyss, where he must bear eternal reproach as a prisoner. As is done to a malefactor, who is put into a dark dungeon away from all the beings of this world, where he must do without any mundane joy or pleasure and bear the reproach of his crime. 36. So it fares also with the devils, and with all damned souls, who he captive in the dark prison. 110 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS
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.
129. But if it resolve rashly, and abandon itself wholly to the wrath, then the fierce wrath destroys the first image according to God. And if it cannot entirely, because the divine power hinders that. 108 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS then it would cast the whole man headlong; and many a one is plunged into despair in this anguish, so that he lays violent hands on himself. 30. Thus the soul with the image falls unto the wrathful, dark world; and the image is brought into a hellish figure, into a form of its property which it had here. So it fared also with the devils, who have lost their first image. 31 Every devil has an image according to his property, according to the figure of the wrath, in accordance with its quahty; like as there are horrible worms or evil beasts, and such a thing has also the lost soul to expect. 32. External Reason supposes that hell is far from us. But it is near us. Every one carries it in himself, unless he kill the hellish poison with God's power, and bud forth therefrom as a new twig, which the hellish quality cannot seize or touch (riigen).
233. Though indeed the fierceness of hell is recognized more in one place than in another, all according to the hellish dominion, where the upper dominion is powerful in various places in the locus of this world; all according to the fire enkindling of King Lucifer, as in many places of the earth, as also in the deep between the stars and the earth, is the hellish quality to be discerned above other places, where the inner fierceness extends to the external principle. Here then are distinct dominions of devils, also of the other hellish properties ; here the fierce wrath of God has strongly THE SIXTH POINT 109 inflamed itself, and now burns until the judgment of God. 34. Every man carries heaven and hell within hi min this world. The property which he awakens, the same burns in him, and of that fire is the soul susceptible. And when the body dies, the soul needs to go nowhither, but it is committed to the hellish dominion of which it is the property. Those devils who are of its property await it, and receive it into their dominion until the judgment of God. And though they are confined to no place, yet they belong to the same dominion, and the same quality they have everywhere. Wherever they go, they are in the same dominion and quality; for the abyss has no place, neither time nor space. As it was before the times of the world, when there was no place; so it is and remains so eternally in the abyss.
335. And though the place of this world was given to Lucifer for a kingdom (for he was created therein), yet he has been cast out from place and position, and dwells in the abyss, where he can never reach any place of the angehc kingdom; but is shut up in his own realm in the abyss, where he must bear eternal reproach as a prisoner. As is done to a malefactor, who is put into a dark dungeon away from all the beings of this world, where he must do without any mundane joy or pleasure and bear the reproach of his crime. 36. So it fares also with the devils, and with all damned souls, who he captive in the dark prison. 110 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS
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.
No commentary for this page.