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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.
14. As a fire must have substance if it is to burn, so likewise the magical fire of the soul has flesh, blood and water. There would be no blood if the tincture of fire and light were not in water. This tincture is the ens or life of wisdom (which has in it all the forms of of Nature), and is the other magical fire. 5. For it gives all colours; and from its form goes forth divine power in the gentle nature of the light (understand, according to the property of the 129 130 SIX MYSTICAL POINTS light in it) ; and according to the property of the fire in it, it is a sharpness of transmutation. It can bring eveiything to its highest degree; although it is not a live spirit, but the supreme ens. 6. Hence also the tincture is such an ens in water, and introduces thereinto the property of fire and of light, with all the powers of Nature; whereby it transforms the water into blood ; and this it does in the outer and inner water, as in the outer and inner blood. 7. The inner blood of the divine substantiality is also magical; for it is Magic which makes it into substance. It is spiritual blood, which outer nature cannot touch (riigen), but by imagination only. The inner imagination introduces the outer will into the inner blood, whereby the flesh and blood of the divine substantiality is corrupted, and the noble image of the likeness of God is eclipsed.
28. The soul's flesh and blood is in the highest mystery, for it is divine substantiality. And when the outer flesh and blood die, it falls unto the outer mystery, and the outer mystery falls unto the inner. 9. And every magical fire has its brightness and darkness in itself; on account of which a final day of separation is appointed, when all must pass through a fire and be proved, what shall be fit for it or not. Then everything goes into its own magic, and thereafter is as it was from eternity. THE SECOND POINT On the election of grace. On good and evil. 1. God is from eternity alone all. His essence divides itself into three eternal distinctions. One is the fire-world, the second the dark world, and the third the light-world. And yet they are but one essence, one in another; but one is not the other. 2. The three distinctions are alike eternal and without bounds, and confined in no time nor place. Each distinction shuts itself in itself in a being; and its qualification is in accordance with its property, and in its qualification is also its desire, as the centrum naturae. 3. And the desire is its making, for desire makes being where there is none, and that in the essence of the desire, according to the property of the desire. And all is together only a Magia, or a hunger after being.
34. Each form makes being in its desire; and each form fulfils itself out of the mirror of its brightness, and has its seeing in its own mirror. Its seeing is a darkness for another mirror, its form is hidden to another eye; but in feeling there is a difference. 5. For each form derives its feehng from the original state of the first three forms in Nature, viz. 131 132 SIX MYSTICAL POINTS from sour, bitter and anguish ; and yet in these three there is no pain in themselves, but fire causes pain in them, and light transforms it into gentleness again. 6. The right life is rooted in fire; there is the hinge of light and darkness. The hinge is desire; with whatever it fill itself, to the fire thereof the desire belongs, and its light shines from that fire. That light is the form or seeing of that life; and the substance introduced in the desire is the fire's wood, from which the fire burns, be it harsh or soft; and that also is its kingdom of heaven or of hell. 7. Human Hfe is the hinge between light and darkness; to whichever it give itself up, in that same does it burn. If it give itself to the desire of essence, it burns in anguish, in the fire of darkness.
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.
14. As a fire must have substance if it is to burn, so likewise the magical fire of the soul has flesh, blood and water. There would be no blood if the tincture of fire and light were not in water. This tincture is the ens or life of wisdom (which has in it all the forms of of Nature), and is the other magical fire. 5. For it gives all colours; and from its form goes forth divine power in the gentle nature of the light (understand, according to the property of the 129 130 SIX MYSTICAL POINTS light in it) ; and according to the property of the fire in it, it is a sharpness of transmutation. It can bring eveiything to its highest degree; although it is not a live spirit, but the supreme ens. 6. Hence also the tincture is such an ens in water, and introduces thereinto the property of fire and of light, with all the powers of Nature; whereby it transforms the water into blood ; and this it does in the outer and inner water, as in the outer and inner blood. 7. The inner blood of the divine substantiality is also magical; for it is Magic which makes it into substance. It is spiritual blood, which outer nature cannot touch (riigen), but by imagination only. The inner imagination introduces the outer will into the inner blood, whereby the flesh and blood of the divine substantiality is corrupted, and the noble image of the likeness of God is eclipsed.
28. The soul's flesh and blood is in the highest mystery, for it is divine substantiality. And when the outer flesh and blood die, it falls unto the outer mystery, and the outer mystery falls unto the inner. 9. And every magical fire has its brightness and darkness in itself; on account of which a final day of separation is appointed, when all must pass through a fire and be proved, what shall be fit for it or not. Then everything goes into its own magic, and thereafter is as it was from eternity. THE SECOND POINT On the election of grace. On good and evil. 1. God is from eternity alone all. His essence divides itself into three eternal distinctions. One is the fire-world, the second the dark world, and the third the light-world. And yet they are but one essence, one in another; but one is not the other. 2. The three distinctions are alike eternal and without bounds, and confined in no time nor place. Each distinction shuts itself in itself in a being; and its qualification is in accordance with its property, and in its qualification is also its desire, as the centrum naturae. 3. And the desire is its making, for desire makes being where there is none, and that in the essence of the desire, according to the property of the desire. And all is together only a Magia, or a hunger after being.
34. Each form makes being in its desire; and each form fulfils itself out of the mirror of its brightness, and has its seeing in its own mirror. Its seeing is a darkness for another mirror, its form is hidden to another eye; but in feeling there is a difference. 5. For each form derives its feehng from the original state of the first three forms in Nature, viz. 131 132 SIX MYSTICAL POINTS from sour, bitter and anguish ; and yet in these three there is no pain in themselves, but fire causes pain in them, and light transforms it into gentleness again. 6. The right life is rooted in fire; there is the hinge of light and darkness. The hinge is desire; with whatever it fill itself, to the fire thereof the desire belongs, and its light shines from that fire. That light is the form or seeing of that life; and the substance introduced in the desire is the fire's wood, from which the fire burns, be it harsh or soft; and that also is its kingdom of heaven or of hell. 7. Human Hfe is the hinge between light and darkness; to whichever it give itself up, in that same does it burn. If it give itself to the desire of essence, it burns in anguish, in the fire of darkness.
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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