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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.
1Nor do they desire to come out, because of the great reproach of their horrible form and image. And wherever they go, yet they never enjoy any good; there is among them no refreshment. But they lie in hell as the dead, or as eternally hungry, fainting and thirsty; and are only an evil poisonsource. All is to them adverse and contrary. They have only a thirst after anguish and malice; these they devour eternally, and bring forth blasphemies upon themselves. The more horrible they can make their figure, the more pleasing that is to them. Like buffoons, who on earth would fain be always the greatest fools, give themselves a hideous appearance, and have their delight therein; so they do also eternally in hell, and accordingly they begin the game here on earth. As the tyrant delights when he can torment men, and spend their sweat in show and luxury, in foolish strange attire and behaviour, and ape the fool; so do also the devils in hell. And the luxury of this world in its strange garb is a true type of the hellish world.
237. AH the curious tassels and tufts which the proud man devises, and clothes his foolish man therewith, whereby he would be distinguished from the true children of God, are types of the hellish world. All his bedizenment, glittering show and ostentation, by which he withdraws himself from humility, is a hellish mirror; for the devil's pride will be like to none, it keeps itself distinct in this world. And the blind man understands not this, how the devil fools and deceives him, and thus only THE SIXTH POINT ill to mock God prefigures his own proud mask; so that the poor man does as he does, and thinks he is thereby fine, and better than other men, whereas we all arise and proceed from one body and spirit. But before God and his angels he is recognized only as a devil's mask, and is in the sight of heaven an abomination. As a fool in comparison with wisdom is but an abomination, so is also hypocritical pride an abomination before God and his angels, in presence of the noble image. The world still cleaves to this abomination, and therewith marks out the corrupt image of earthliness.
338, He who sees a proud man sees the heavy fall of Adam, and a type of the hellish world; a half devil and half man, to whom the devil has continual access. For he is the devil's servant in this world; the devil does his work thi'ough him, and the poor man knows it not, and so enters the devil's service to his eternal reproach. He thinks he is thereby fine and important, and is thereby in the sight of God only as a fool, who puts on strange clothing and takes to himself animal form. 112 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS CHAPTER X Of the four elements of the devil and of the dark world; how we shall know them in this outer world, 1. The first element of the dark world and of the devil is pride, the second covetousness, the third envy, the fourth anger. These four elements are everlastingly hatching a young son, who is called Falsehood. This son is also a true son of the corrupt Adam, whom he left behind him to be a lord of the world. He has become king in the world, and has possessed the whole world, and rules everywhere in the third principle. Whoever rightly knows this king, knows the four elements of the devil ; for in the dark world these four elements have entire dominion in spirit and body, and in all that is called being.
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.
1Nor do they desire to come out, because of the great reproach of their horrible form and image. And wherever they go, yet they never enjoy any good; there is among them no refreshment. But they lie in hell as the dead, or as eternally hungry, fainting and thirsty; and are only an evil poisonsource. All is to them adverse and contrary. They have only a thirst after anguish and malice; these they devour eternally, and bring forth blasphemies upon themselves. The more horrible they can make their figure, the more pleasing that is to them. Like buffoons, who on earth would fain be always the greatest fools, give themselves a hideous appearance, and have their delight therein; so they do also eternally in hell, and accordingly they begin the game here on earth. As the tyrant delights when he can torment men, and spend their sweat in show and luxury, in foolish strange attire and behaviour, and ape the fool; so do also the devils in hell. And the luxury of this world in its strange garb is a true type of the hellish world.
237. AH the curious tassels and tufts which the proud man devises, and clothes his foolish man therewith, whereby he would be distinguished from the true children of God, are types of the hellish world. All his bedizenment, glittering show and ostentation, by which he withdraws himself from humility, is a hellish mirror; for the devil's pride will be like to none, it keeps itself distinct in this world. And the blind man understands not this, how the devil fools and deceives him, and thus only THE SIXTH POINT ill to mock God prefigures his own proud mask; so that the poor man does as he does, and thinks he is thereby fine, and better than other men, whereas we all arise and proceed from one body and spirit. But before God and his angels he is recognized only as a devil's mask, and is in the sight of heaven an abomination. As a fool in comparison with wisdom is but an abomination, so is also hypocritical pride an abomination before God and his angels, in presence of the noble image. The world still cleaves to this abomination, and therewith marks out the corrupt image of earthliness.
338, He who sees a proud man sees the heavy fall of Adam, and a type of the hellish world; a half devil and half man, to whom the devil has continual access. For he is the devil's servant in this world; the devil does his work thi'ough him, and the poor man knows it not, and so enters the devil's service to his eternal reproach. He thinks he is thereby fine and important, and is thereby in the sight of God only as a fool, who puts on strange clothing and takes to himself animal form. 112 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS CHAPTER X Of the four elements of the devil and of the dark world; how we shall know them in this outer world, 1. The first element of the dark world and of the devil is pride, the second covetousness, the third envy, the fourth anger. These four elements are everlastingly hatching a young son, who is called Falsehood. This son is also a true son of the corrupt Adam, whom he left behind him to be a lord of the world. He has become king in the world, and has possessed the whole world, and rules everywhere in the third principle. Whoever rightly knows this king, knows the four elements of the devil ; for in the dark world these four elements have entire dominion in spirit and body, and in all that is called being.
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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