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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.
117. The Anguish makes the Sulphureous Spirit; and the Compunction makes the Mercury, viz. the Work-Master of Nature, he is the Life of Nature; and the astringent Desire makes the keen Salt-Spirit; and yet all three are only one. But they divide themselves into three forms, which are called Sulphur, Mercurius, and Sal: These three Properties impress the Free Lubet into them, that it also gives a material Essentiality, which is the Oil of these three forms (viz. their Life and joy) which mollifies, meekens, and allays their Wrathfulness; and this no rational Man can deny. There is a Salt, Brimstone and Oil in all Things; and Mercurius, viz. the vital Venom [poison Life], makes the Essence in all Things; and so the Abyss brings itself into Byss and Nature. 18. Sol( ). The fourth Form of Nature is the Enkindling of the Fire ; where the sensitive [ Feeling and Understanding] and intellective Life first arise, and the hidden God manifests himself. For without Nature he is hid to all Creatures; but in the Eternal and Temporal Nature he is perceived and manifest.
219. And this Manifestation is first effected by the Awakening of the Powers, viz. by the three above-mentioned Properties, Sulphur, Mercurius, and Sal, and therein the Oil, in which the Life has its vital Being and Beauty, Life and Lustre [burns and shines]: The true Life is first manifest in the fourth Form, viz. in the Fire and Light; in the Fire the Natural, and in the Light the Oily Spiritual; and in the Power of the Light the divine intellectual [or understanding Life is manifest.] 20. Reader, attend, and mark right; I understand here, with the Description of Nature, the Eternal not the Temporal Nature: I only show thee the temporal Nature thereby, for it is expressed, or spoken forth out of the Eternal, and therefore do not foist in or alledge Calves, Cowes, or Oxen, as it is the course of irrational Reason in Babel to do. 21. First know this; that the Divine Understanding does therefore introduce itself into Fire, that its Eternal Lubet might be majestical and Lustrous [a Light] ; for the Divine Understanding receives no Source into itself: It also needs none to its own Being; for the All needs not the Something; the Something is only the Play of the All, wherewith the All does melodize and play; and that the TOTAL or All might be manifest to itself, it introduces its Will into Properties: Thus we as a Creature will write of the Properties, viz. of the manifested God; how the All, viz. the Immense, Abyssal, Eternal Understanding manifests itself.
322. Secondly, the Abyssal and Divine Understanding does therefore introduce itself into an anxious Fire-will, and Life, that its great Love and Joy, which is called God, might be manifest; for if all were only One, then the One would not be manifest to itself; but by the Manifestation the Eternal Good is known, and makes a Kingdom of Joy : Else, if there were no Anguish, then Joy would not be manifest to itself; and there would be but one only Will, which would do continually one and the same Thing. But if it introduces itself into Contrariety, then in the Contest, the Lubet of Joy becomes a Desire, and a Love-play to itself; in that it has to work and act, to speak according to our human Capacity. 23. The Original of the Eternal Spiritual and Natural Fire is effected by an Eternal Conjunction or Copulation, not each seperately, but both jointly; viz. the Divine Fire, which is a Love-flame; and Natural Fire, which is a Torment, and consuming Source: Understand it thus, as it 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.
117. The Anguish makes the Sulphureous Spirit; and the Compunction makes the Mercury, viz. the Work-Master of Nature, he is the Life of Nature; and the astringent Desire makes the keen Salt-Spirit; and yet all three are only one. But they divide themselves into three forms, which are called Sulphur, Mercurius, and Sal: These three Properties impress the Free Lubet into them, that it also gives a material Essentiality, which is the Oil of these three forms (viz. their Life and joy) which mollifies, meekens, and allays their Wrathfulness; and this no rational Man can deny. There is a Salt, Brimstone and Oil in all Things; and Mercurius, viz. the vital Venom [poison Life], makes the Essence in all Things; and so the Abyss brings itself into Byss and Nature. 18. Sol( ). The fourth Form of Nature is the Enkindling of the Fire ; where the sensitive [ Feeling and Understanding] and intellective Life first arise, and the hidden God manifests himself. For without Nature he is hid to all Creatures; but in the Eternal and Temporal Nature he is perceived and manifest.
219. And this Manifestation is first effected by the Awakening of the Powers, viz. by the three above-mentioned Properties, Sulphur, Mercurius, and Sal, and therein the Oil, in which the Life has its vital Being and Beauty, Life and Lustre [burns and shines]: The true Life is first manifest in the fourth Form, viz. in the Fire and Light; in the Fire the Natural, and in the Light the Oily Spiritual; and in the Power of the Light the divine intellectual [or understanding Life is manifest.] 20. Reader, attend, and mark right; I understand here, with the Description of Nature, the Eternal not the Temporal Nature: I only show thee the temporal Nature thereby, for it is expressed, or spoken forth out of the Eternal, and therefore do not foist in or alledge Calves, Cowes, or Oxen, as it is the course of irrational Reason in Babel to do. 21. First know this; that the Divine Understanding does therefore introduce itself into Fire, that its Eternal Lubet might be majestical and Lustrous [a Light] ; for the Divine Understanding receives no Source into itself: It also needs none to its own Being; for the All needs not the Something; the Something is only the Play of the All, wherewith the All does melodize and play; and that the TOTAL or All might be manifest to itself, it introduces its Will into Properties: Thus we as a Creature will write of the Properties, viz. of the manifested God; how the All, viz. the Immense, Abyssal, Eternal Understanding manifests itself.
322. Secondly, the Abyssal and Divine Understanding does therefore introduce itself into an anxious Fire-will, and Life, that its great Love and Joy, which is called God, might be manifest; for if all were only One, then the One would not be manifest to itself; but by the Manifestation the Eternal Good is known, and makes a Kingdom of Joy : Else, if there were no Anguish, then Joy would not be manifest to itself; and there would be but one only Will, which would do continually one and the same Thing. But if it introduces itself into Contrariety, then in the Contest, the Lubet of Joy becomes a Desire, and a Love-play to itself; in that it has to work and act, to speak according to our human Capacity. 23. The Original of the Eternal Spiritual and Natural Fire is effected by an Eternal Conjunction or Copulation, not each seperately, but both jointly; viz. the Divine Fire, which is a Love-flame; and Natural Fire, which is a Torment, and consuming Source: Understand it thus, as it 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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