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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.
1and yet it is the eternal hiddenness 2 (just as the understanding of man is not confined in time and place, but is its own comprehension and seat), and the egress of the spirit is the eternal original contemplation, viz. a lubet of the spirit. 6. The egressed 3 is called the lubet of the Deity, or the eternal wisdom, which is the eternal original of all powers, colours and virtues; by which the threefold spirit comes, in this lubet, to a desiring, namely, of the powers, colours, and virtues; and its desiring is an impressing, a conceiving itself: The will conceives the wisdom in the mind, and the conceived in the understanding is the eternal word of all colours, powers, and virtues; which the eternal will expresses 4 by the spirit from the understanding of the mind. 7. And this speaking is the motion or life of the Deity, an eye of the eternal seeing, where one power, colour and virtue does know each of the others, and does distinguish each from the other; and yet they all stand in equal proportion 5 or analogy, devoid of weight, limit or measure, also undivided one from another. All the powers, colours and virtues lie in one; and it is a distinct, mutual, well-tuned, pregnant harmony; or, as I might say, a speaking word, in which word or speaking all speeches, powers, colours and virtues are contained, and with the pronouncing or speaking they unfold themselves, and bring themselves into sight and ken.
28. This is now the eye of the abyss, the eternal chaos, wherein all (whatsoever eternity and time has) is contained; and it is called Counsel, Power, Wonder and Virtue. Its peculiar and proper name is called GOD, or JEOVA, or JEHOVAH, who is outside of all nature, without all beginnings of any essence, a working in himself; generating, finding, or perceiving himself; without any kind of source from any thing, or by any thing: He has neither beginning nor end, he is immeasurable, no number can express his largeness, and greatness, he is deeper than any thought can reach; he is nowhere far from any thing, or nigh unto any thing; he is through all, and in all: his birth is everywhere, and without and besides him there is nothing else: he is time and eternity, byss and abyss, and yet nothing comprehends him save the true understanding, which is God himself. 1 Or Tri-Une. 2 Or mystical Mystery. 3 That which is flown forth from the one eternal will. 4 Or speaks forth. 5 Text, property. The second chapter Of the Word, or Heart of God.
31. THIS is now what Saint John says, Ch. 1. In the Beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word: The same was in the Beginning with God. The Word is the Will of the Abyss: The Beginning is the Conception [or Apprehension] of the Will; where it conceives, and brings itself into an Eternal Beginning ;the (Word) is now the Conceived, which in the Will is a Nothing, and with the Conception there is a Generation : This was in the Beginning with the Will, and in the Will; but with the Lubet of the Will it receives its beginning in the Conception of the Will : Therefore it is called [a] Heart, viz. a Center or Life-Circle, wherein the Original of the Eternal Life is.
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.
1and yet it is the eternal hiddenness 2 (just as the understanding of man is not confined in time and place, but is its own comprehension and seat), and the egress of the spirit is the eternal original contemplation, viz. a lubet of the spirit. 6. The egressed 3 is called the lubet of the Deity, or the eternal wisdom, which is the eternal original of all powers, colours and virtues; by which the threefold spirit comes, in this lubet, to a desiring, namely, of the powers, colours, and virtues; and its desiring is an impressing, a conceiving itself: The will conceives the wisdom in the mind, and the conceived in the understanding is the eternal word of all colours, powers, and virtues; which the eternal will expresses 4 by the spirit from the understanding of the mind. 7. And this speaking is the motion or life of the Deity, an eye of the eternal seeing, where one power, colour and virtue does know each of the others, and does distinguish each from the other; and yet they all stand in equal proportion 5 or analogy, devoid of weight, limit or measure, also undivided one from another. All the powers, colours and virtues lie in one; and it is a distinct, mutual, well-tuned, pregnant harmony; or, as I might say, a speaking word, in which word or speaking all speeches, powers, colours and virtues are contained, and with the pronouncing or speaking they unfold themselves, and bring themselves into sight and ken.
28. This is now the eye of the abyss, the eternal chaos, wherein all (whatsoever eternity and time has) is contained; and it is called Counsel, Power, Wonder and Virtue. Its peculiar and proper name is called GOD, or JEOVA, or JEHOVAH, who is outside of all nature, without all beginnings of any essence, a working in himself; generating, finding, or perceiving himself; without any kind of source from any thing, or by any thing: He has neither beginning nor end, he is immeasurable, no number can express his largeness, and greatness, he is deeper than any thought can reach; he is nowhere far from any thing, or nigh unto any thing; he is through all, and in all: his birth is everywhere, and without and besides him there is nothing else: he is time and eternity, byss and abyss, and yet nothing comprehends him save the true understanding, which is God himself. 1 Or Tri-Une. 2 Or mystical Mystery. 3 That which is flown forth from the one eternal will. 4 Or speaks forth. 5 Text, property. The second chapter Of the Word, or Heart of God.
31. THIS is now what Saint John says, Ch. 1. In the Beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word: The same was in the Beginning with God. The Word is the Will of the Abyss: The Beginning is the Conception [or Apprehension] of the Will; where it conceives, and brings itself into an Eternal Beginning ;the (Word) is now the Conceived, which in the Will is a Nothing, and with the Conception there is a Generation : This was in the Beginning with the Will, and in the Will; but with the Lubet of the Will it receives its beginning in the Conception of the Will : Therefore it is called [a] Heart, viz. a Center or Life-Circle, wherein the Original of the Eternal Life is.
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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