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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.
124. One Part, viz. the Will of the Father, or of the Abyss, introduces itself into the greatest Sharpness of the Astringency, where it is a cold Fire, a cold painful Source, and it is Sharpened by the Astringent Compunctive Anguish; and in this Anguish it comes to desire the Liberty, viz. the free Lubet, or Meekness; and the other Part is the Free Lubet, which desires to be manifest; it longs after the Will of the Father, which has generated it without Nature, and uses it for its Play; this here does again desire the Will, and the Will has here reconceived itself to go again out of the Anguish into the Liberty; viz. the Lubet. 25. Understand; that it is the re-conceived Will which desires the Free Lubet of God: But now it has taken into itself the horrible, astringent, hard, compunctive Sharpness; and the Free Lubet is a great Meekness, in reference to the wrathful Nature, as a Nothing, and yet it is: Now both these dash together in one another; the sharp Will eagerly and mightily desires the Fire-Lubet, and the Lubet desires the Austere Will, and in that they enter into and feel each other, a great Flagrat is made, like a Flash of Lightning; in manner as the Fire, or celestial Lightning, or etherial Blaze, is enkindled in the Firmament.
226. And in this Flagrat the Fire is enkindled: for the Astringent harsh Darkness, which is cold, is dismayed at the Light and great Meekness of the Free Lubet, and becomes in itself a Flagrat of Death, where the Wrathfulness and cold Property retires back into itself, and closes up itself as a Death; for in the Flagrat the dark Mind becomes essential; it sadly betakes itself into itself; as a great Fear before the Light [as being afraid, or dismayed at the Light] ; or as an Enmity of the Light; and this is the true Original of the dark World, viz. of the Abyss, into which the Devils are thrust, which we call Hell. The fourth Chapter Of the Two Principles, viz. God's Love, and Anger; of Darkness, and Light; very necessary for the Reader to consider of In this Flagrat, or Enkindling of the Fire, two Kingdoms sever themselves, and yet are only one; but they divide in the Essence, Source and Will, and are invisible to one another; the one comprehends not the other in its own Source, and yet they proceed from one Original, and are dependant on one another; and the one without the other were a Nothing, and yet both receive their Source from One Original. Understand it thus: When the Blaze or Flagrat arises, then it is in the Punctum, and makes immediately a Triangle, or a Cross:
3And this is the true Meaning of the Character First, it is the Keenness of all Things; and God manifested in Trinity: The Triangle betokens the hidden God; viz. the Word or Divine Understanding; which is threefold in its eternal unbeginning Birth, and yet only one in its Manifestation: In the Fire and Light World this Trinity manifests itself in the Birth; not as if there were any Place where such a Figure did stand; no; but the whole Birth is so; wherever the Divine Fire manifests itself in any Thing, it makes in its Inflammation a Triangle, ^X^ which the Children of men ought seriously to observe, and how likewise the Life enkindles itself in a Triangle, which betokens the Holy Trinity. And seeing the Light of Life was in the Word of the Deity, which [Word] was breathed into Man, (as John says in his first Chapter) and yet disappeared in Paradise, in relation to God, therefore it must be born again on the T. 3. The upper Cross betokens the unformed Word in Trinity wholly without Nature, and the Character is thus set A ; and this Character The Explanation of the foregoing Characters betokens the formed Word^, viz. the 4. But that the Triangle with the three straight Cusps has changed itself into such a T. on which Death was slain, points out and betokens unto us the great Love of God which has freely given itself again into our Humanity out of the Triangle, when we were departed from the Triangle in the Light of Life.
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.
124. One Part, viz. the Will of the Father, or of the Abyss, introduces itself into the greatest Sharpness of the Astringency, where it is a cold Fire, a cold painful Source, and it is Sharpened by the Astringent Compunctive Anguish; and in this Anguish it comes to desire the Liberty, viz. the free Lubet, or Meekness; and the other Part is the Free Lubet, which desires to be manifest; it longs after the Will of the Father, which has generated it without Nature, and uses it for its Play; this here does again desire the Will, and the Will has here reconceived itself to go again out of the Anguish into the Liberty; viz. the Lubet. 25. Understand; that it is the re-conceived Will which desires the Free Lubet of God: But now it has taken into itself the horrible, astringent, hard, compunctive Sharpness; and the Free Lubet is a great Meekness, in reference to the wrathful Nature, as a Nothing, and yet it is: Now both these dash together in one another; the sharp Will eagerly and mightily desires the Fire-Lubet, and the Lubet desires the Austere Will, and in that they enter into and feel each other, a great Flagrat is made, like a Flash of Lightning; in manner as the Fire, or celestial Lightning, or etherial Blaze, is enkindled in the Firmament.
226. And in this Flagrat the Fire is enkindled: for the Astringent harsh Darkness, which is cold, is dismayed at the Light and great Meekness of the Free Lubet, and becomes in itself a Flagrat of Death, where the Wrathfulness and cold Property retires back into itself, and closes up itself as a Death; for in the Flagrat the dark Mind becomes essential; it sadly betakes itself into itself; as a great Fear before the Light [as being afraid, or dismayed at the Light] ; or as an Enmity of the Light; and this is the true Original of the dark World, viz. of the Abyss, into which the Devils are thrust, which we call Hell. The fourth Chapter Of the Two Principles, viz. God's Love, and Anger; of Darkness, and Light; very necessary for the Reader to consider of In this Flagrat, or Enkindling of the Fire, two Kingdoms sever themselves, and yet are only one; but they divide in the Essence, Source and Will, and are invisible to one another; the one comprehends not the other in its own Source, and yet they proceed from one Original, and are dependant on one another; and the one without the other were a Nothing, and yet both receive their Source from One Original. Understand it thus: When the Blaze or Flagrat arises, then it is in the Punctum, and makes immediately a Triangle, or a Cross:
3And this is the true Meaning of the Character First, it is the Keenness of all Things; and God manifested in Trinity: The Triangle betokens the hidden God; viz. the Word or Divine Understanding; which is threefold in its eternal unbeginning Birth, and yet only one in its Manifestation: In the Fire and Light World this Trinity manifests itself in the Birth; not as if there were any Place where such a Figure did stand; no; but the whole Birth is so; wherever the Divine Fire manifests itself in any Thing, it makes in its Inflammation a Triangle, ^X^ which the Children of men ought seriously to observe, and how likewise the Life enkindles itself in a Triangle, which betokens the Holy Trinity. And seeing the Light of Life was in the Word of the Deity, which [Word] was breathed into Man, (as John says in his first Chapter) and yet disappeared in Paradise, in relation to God, therefore it must be born again on the T. 3. The upper Cross betokens the unformed Word in Trinity wholly without Nature, and the Character is thus set A ; and this Character The Explanation of the foregoing Characters betokens the formed Word^, viz. the 4. But that the Triangle with the three straight Cusps has changed itself into such a T. on which Death was slain, points out and betokens unto us the great Love of God which has freely given itself again into our Humanity out of the Triangle, when we were departed from the Triangle in the Light of Life.
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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