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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.
120. But if there be a contrarium, as light and darkness, therein, then this contrarium is contrary to itself, and each quality occasions the other to bring itself into desire to will to fight against the other, and to dominate it. In which desire, sense ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 183 and the soul is brought into a natural and creaturely ground to a will of its own, viz. to a domination in its something, or by its centrum over all the centra, as one sense of the soul over another. 21. Hence struggle and anxiety, also contrary will, take their rise in the soul, so that the whole soul is thereby instigated to enter into a breaking of the senses, and of the self-will of the senses, as of the natural centra, and, passing out of the pain of rebellion and strife, out of anxiety, to desire to sink into the eternal rest, as into God, from whence it sprang. 22. And therefrom arise faith and hope, so that the anxious soul hopes for a deliverance, and longs to return to its origin again, viz. to God.
223. So have we Hkewise to understand the divine manifestation. For all things have their first beginning from the emanation of the divine will, whether evil or good, love or sorrow; and yet the will of God is not a thing, neither nature nor creation, wherein is no pain, sorrow nor contrary will. But from the efflux of the Word, as by the outgoing of the unfathomable mind (which is the wisdom of God or the great Mystery, where the eternal understanding is in the temperament) , has flowed understanding and knowledge ; and this efflux is a beginning of will, when the understanding has separated itself into form. Thus the forms, each in itself, became desirous to have also a counterstroke to its similarity. And this desire is a comprehendingness for selfhood or ownness, as for a place, for a something. And through this something the Mysterium 184 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION magnum, as the unnatural power, is become substantial and natural; and the something has comprehended itself so as to become an individual will.
324. For this individual will is a ground of its selfhood, and shuts itself in as a desiring will, whence the magnetic impression for sharpness and hardness has taken its origin; and is a ground of darkness and of painful feeling, whence contrary will, anxiety and flight (sensibility) have their origin ; and is a ground of Nature, from whence comes the plurality of the qualities, so that in such a contrariety each will has arisen from the other, to separate itself from pam, like as sense takes its rise from the soul, the soul through the senses being in continual anxiety, working, willing and breaking. 25. In this divine emanation, in which the divine power breathes forth itself from itself, and brings and has brought itself into Nature and creation, we are to recognize two things. First, the eternal understanding of the one good will, which is a temperament, and thus only introduces itself into a sensibility and activity for the manifestation of power, colours and virtue; that power and virtue may be reahzed in separability, in form, and the eternal wisdom be revealed and pass into knowledge. From thence also the angelic, soulic and creaturely ground has proceeded, as well as thrones and dominions, together with the visible world. 26. And then, secondly, we are to understand the original will of Nature, viz. the comprehensibility of the centra, where each centrum in the divisibility shuts itself in a place to egoism and self-will as an
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.
120. But if there be a contrarium, as light and darkness, therein, then this contrarium is contrary to itself, and each quality occasions the other to bring itself into desire to will to fight against the other, and to dominate it. In which desire, sense ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 183 and the soul is brought into a natural and creaturely ground to a will of its own, viz. to a domination in its something, or by its centrum over all the centra, as one sense of the soul over another. 21. Hence struggle and anxiety, also contrary will, take their rise in the soul, so that the whole soul is thereby instigated to enter into a breaking of the senses, and of the self-will of the senses, as of the natural centra, and, passing out of the pain of rebellion and strife, out of anxiety, to desire to sink into the eternal rest, as into God, from whence it sprang. 22. And therefrom arise faith and hope, so that the anxious soul hopes for a deliverance, and longs to return to its origin again, viz. to God.
223. So have we Hkewise to understand the divine manifestation. For all things have their first beginning from the emanation of the divine will, whether evil or good, love or sorrow; and yet the will of God is not a thing, neither nature nor creation, wherein is no pain, sorrow nor contrary will. But from the efflux of the Word, as by the outgoing of the unfathomable mind (which is the wisdom of God or the great Mystery, where the eternal understanding is in the temperament) , has flowed understanding and knowledge ; and this efflux is a beginning of will, when the understanding has separated itself into form. Thus the forms, each in itself, became desirous to have also a counterstroke to its similarity. And this desire is a comprehendingness for selfhood or ownness, as for a place, for a something. And through this something the Mysterium 184 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION magnum, as the unnatural power, is become substantial and natural; and the something has comprehended itself so as to become an individual will.
324. For this individual will is a ground of its selfhood, and shuts itself in as a desiring will, whence the magnetic impression for sharpness and hardness has taken its origin; and is a ground of darkness and of painful feeling, whence contrary will, anxiety and flight (sensibility) have their origin ; and is a ground of Nature, from whence comes the plurality of the qualities, so that in such a contrariety each will has arisen from the other, to separate itself from pam, like as sense takes its rise from the soul, the soul through the senses being in continual anxiety, working, willing and breaking. 25. In this divine emanation, in which the divine power breathes forth itself from itself, and brings and has brought itself into Nature and creation, we are to recognize two things. First, the eternal understanding of the one good will, which is a temperament, and thus only introduces itself into a sensibility and activity for the manifestation of power, colours and virtue; that power and virtue may be reahzed in separability, in form, and the eternal wisdom be revealed and pass into knowledge. From thence also the angelic, soulic and creaturely ground has proceeded, as well as thrones and dominions, together with the visible world. 26. And then, secondly, we are to understand the original will of Nature, viz. the comprehensibility of the centra, where each centrum in the divisibility shuts itself in a place to egoism and self-will as an
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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