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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.
144. God is the eternal One, or the greatest gentleness [stillness,] so far as he exists in himself independently of his motion and manifestation. But in his motion he is called a God in trinity, that is, a triune Being, where we speak of three and yet but of one, and in accordance with which he is called the eternal Power and Word. This is the precious and supreme ground, and thus to be considered: The divine will shuts itself in a place to selfhood, as to power, and becomes active in itself; but also by its activity goes forth, and makes for itself an object,^ viz. wisdom, through which the ground and origin of all beings has arisen. 45. In like manner know this: All that is soft, gentle and thin in the existence of this world is emanating and self -giving; and its ground and origin is in accordance with the Unity of eternity, the Unity perpetually emanating from itself. And 216 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION indeed in the very nature of thinness or rarity, as in water and air, we understand no sensation or pain, so far as that nature is one in itself.
246. But whatever is hard and impressing, as bones, wood, herbs, metals, fire, earth, stones, and the like material things, — therein is the image of di\ane power and motion, and shuts itself up with its separator (viz. the efflux of divine desire) against the coarseness, as a noble jewel or sparkle of divine power. And it is hard and fiery on this account, that it hath its own ground of divine inclusion, as where the eternal One introduces itself continually into a ground of threefoldness for motion of powers, and yet shuts itself up against the efflux, as against the introduction of the particular will of Nature, and with the power of the Unity works through Nature. 47. And so it is to be understood in regard to the noble tinctui'e. Where it is noblest, there it is most of all shut up with the hardness. For the Unity is involved in it in a mobiUty, as in a sensation of activity, and therefore it is hidden, but in thinness or rarity it is involved not in such sensation, but is one with all things. As indeed water and air are one with all things, and are in all things. But the dry water is the true pearly foundation, in which the subtle power of the working of the Unity is in the centre. To ours, who are worthy of this, it is hereby intimated, that they should not give their attention to the soft and yielding apart from the fiery nature, to seek ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 217 the mystery therein. Understand this mystery thus:
348. That the soft and thin arises from the Unity, from its emanation, from the Mysterium magnum, and is nearest to the Unity; and, on the other hand, the noblest ground of divine revelation, both in power and operation, lies in the fiery hardness, and is a dry unity or a temperament, wherein again is contained the separability of all powers. For, where powers are comprised not in the unity of a will, there the will is divided, and no great power is to be understood in that thing. Which ought well to be observed by the physicians, that they should not look to the coarse spiritus of strong smell, and regard that as the true balsam; although it is present therein, and so is the tincture therein very mobile and evolant. 49. The spiritus or spiritual essences of the strong power in smell must be brought into the temperament, into unity, and not be flying from it, whereby men attempt to cure with salt, as with the sharpness of fire, and give to the patient soul without spirit. 50. The soul of such balsams is separated in the qualities; each one gives itself in its great joy separately, but in separation they are too rebellious. They unite not life's enmity and division, but kindle life's division more. 51. Shut them up and make them one, so that they all have one will in love, and you have the 218 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION pearl of the whole world. To provoke to wrath causes pride and strife, which is to be recognized in all things.
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.
144. God is the eternal One, or the greatest gentleness [stillness,] so far as he exists in himself independently of his motion and manifestation. But in his motion he is called a God in trinity, that is, a triune Being, where we speak of three and yet but of one, and in accordance with which he is called the eternal Power and Word. This is the precious and supreme ground, and thus to be considered: The divine will shuts itself in a place to selfhood, as to power, and becomes active in itself; but also by its activity goes forth, and makes for itself an object,^ viz. wisdom, through which the ground and origin of all beings has arisen. 45. In like manner know this: All that is soft, gentle and thin in the existence of this world is emanating and self -giving; and its ground and origin is in accordance with the Unity of eternity, the Unity perpetually emanating from itself. And 216 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION indeed in the very nature of thinness or rarity, as in water and air, we understand no sensation or pain, so far as that nature is one in itself.
246. But whatever is hard and impressing, as bones, wood, herbs, metals, fire, earth, stones, and the like material things, — therein is the image of di\ane power and motion, and shuts itself up with its separator (viz. the efflux of divine desire) against the coarseness, as a noble jewel or sparkle of divine power. And it is hard and fiery on this account, that it hath its own ground of divine inclusion, as where the eternal One introduces itself continually into a ground of threefoldness for motion of powers, and yet shuts itself up against the efflux, as against the introduction of the particular will of Nature, and with the power of the Unity works through Nature. 47. And so it is to be understood in regard to the noble tinctui'e. Where it is noblest, there it is most of all shut up with the hardness. For the Unity is involved in it in a mobiUty, as in a sensation of activity, and therefore it is hidden, but in thinness or rarity it is involved not in such sensation, but is one with all things. As indeed water and air are one with all things, and are in all things. But the dry water is the true pearly foundation, in which the subtle power of the working of the Unity is in the centre. To ours, who are worthy of this, it is hereby intimated, that they should not give their attention to the soft and yielding apart from the fiery nature, to seek ON THE DIVINE INTUITION 217 the mystery therein. Understand this mystery thus:
348. That the soft and thin arises from the Unity, from its emanation, from the Mysterium magnum, and is nearest to the Unity; and, on the other hand, the noblest ground of divine revelation, both in power and operation, lies in the fiery hardness, and is a dry unity or a temperament, wherein again is contained the separability of all powers. For, where powers are comprised not in the unity of a will, there the will is divided, and no great power is to be understood in that thing. Which ought well to be observed by the physicians, that they should not look to the coarse spiritus of strong smell, and regard that as the true balsam; although it is present therein, and so is the tincture therein very mobile and evolant. 49. The spiritus or spiritual essences of the strong power in smell must be brought into the temperament, into unity, and not be flying from it, whereby men attempt to cure with salt, as with the sharpness of fire, and give to the patient soul without spirit. 50. The soul of such balsams is separated in the qualities; each one gives itself in its great joy separately, but in separation they are too rebellious. They unite not life's enmity and division, but kindle life's division more. 51. Shut them up and make them one, so that they all have one will in love, and you have the 218 ON THE DIVINE INTUITION pearl of the whole world. To provoke to wrath causes pride and strife, which is to be recognized in all things.
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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