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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.
12. And John says further: By the same were all Things made, and without it was not any thing made that was made : In it was the Life and the Life was the Light of Men. Here, O Man, take now this Light of Life, which was in the Word, and is Eternal, and behold the Being of all Beings, and especially thy Self, seeing Thou art an Image, Life, and Being of the unsearchable God, and a Likeness as to him : Here consider Time and Eternity, Heaven, Hell, the World, Light and Darkness, Pain and Source, Life and Death, Something and Nothing. Here examine thyself, whether thou hast the Light and Life of the Word in thee, so that thou art able to see, and understand all Things. For thy Life was in the Word, and was made manifest in the Image which God created; it was breathed into it from the Spirit of the Word. Now lift up thy Understanding in the Light of thy Life, and behold the formed Word : Consider its inward Generation, for all is manifest in the Light of Life.
23. Dost thou say I cannot; I am corrupt, and depraved? Hear me! Thou art not as yet born of God, otherwise, if thou hadst again that same Light, then thou couldst. Go to then ! We all indeed come far short of the Glory which we ought to have in God: But 1 will shew thee somewhat. Have a Care, and conceive it aright; be not a Mocker, as the confused Babel is. Lo! when we would speak of the Being of all Beings, then we say, that from God, and through God, are all Things: for St. John says also, that without him was not any Thing made that was made. 4. Now says Reason, whence or how has God made Good and Evil, Pain and Joy, Life and Death ? Is there any such Will in God which makes the Evil ? Here Reason begins to speculate, and will apprehend it; but it goes only about the Outside of the Circle, and cannot enter in; for it is without, and not in the Word of the LifeCircle.
35. Now then behold thyself, and consider what thou art; view what the outward World is with its Dominion, and thou shalt find, that thou with thy outward Spirit and Being art the outward World ; thou art a little World out of the great World; thy outward Light is a Chaos of the Sun and Stars, else thou couldst not see by the Light [Or receive Light from] of the Sun; the Stars give the Essence of Distinction in the intellective Sight. Thy Body is Fire, Air, Water, Earth; therein also lies the metalline Property; for of whatsoever the Sun with the Stars is a Spirit, of that the Earth with the other Elements is a Being [Essence, Substance, Body], a coagulated Power. What the superior [Being] is, that is also the inferior; and all the Creatures of this World are the same.
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.
12. And John says further: By the same were all Things made, and without it was not any thing made that was made : In it was the Life and the Life was the Light of Men. Here, O Man, take now this Light of Life, which was in the Word, and is Eternal, and behold the Being of all Beings, and especially thy Self, seeing Thou art an Image, Life, and Being of the unsearchable God, and a Likeness as to him : Here consider Time and Eternity, Heaven, Hell, the World, Light and Darkness, Pain and Source, Life and Death, Something and Nothing. Here examine thyself, whether thou hast the Light and Life of the Word in thee, so that thou art able to see, and understand all Things. For thy Life was in the Word, and was made manifest in the Image which God created; it was breathed into it from the Spirit of the Word. Now lift up thy Understanding in the Light of thy Life, and behold the formed Word : Consider its inward Generation, for all is manifest in the Light of Life.
23. Dost thou say I cannot; I am corrupt, and depraved? Hear me! Thou art not as yet born of God, otherwise, if thou hadst again that same Light, then thou couldst. Go to then ! We all indeed come far short of the Glory which we ought to have in God: But 1 will shew thee somewhat. Have a Care, and conceive it aright; be not a Mocker, as the confused Babel is. Lo! when we would speak of the Being of all Beings, then we say, that from God, and through God, are all Things: for St. John says also, that without him was not any Thing made that was made. 4. Now says Reason, whence or how has God made Good and Evil, Pain and Joy, Life and Death ? Is there any such Will in God which makes the Evil ? Here Reason begins to speculate, and will apprehend it; but it goes only about the Outside of the Circle, and cannot enter in; for it is without, and not in the Word of the LifeCircle.
35. Now then behold thyself, and consider what thou art; view what the outward World is with its Dominion, and thou shalt find, that thou with thy outward Spirit and Being art the outward World ; thou art a little World out of the great World; thy outward Light is a Chaos of the Sun and Stars, else thou couldst not see by the Light [Or receive Light from] of the Sun; the Stars give the Essence of Distinction in the intellective Sight. Thy Body is Fire, Air, Water, Earth; therein also lies the metalline Property; for of whatsoever the Sun with the Stars is a Spirit, of that the Earth with the other Elements is a Being [Essence, Substance, Body], a coagulated Power. What the superior [Being] is, that is also the inferior; and all the Creatures of this World are the same.
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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