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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.
12. Now the will governs the hfe of the craving, and doth therewith what it will. And though it doth somewhat, yet this is not known till the same reveals itself through the will, so that it becomes an entitj^ in the life of the will; then it is known what the will has wrought. 3. We recognize, therefore, the eternal Willspirit as God, and the moving life of the craving as Nature. For there is nothing prior, and either is without beginning, and each is a cause of the other, and an eternal bond, 4. Thus the Will-spirit is an eternal knowing of the unground, and the hfe of the craving an eternal being [body] of the will. 155 THE FOURTH TEXT, 1. Seeing then the craving is a process of desire, and this desire a hfe, this same desiring Mfe goes in the craving forward, and is always pregnant with the craving. 2. And the desire is a stern attraction, and yet hath nothing but itself, or the eternity without foundation. And it di*aws magically, viz. its own desiring into a substance.
23. For the will takes where there is nothing. It is a lord and possessor. It is itself not a being, and yet rules in being, and being makes it desirous, namely of being. And since it becomes in itself desirous, it is magical, and makes itself pregnant, viz. by spirit without being ; for originally it is only spirit. Thus it makes in its imagination only spirit, and becomes pregnant with spirit as with the eternal knowing of the unground, in the All-power of the life, without being. 4. As then it is pregnant, the engenderment goes within itself, and dwells in itself. For the essence of the other life cannot grasp this pregnation, and be its container. Hence the pregnation must go within itself and be its own container, as a Son in the eternal Spirit. 5. And as this pregnation has no being, then that is a voice or sound, as a Word of the spirit ; and yet 156 THE FOURTH TEXT 157 remains in the primitive condition of spirit, for it hath else no seat.
36. But in this Word is a will, which desires to go out into a being. This will is the life of the original will, and proceeds out of the pregnation, as out of the mouth of the will, into the life of Magic, viz. into Nature ; and reveals the non-understanding life of Magic, so that the same is a mysterium in which an understanding exists essentially, and thus obtains an essential spirit. There, every essence is an arcanum or a mysterium of an entire being, and is thus a comprehension as an unfathomable wonder of eternity; for many lives without number are generated, and yet all is together but one being. 7. The threefold Spirit without being is its master and possessor; and yet it possesses not the Nature-being, for it (the Spirit) dwells in itself.
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.
12. Now the will governs the hfe of the craving, and doth therewith what it will. And though it doth somewhat, yet this is not known till the same reveals itself through the will, so that it becomes an entitj^ in the life of the will; then it is known what the will has wrought. 3. We recognize, therefore, the eternal Willspirit as God, and the moving life of the craving as Nature. For there is nothing prior, and either is without beginning, and each is a cause of the other, and an eternal bond, 4. Thus the Will-spirit is an eternal knowing of the unground, and the hfe of the craving an eternal being [body] of the will. 155 THE FOURTH TEXT, 1. Seeing then the craving is a process of desire, and this desire a hfe, this same desiring Mfe goes in the craving forward, and is always pregnant with the craving. 2. And the desire is a stern attraction, and yet hath nothing but itself, or the eternity without foundation. And it di*aws magically, viz. its own desiring into a substance.
23. For the will takes where there is nothing. It is a lord and possessor. It is itself not a being, and yet rules in being, and being makes it desirous, namely of being. And since it becomes in itself desirous, it is magical, and makes itself pregnant, viz. by spirit without being ; for originally it is only spirit. Thus it makes in its imagination only spirit, and becomes pregnant with spirit as with the eternal knowing of the unground, in the All-power of the life, without being. 4. As then it is pregnant, the engenderment goes within itself, and dwells in itself. For the essence of the other life cannot grasp this pregnation, and be its container. Hence the pregnation must go within itself and be its own container, as a Son in the eternal Spirit. 5. And as this pregnation has no being, then that is a voice or sound, as a Word of the spirit ; and yet 156 THE FOURTH TEXT 157 remains in the primitive condition of spirit, for it hath else no seat.
36. But in this Word is a will, which desires to go out into a being. This will is the life of the original will, and proceeds out of the pregnation, as out of the mouth of the will, into the life of Magic, viz. into Nature ; and reveals the non-understanding life of Magic, so that the same is a mysterium in which an understanding exists essentially, and thus obtains an essential spirit. There, every essence is an arcanum or a mysterium of an entire being, and is thus a comprehension as an unfathomable wonder of eternity; for many lives without number are generated, and yet all is together but one being. 7. The threefold Spirit without being is its master and possessor; and yet it possesses not the Nature-being, for it (the Spirit) dwells in itself.
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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