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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.
121. Let every one, therefore, learn to know himself,— what kind of properties rule in him. If he find that all these four elements, or one only, rule in him, he has to take the field against them, or it will turn out ill in the end. He will not be permitted to comfort himself with the kingdom of heaven. Only let him not suffer the devil to wrap him round with the hypocritical cloak, as happens when men live in these four elements, and subtly flatter themselves with the sufferings of Christ. That must be the covering of this impostor. The impostor might retain his dominion, if he did not tickle himself with Christ's satisfaction. 22. Oh, how the shining coat of Christ will be stript off thee! Then will be seen standing in Babel the whore with the four virtues. It is not merely a question of taking comfort, but of keeping down the impostor, lest he become master in the house. He must not bear rule, but righteousness, love, humility and chastity, and constant cheerful well-doing. Not dissembling and giving good words, but doing. There must be doing: viz. 122 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS striving against the devil's will, contenting oneself with little, in patience shutting oneself up in hope in God, resisting the four evil elements and taking in God's four elements, which are love, meekness, mercy, and patience in hope. These should man awaken in himself, and therewith continually fight against the devil's four elements.
223. JVIan must here be at war against himself, if he wishes to become a heavenly citizen. He must not be a lazy sleeper, and with gormandizing and swilling fill his belly, whereby the devil's elements begin to qualify; but he must be temperate, sober and vigilant, as a soldier that stands before his enemy. For God's wrath fights continually against him; he will have enough to do to defend himself. 24. For the devil is his enemy, his own corrupt flesh and blood is his enemy, God's wrath is his enemy within him, and the whole world is his enemy. Wherever he looks he sees enemies, who all desire to rob him. 25. Therefore fighting must be the watchword, not with tongue and sword, but with mind and spirit; and not give over. Though body and soul should break, yet God must remain the strength of the heart, as David says (Psal. Ixxiii. 26). And though a man should see that the whole world were godless, if he purpose becoming a child of God, he must nevertheless continue steadfast. 26. And though it should seem to him that he were alone in this path, and the whole world should say: Thou art a fool, and art mad! yet he should THE SIXTH POINT 123 be as if he were dead in the world, and heard that from the mouth of the devil, who is his worst enemy. He should nowhere give ground ; but think that in his purpose he pleases God, and that God himself in him is his purpose; that he would thus deliver him from the devil, and bring him into his kingdom. Amen.
3SEX PUNCTA MYSTICA OR A SHORT EXPLANATION OF SIX MYSTICAL POINTS BY JACOB BOHME Written in the year 1620 PREFACE The precious knowledge is not found unless the soul have once conquered in the assault and struck down the devil, so that it obtains the knight's garland, which the gracious virgin Chastity puts upon it as a token of victory that it has overcome in its dear champion Christ. Then the wonderful knowledge rises, but with no perfection. 127 THE FIRST POINT On the blood and water of the soul. 1. All that is substantial and tangible is in this world. Now, since the soul is not a substance or entity in this world, neither is its blood and water a substance or entity in this world. 2. Certainly the soul with its blood and water is in the outer blood and water; but its substance is magical. For the soul is also a magical fire, and its image or form is generated in the light (in the power of its own fire and light) from the magical fire ; and yet is a veritable image in flesh and blood, but in the original state thereof. 3. As God's wisdom has being, and yet it, wisdom, is not a being; so the soul with its image has being, and yet it, the soul, is only a magical fire, but its sustenance is from its substance.
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.
121. Let every one, therefore, learn to know himself,— what kind of properties rule in him. If he find that all these four elements, or one only, rule in him, he has to take the field against them, or it will turn out ill in the end. He will not be permitted to comfort himself with the kingdom of heaven. Only let him not suffer the devil to wrap him round with the hypocritical cloak, as happens when men live in these four elements, and subtly flatter themselves with the sufferings of Christ. That must be the covering of this impostor. The impostor might retain his dominion, if he did not tickle himself with Christ's satisfaction. 22. Oh, how the shining coat of Christ will be stript off thee! Then will be seen standing in Babel the whore with the four virtues. It is not merely a question of taking comfort, but of keeping down the impostor, lest he become master in the house. He must not bear rule, but righteousness, love, humility and chastity, and constant cheerful well-doing. Not dissembling and giving good words, but doing. There must be doing: viz. 122 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS striving against the devil's will, contenting oneself with little, in patience shutting oneself up in hope in God, resisting the four evil elements and taking in God's four elements, which are love, meekness, mercy, and patience in hope. These should man awaken in himself, and therewith continually fight against the devil's four elements.
223. JVIan must here be at war against himself, if he wishes to become a heavenly citizen. He must not be a lazy sleeper, and with gormandizing and swilling fill his belly, whereby the devil's elements begin to qualify; but he must be temperate, sober and vigilant, as a soldier that stands before his enemy. For God's wrath fights continually against him; he will have enough to do to defend himself. 24. For the devil is his enemy, his own corrupt flesh and blood is his enemy, God's wrath is his enemy within him, and the whole world is his enemy. Wherever he looks he sees enemies, who all desire to rob him. 25. Therefore fighting must be the watchword, not with tongue and sword, but with mind and spirit; and not give over. Though body and soul should break, yet God must remain the strength of the heart, as David says (Psal. Ixxiii. 26). And though a man should see that the whole world were godless, if he purpose becoming a child of God, he must nevertheless continue steadfast. 26. And though it should seem to him that he were alone in this path, and the whole world should say: Thou art a fool, and art mad! yet he should THE SIXTH POINT 123 be as if he were dead in the world, and heard that from the mouth of the devil, who is his worst enemy. He should nowhere give ground ; but think that in his purpose he pleases God, and that God himself in him is his purpose; that he would thus deliver him from the devil, and bring him into his kingdom. Amen.
3SEX PUNCTA MYSTICA OR A SHORT EXPLANATION OF SIX MYSTICAL POINTS BY JACOB BOHME Written in the year 1620 PREFACE The precious knowledge is not found unless the soul have once conquered in the assault and struck down the devil, so that it obtains the knight's garland, which the gracious virgin Chastity puts upon it as a token of victory that it has overcome in its dear champion Christ. Then the wonderful knowledge rises, but with no perfection. 127 THE FIRST POINT On the blood and water of the soul. 1. All that is substantial and tangible is in this world. Now, since the soul is not a substance or entity in this world, neither is its blood and water a substance or entity in this world. 2. Certainly the soul with its blood and water is in the outer blood and water; but its substance is magical. For the soul is also a magical fire, and its image or form is generated in the light (in the power of its own fire and light) from the magical fire ; and yet is a veritable image in flesh and blood, but in the original state thereof. 3. As God's wisdom has being, and yet it, wisdom, is not a being; so the soul with its image has being, and yet it, the soul, is only a magical fire, but its sustenance is from its substance.
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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