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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.
173. Fierce wrathful death is thus a root of life. And here, ye men, consider your death and also Christ's death, who has begotten us again out of death through the fire of God; for out of death is the free life born. Whatever can go out from death is released from death and the source of wrath. That is now its kingdom of joy, that there is no longer any fierce source in it ; it has remained away from it in death (in the dark world) . And thus out of death life attains eternal freedom, where there is no more any fear or terror; for in life the terror is broken. 74. The right life is a power of joy, a perpetual well-being and pleasing delight; for there is no pain in it, save only a desire, which has all the property of pain, and yet the pain cannot uplift itself in it so as to kindle its property therein, for light and freedom hinder that. THE FIRST POINT 31 CHAPTER II Of the propriuni of the principle. What the principle is, or what they all three are. 1. When life and movement appears, which previously existed not, a principle is present. Fire is a principle with its property, and light is also a principle with its property, for it is generated from fire, and yet is not the fire's property. It has also its own life in itself, but fire is cause thereof, and the terrible anguish is a cause of both.
22. But the will to anguish, which gives birth to the anguishful nature, and which is called Father, that it is impossible to search out. We inquire only how it brings itself into the highest perfection, into the being of the Holy Trinity; and how it manifests itself in three principles, and how the essence of each source arises ; what essence is, whence life with the senses has its origin, and the wonder of all beings. 3. Thus, we recognize the third principle, or the source of this world, with the stars and elements, to be a creation from the mai'vels of the eternal wisdom. 4. The third principle manifests the first two, though each is manifest in itself. But the eternal Being has willed in his wonders, which have been beheld in wisdom, to manifest himself in such a 32 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS
3property, viz. according to the ground of eternity, according to the source of wrath and of love; and has created all into a creaturely and figurative being, evil and good according to the eternal origin. As we plainly see that in this world there is evil and good; of which, however, the devils are a gi*eat cause, who in their creation have at the fall moved more vehemently the fierce matrix in the wrath, God having moved himself more exceedingly according to the property of wrath, to cast them forth out of light into the death of fierce wrathfulness; whereby also the heavenly Essence was moved, so that very much which stood in freedom has become shut up in the earthly essence. 5. As we see in gold and its tincture, which is free from the earthly essence. For it resists fire and every quality, no quality can hold it in check, but only God's will; and that must come to pass repeatedly by reason of the unworthiness of the world. 6. And if we rightly consider the creation of this world and the spirit of the third principle, viz. the spirit of the great world with the stars and elements, we find therein the property of the eternal world as it were mixed, like unto a great marvel, whereby God, the highest good, has willed to manifest and bring into being the eternal wonders which existed in mystery.
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.
173. Fierce wrathful death is thus a root of life. And here, ye men, consider your death and also Christ's death, who has begotten us again out of death through the fire of God; for out of death is the free life born. Whatever can go out from death is released from death and the source of wrath. That is now its kingdom of joy, that there is no longer any fierce source in it ; it has remained away from it in death (in the dark world) . And thus out of death life attains eternal freedom, where there is no more any fear or terror; for in life the terror is broken. 74. The right life is a power of joy, a perpetual well-being and pleasing delight; for there is no pain in it, save only a desire, which has all the property of pain, and yet the pain cannot uplift itself in it so as to kindle its property therein, for light and freedom hinder that. THE FIRST POINT 31 CHAPTER II Of the propriuni of the principle. What the principle is, or what they all three are. 1. When life and movement appears, which previously existed not, a principle is present. Fire is a principle with its property, and light is also a principle with its property, for it is generated from fire, and yet is not the fire's property. It has also its own life in itself, but fire is cause thereof, and the terrible anguish is a cause of both.
22. But the will to anguish, which gives birth to the anguishful nature, and which is called Father, that it is impossible to search out. We inquire only how it brings itself into the highest perfection, into the being of the Holy Trinity; and how it manifests itself in three principles, and how the essence of each source arises ; what essence is, whence life with the senses has its origin, and the wonder of all beings. 3. Thus, we recognize the third principle, or the source of this world, with the stars and elements, to be a creation from the mai'vels of the eternal wisdom. 4. The third principle manifests the first two, though each is manifest in itself. But the eternal Being has willed in his wonders, which have been beheld in wisdom, to manifest himself in such a 32 SIX THEOSOPHIC POINTS
3property, viz. according to the ground of eternity, according to the source of wrath and of love; and has created all into a creaturely and figurative being, evil and good according to the eternal origin. As we plainly see that in this world there is evil and good; of which, however, the devils are a gi*eat cause, who in their creation have at the fall moved more vehemently the fierce matrix in the wrath, God having moved himself more exceedingly according to the property of wrath, to cast them forth out of light into the death of fierce wrathfulness; whereby also the heavenly Essence was moved, so that very much which stood in freedom has become shut up in the earthly essence. 5. As we see in gold and its tincture, which is free from the earthly essence. For it resists fire and every quality, no quality can hold it in check, but only God's will; and that must come to pass repeatedly by reason of the unworthiness of the world. 6. And if we rightly consider the creation of this world and the spirit of the third principle, viz. the spirit of the great world with the stars and elements, we find therein the property of the eternal world as it were mixed, like unto a great marvel, whereby God, the highest good, has willed to manifest and bring into being the eternal wonders which existed in mystery.
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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