Fetching
One moment.
Fetching
One moment.
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.
112. From this eternal operation of the sensation and sense-element, which very working has from eternity introduced itself into Nature and qualities, the visible world with all its host sprang, and was brought into a creaturely being. For the eternity of such working to fire, Hght and darkness has with visible world carried itself into a counterstroke, and made the separator in all the powers of the emanated being a steward of Nature, by whom the eternal will rules, makes, forms and shapes all things. 13. We can, therefore, in no wise say that God's 206 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION essence is something far off, which possesses a special abode or place ; for the abyss of Nature and creation is God himself. 14. The visible world with its host of creatures is nothing else than the emanated Word which has disposed itself into qualities, as in qualities the particular will has arisen. And with the receptibility of the Will the creaturely life arose ; which hf e has in the beginning of this world introduced itself into a receptivity for a creaturely groiuid, which the separator has separated according to the quality, and brought to a will of its own after such a fashion. And with the self-will of such desire substance or body of its likeness and quality has arisen to each receptivity; whereby the separator has signed itself and made itself visible, as is to be seen in every life.
215. In this counterstroke of the divine will we are to understand two kinds of life, viz. an eternal and a temporal. That which is eternal is in the Eternal, and arises from the eternal Word. It stands at the basis of the eternal spiritual world, in the Mysteriiini magnum of the divine counterstroke, and constitutes the intellective life at the basis of the eternal fire and light. 16. The inmost ground is a spark of the emanated will of God through the eternal divine breathing, and is united with God's Word to will nothing but what the one will of God wills through such emanation. 17. It is nothing else than a mansion of divine will, through which the divine will reveals itself; and is revealed to no peculiarity of individual will, ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 207 but only to the instrument of the divine will, by which this chooses to perforin its marvellous works. It is the separator of the divine will, an instrument of God, into which the divine will has fashioned itself so as to be a wonder-worker of omnipotence and glory, by which he will rule all things. Wherefore also the divine understanding was given to it.
318. The other life is a primal efflux of the separator of all powers, and is called the soul of the outer world. This life became creaturely in the emanated qualities, and is a life of all the creatures of the visible world, whereby the separator or creator of this world fashions itself and makes a likeness of the spiritual world, in which the power of the inward spiritual world forms, shapes and beholds itself. 19. For the spiritual world of fire, light and darkness is hidden in the visible elemental world, and works through the visible world, and by the separator imprints itself with its efflux in all things, according to each thing's kind and quality. According as each several thing is of a kind and quality, such a quality does it receive from the separator of the inward spiritual power. Not for a possession and individual power does the visible receive the invisible, that the outer might thereby be transformed into the inner. No ; that is not so. The inward power fashions itself in the way we understand this in the powers of herbs, trees and metals, that their external spirit is only an instrument of the inward spirit or of the inward power, whereby the inward power imprints itself in the external spirit. 208 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION
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.
112. From this eternal operation of the sensation and sense-element, which very working has from eternity introduced itself into Nature and qualities, the visible world with all its host sprang, and was brought into a creaturely being. For the eternity of such working to fire, Hght and darkness has with visible world carried itself into a counterstroke, and made the separator in all the powers of the emanated being a steward of Nature, by whom the eternal will rules, makes, forms and shapes all things. 13. We can, therefore, in no wise say that God's 206 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION essence is something far off, which possesses a special abode or place ; for the abyss of Nature and creation is God himself. 14. The visible world with its host of creatures is nothing else than the emanated Word which has disposed itself into qualities, as in qualities the particular will has arisen. And with the receptibility of the Will the creaturely life arose ; which hf e has in the beginning of this world introduced itself into a receptivity for a creaturely groiuid, which the separator has separated according to the quality, and brought to a will of its own after such a fashion. And with the self-will of such desire substance or body of its likeness and quality has arisen to each receptivity; whereby the separator has signed itself and made itself visible, as is to be seen in every life.
215. In this counterstroke of the divine will we are to understand two kinds of life, viz. an eternal and a temporal. That which is eternal is in the Eternal, and arises from the eternal Word. It stands at the basis of the eternal spiritual world, in the Mysteriiini magnum of the divine counterstroke, and constitutes the intellective life at the basis of the eternal fire and light. 16. The inmost ground is a spark of the emanated will of God through the eternal divine breathing, and is united with God's Word to will nothing but what the one will of God wills through such emanation. 17. It is nothing else than a mansion of divine will, through which the divine will reveals itself; and is revealed to no peculiarity of individual will, ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 207 but only to the instrument of the divine will, by which this chooses to perforin its marvellous works. It is the separator of the divine will, an instrument of God, into which the divine will has fashioned itself so as to be a wonder-worker of omnipotence and glory, by which he will rule all things. Wherefore also the divine understanding was given to it.
318. The other life is a primal efflux of the separator of all powers, and is called the soul of the outer world. This life became creaturely in the emanated qualities, and is a life of all the creatures of the visible world, whereby the separator or creator of this world fashions itself and makes a likeness of the spiritual world, in which the power of the inward spiritual world forms, shapes and beholds itself. 19. For the spiritual world of fire, light and darkness is hidden in the visible elemental world, and works through the visible world, and by the separator imprints itself with its efflux in all things, according to each thing's kind and quality. According as each several thing is of a kind and quality, such a quality does it receive from the separator of the inward spiritual power. Not for a possession and individual power does the visible receive the invisible, that the outer might thereby be transformed into the inner. No ; that is not so. The inward power fashions itself in the way we understand this in the powers of herbs, trees and metals, that their external spirit is only an instrument of the inward spirit or of the inward power, whereby the inward power imprints itself in the external spirit. 208 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION
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.
No commentary for this page.