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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.
136. And as the tinctm-e with its virtue fashioneth itself in all things with its efflux and makes itself visible, so that we mav see and know by the figure, as well as by the colours and smell, what manner of separator or efflux of divine will has emanated in the tinctm-e from the Mysterium magnum ; so likewise we may recognize in the visible world, in sun, stars, elements and all creatures, the inward ground from which they arose. 37. For no thing or being is come from afar to its place, but in the place where it grows is its ground. The elements have their cause, from which they arise, in themselves; the stars also have their chaos, wherein they stand, in themselves. 38. The elements are nothing but an image-like, moving existence of what is invisible and nonmoving. 39. The stars likewise are an efflux of the qualities of the spiritual world, according to the separation of the separator, whose ground is the Word or the separable will of God. 40. The being and motion of the elements is fire, air, water and earth, wherein is thick and thin, moist and dry, hard and soft, and these are united together in one substance. Not that each is from a particular origin, but they all proceed from a single ground, and that place where they have arisen is everywhere. We have only to conceive how at one place there may have been a greater 214 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION
2enkindling according to one quality than at another place, whereby the motion has become greater, and of material things in such form and substance more have been produced than at another place. As is to be understood by the material things of the earth, as also by the water and air, how a difference exists at each pole, or at each position above the earth. Whence also the difference of manners and of virtues, as well as of governments, laws and creatm'es. 41. But the differences of such qualities have all arisen from iheMysterium magnum, by the motion once for all of the powers of all beings, as when the one will of all beings puts itself in motion at once, and brought itself out of non-perceptibility into perceptibility and separability of powers, and made the eternal Power effectual and desireful, so that in each power a counterstroke as an individual desire has arisen. This same desire in the counterstroke of the powers has developed itself in its turn out of itself into a counterstroke, whence the desire of such efflux is become acute, strong and excessive, and has coagulated and brought itself into material things.
342. And as the efflux of the inward powers has been from light to darkness, from sharpness and gentleness, from the nature of fire and light, so has been the origination of material things. The further the efflux of a power has extended, the more outward and coarse does the matter become; for one counterstroke has proceeded out of another, unto finally the coarse earth. ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 215 43. But we must deduce correctly the ground of this philosophy, and indicate whence hard and soft have taken their origin. This we recognize in metals. For every matter which is hard, as are metals and stones, as also wood, herbs and the like, has within it a very noble tincture and high spirit of power. As also is to be recognized in the bones of creatures, how the noblest tincture according to the power of the Light, or the greatest sweetness, is in the marrow of the bones; and, on the other hand, in the blood there is only a fiery tincture, viz. in sulphur, salt and mercury. This is understood thus:
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.
136. And as the tinctm-e with its virtue fashioneth itself in all things with its efflux and makes itself visible, so that we mav see and know by the figure, as well as by the colours and smell, what manner of separator or efflux of divine will has emanated in the tinctm-e from the Mysterium magnum ; so likewise we may recognize in the visible world, in sun, stars, elements and all creatures, the inward ground from which they arose. 37. For no thing or being is come from afar to its place, but in the place where it grows is its ground. The elements have their cause, from which they arise, in themselves; the stars also have their chaos, wherein they stand, in themselves. 38. The elements are nothing but an image-like, moving existence of what is invisible and nonmoving. 39. The stars likewise are an efflux of the qualities of the spiritual world, according to the separation of the separator, whose ground is the Word or the separable will of God. 40. The being and motion of the elements is fire, air, water and earth, wherein is thick and thin, moist and dry, hard and soft, and these are united together in one substance. Not that each is from a particular origin, but they all proceed from a single ground, and that place where they have arisen is everywhere. We have only to conceive how at one place there may have been a greater 214 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION
2enkindling according to one quality than at another place, whereby the motion has become greater, and of material things in such form and substance more have been produced than at another place. As is to be understood by the material things of the earth, as also by the water and air, how a difference exists at each pole, or at each position above the earth. Whence also the difference of manners and of virtues, as well as of governments, laws and creatm'es. 41. But the differences of such qualities have all arisen from iheMysterium magnum, by the motion once for all of the powers of all beings, as when the one will of all beings puts itself in motion at once, and brought itself out of non-perceptibility into perceptibility and separability of powers, and made the eternal Power effectual and desireful, so that in each power a counterstroke as an individual desire has arisen. This same desire in the counterstroke of the powers has developed itself in its turn out of itself into a counterstroke, whence the desire of such efflux is become acute, strong and excessive, and has coagulated and brought itself into material things.
342. And as the efflux of the inward powers has been from light to darkness, from sharpness and gentleness, from the nature of fire and light, so has been the origination of material things. The further the efflux of a power has extended, the more outward and coarse does the matter become; for one counterstroke has proceeded out of another, unto finally the coarse earth. ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 215 43. But we must deduce correctly the ground of this philosophy, and indicate whence hard and soft have taken their origin. This we recognize in metals. For every matter which is hard, as are metals and stones, as also wood, herbs and the like, has within it a very noble tincture and high spirit of power. As also is to be recognized in the bones of creatures, how the noblest tincture according to the power of the Light, or the greatest sweetness, is in the marrow of the bones; and, on the other hand, in the blood there is only a fiery tincture, viz. in sulphur, salt and mercury. This is understood thus:
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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