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.
123. Now says reason, Wherefore did it rain just forty days and forty nights; could not God have drowned the world in one hour? Answer: In the space of forty days the turba was borne in the human property, viz. Adam before his Eve stood in the image of God forty days and nights, which yet in the image of God were only as one day. There he wrought forty days in his desire, viz. in the Fiat, and brought forth the turba in himself; in his lust after the grossness of the earth: the good part of the lirous of the earth, which was drawn, in the Verbum Fiat, into a mass, did hunger after the evil, gross part, which was of the dark world's property. 24. And even in forty days the grossness did arise in his imagination in the good ens, viz. a self-full will to the perception or intromission of the gross earthliness, in which evil and good was made manifest. And when this same will's spirit was arisen in the desire, it entered into its own self-full dominion, and in its fiery and earthly might strongly suppressed the holy spiritual ens in the word of power. Even then Adam fell asleep, viz. into an impotency and disability of the angelical spiritual world, and the woman was taken out of him; and both were in this turba formed 1 unto the outward natural life. 1 Text, figured.
225. This turba is that wherein God did also set the curse, which with Noah was first at the end, which God said, The end of all flesh is come up before me. And out of this forty-days-produced turba, the fountains of the deep did arise in the water source, and drowned the turba in the flesh of these sexes. 26. For from the sin of Aclam came the deluge over the world; and this forty-days-produced turba was the sin in the flesh. Otherwise, if the water-fountain had not opened itself the fire-fountain had proceeded forth out of the turba in the wrath of God. Therefore God said, It repented him, that he had made the creatures; and his sorrow went into the turba, and drowned it. 27. And let the Reader be put in mind, that so of ten as he finds the number forty in the holy Scripture, that it altogether, in the beginning, points at the forty-days-produced turba. For instance, the forty days of Moses upon Mount Sinai: the forty years in the wilderness: also the forty hours of Christ in the grave. Also the forty days after his resurrection, before his ascension, do all belong unto this; and all the numbers forty in the secret and mystical prophetical sayings of the prophets: for out of this turba the prophet is arisen, with his prophecy.
328. But in that I say, that if the water-fountain had not been opened, the fire-fountain would have broken forth: is also true. For the children in the turba would have also burnt Noah in the ark with fire, if the most high had not hindered and prevented them with the water: for the fire's turba was moved in them. This was the world's end, or the end of all flesh: for at the end all shall be purified and purged in the fire's turba; for it will enkindle itself: 29. There is a very great mystery in that which the spirit says in Moses: Noah was five hundred years old when he begat Sent, Ham and Japhet, which otherwise is against the ordinary course of nature, to beget children in such a natural age. Also there is a very great mystery in that God said that he would give the world an hundred and twenty years respite; and yet the deluge came in the sixhundredth year of Noah, viz. in the hundredth year after the warning or notice thereof: And it signifies the abbreviation of time in its natural course, and also the end of the world, how that there shall be an abbreviation or shortening of time in the circle of the conclusion of all beings, of which we will mention something in a Treatise by itself; if the same be permitted us. 1 1 Query: this Treatise by itself.
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.
123. Now says reason, Wherefore did it rain just forty days and forty nights; could not God have drowned the world in one hour? Answer: In the space of forty days the turba was borne in the human property, viz. Adam before his Eve stood in the image of God forty days and nights, which yet in the image of God were only as one day. There he wrought forty days in his desire, viz. in the Fiat, and brought forth the turba in himself; in his lust after the grossness of the earth: the good part of the lirous of the earth, which was drawn, in the Verbum Fiat, into a mass, did hunger after the evil, gross part, which was of the dark world's property. 24. And even in forty days the grossness did arise in his imagination in the good ens, viz. a self-full will to the perception or intromission of the gross earthliness, in which evil and good was made manifest. And when this same will's spirit was arisen in the desire, it entered into its own self-full dominion, and in its fiery and earthly might strongly suppressed the holy spiritual ens in the word of power. Even then Adam fell asleep, viz. into an impotency and disability of the angelical spiritual world, and the woman was taken out of him; and both were in this turba formed 1 unto the outward natural life. 1 Text, figured.
225. This turba is that wherein God did also set the curse, which with Noah was first at the end, which God said, The end of all flesh is come up before me. And out of this forty-days-produced turba, the fountains of the deep did arise in the water source, and drowned the turba in the flesh of these sexes. 26. For from the sin of Aclam came the deluge over the world; and this forty-days-produced turba was the sin in the flesh. Otherwise, if the water-fountain had not opened itself the fire-fountain had proceeded forth out of the turba in the wrath of God. Therefore God said, It repented him, that he had made the creatures; and his sorrow went into the turba, and drowned it. 27. And let the Reader be put in mind, that so of ten as he finds the number forty in the holy Scripture, that it altogether, in the beginning, points at the forty-days-produced turba. For instance, the forty days of Moses upon Mount Sinai: the forty years in the wilderness: also the forty hours of Christ in the grave. Also the forty days after his resurrection, before his ascension, do all belong unto this; and all the numbers forty in the secret and mystical prophetical sayings of the prophets: for out of this turba the prophet is arisen, with his prophecy.
328. But in that I say, that if the water-fountain had not been opened, the fire-fountain would have broken forth: is also true. For the children in the turba would have also burnt Noah in the ark with fire, if the most high had not hindered and prevented them with the water: for the fire's turba was moved in them. This was the world's end, or the end of all flesh: for at the end all shall be purified and purged in the fire's turba; for it will enkindle itself: 29. There is a very great mystery in that which the spirit says in Moses: Noah was five hundred years old when he begat Sent, Ham and Japhet, which otherwise is against the ordinary course of nature, to beget children in such a natural age. Also there is a very great mystery in that God said that he would give the world an hundred and twenty years respite; and yet the deluge came in the sixhundredth year of Noah, viz. in the hundredth year after the warning or notice thereof: And it signifies the abbreviation of time in its natural course, and also the end of the world, how that there shall be an abbreviation or shortening of time in the circle of the conclusion of all beings, of which we will mention something in a Treatise by itself; if the same be permitted us. 1 1 Query: this Treatise by itself.
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.