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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.
128. And thus in hke manner as the outer man is a limus of the external elemental world, whose hfe has its subsistence in the power and virtue of the sun and stars, and the body, as also the earth, is a coagulation of the spmtus mundi; and if that were unable to have in its food the sun's power of light and of love, it would become wholly evil, fiery, and mortal, and the external life would necessarily perish : 29. So also, in like manner, the soul is a limus of the inward spiritual world from the Mysterium magnum, viz. from the issue and counterstroke of the divine knowledge, which must receive its nourishment from the Mysterium magnum of the divine power and knowledge. Now if it cannot have the ens of divine love for its food, so that it breaks itself off from the unground, as from resignation or renimciation, then it becomes sharp, fiery, dark, rough, stinging, envious, hostile, rebellious, and an entire restlessness itself; and introduces itself into a mortal, dying, fierce source, which is its damnation, wherein it goes to destruction, as befell the devil, and likewise befalls the wicked. 30. But if such a fire-source can again attain and receive in itself divine love, viz. the essential light of God, then this fire-source of the soul becomes transformed into a kingdom of joy, into praise to ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 201
2God. But without will that has turned round, that stands still from its own impression and shutting-in, this is not possible. For the light of the sun cannot so work in a hard stone as in herbs and trees, for the water is compacted and coagulated in the stone into a hard impression. 31. And thus it is to be understood with regard to the soul's false own will and divine gentleness, so that in such a covetous, envious fire-greed the divine gentleness accomplishes no working. Hence Christ truly said (John vi. 53) : The hfe of man which should not eat the bread that is come from heaven to give hfe to the world, has no life in it. Thereby he indicates the essential love which God has manifested in him (in Christ) by a new fountain for refreshment of the poor withered soul. The soul that should not eat thereof cannot attain the divine Light, and were without divine life. And indeed he calls himself (John viii. 12) the Light of the world. Item, in the Psahns : A Light that shines in the darkness, which changes the darkness into light (Ps. cxii. 4). CHAPTER III Of the natural ground. How Nature is a counterstroke to the divine knowledge, whereby the eternal (one) will with the unfathomable, supernatural knowledge makes itself perceptible, viable, effectual, and desireful. And what Mysterium magnum is. How all is from, through, and in God. How God is so near all things, and fills all. A highly precious gate, for the reader that loveth God to well consider.
3John i. 1-3 runs thus: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. 1. The beginning of all beings was the Word as the breath of God ; and God was the eternal One of eternity, and likewise remains so in eternity. But the Word is the efflux of the divine will or of the divine knowledge. As the senses flow from the soul, and yet the soul is but a one ; so it was with the eternal One in the efflux of the will, that is to say: In the beginning was the Word. For the Word as the efflux of the will of God is the eternal beginning, and remains so eternally. For it is the revelation of the eternal One, by and through which the divine 202 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 203 power is brought into a knowledge of somewhat. By the Word we understand the revealed will of God; and by the word God we mean the hidden God, viz. the eternal One from which the Word eternally springs forth. 2. Thus the Word is the efflux of the divine One, and yet God himself as his revelation. 3. This efflux flows from God; and what has flowed forth is wisdom, beginning and cause of all powers, colours, virtues and qualities.
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.
128. And thus in hke manner as the outer man is a limus of the external elemental world, whose hfe has its subsistence in the power and virtue of the sun and stars, and the body, as also the earth, is a coagulation of the spmtus mundi; and if that were unable to have in its food the sun's power of light and of love, it would become wholly evil, fiery, and mortal, and the external life would necessarily perish : 29. So also, in like manner, the soul is a limus of the inward spiritual world from the Mysterium magnum, viz. from the issue and counterstroke of the divine knowledge, which must receive its nourishment from the Mysterium magnum of the divine power and knowledge. Now if it cannot have the ens of divine love for its food, so that it breaks itself off from the unground, as from resignation or renimciation, then it becomes sharp, fiery, dark, rough, stinging, envious, hostile, rebellious, and an entire restlessness itself; and introduces itself into a mortal, dying, fierce source, which is its damnation, wherein it goes to destruction, as befell the devil, and likewise befalls the wicked. 30. But if such a fire-source can again attain and receive in itself divine love, viz. the essential light of God, then this fire-source of the soul becomes transformed into a kingdom of joy, into praise to ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 201
2God. But without will that has turned round, that stands still from its own impression and shutting-in, this is not possible. For the light of the sun cannot so work in a hard stone as in herbs and trees, for the water is compacted and coagulated in the stone into a hard impression. 31. And thus it is to be understood with regard to the soul's false own will and divine gentleness, so that in such a covetous, envious fire-greed the divine gentleness accomplishes no working. Hence Christ truly said (John vi. 53) : The hfe of man which should not eat the bread that is come from heaven to give hfe to the world, has no life in it. Thereby he indicates the essential love which God has manifested in him (in Christ) by a new fountain for refreshment of the poor withered soul. The soul that should not eat thereof cannot attain the divine Light, and were without divine life. And indeed he calls himself (John viii. 12) the Light of the world. Item, in the Psahns : A Light that shines in the darkness, which changes the darkness into light (Ps. cxii. 4). CHAPTER III Of the natural ground. How Nature is a counterstroke to the divine knowledge, whereby the eternal (one) will with the unfathomable, supernatural knowledge makes itself perceptible, viable, effectual, and desireful. And what Mysterium magnum is. How all is from, through, and in God. How God is so near all things, and fills all. A highly precious gate, for the reader that loveth God to well consider.
3John i. 1-3 runs thus: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. 1. The beginning of all beings was the Word as the breath of God ; and God was the eternal One of eternity, and likewise remains so in eternity. But the Word is the efflux of the divine will or of the divine knowledge. As the senses flow from the soul, and yet the soul is but a one ; so it was with the eternal One in the efflux of the will, that is to say: In the beginning was the Word. For the Word as the efflux of the will of God is the eternal beginning, and remains so eternally. For it is the revelation of the eternal One, by and through which the divine 202 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 203 power is brought into a knowledge of somewhat. By the Word we understand the revealed will of God; and by the word God we mean the hidden God, viz. the eternal One from which the Word eternally springs forth. 2. Thus the Word is the efflux of the divine One, and yet God himself as his revelation. 3. This efflux flows from God; and what has flowed forth is wisdom, beginning and cause of all powers, colours, virtues and qualities.
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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