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.
15. Therefore the great Angle waves downwards, betokening the great Humility, and also that we have lost the fiery Angle which ascends on High; in which we were the Image and Likeness of God: Therefore the Angle in the Regeneration in the T« has turned itself downward, and ascends not upward any more with its Cusp, betokening now unto us the true Resignation under the T» where we in the Spirit of Christ shall be born again through the great Humility of God in the Light. 6. Now the Will seperates itself in the Fire's Flagrat into two Kingdoms, where each dwells in itself, viz. the Flagrat in the Darkness is God's Anger, and the Flagrat in the Re-conception to the Free Lubet becomes the Highly Triumphant Divine Kingdom of Joy in the Free Lubet: for thus the free Lubet is elevated and brought into a wrestling Love-play, and so it becomes springing and working. 7. Not that we mean that God thus receives a Beginning; but it is the eternal Beginning of God manifested; viz. how the Divine Understanding manifests itself with Power in distinct Variety, and works itself forth into a Kingdom; which is an eternal Generation. We only speak here how the invisible unperceivable God introduces himself into Perception for his own Manifestation.
28. Now we are to understand by the Inflammation of the Fire a twofold Fire, a twofold Spirit, and a twofold Essence; viz. a Love-fire in the Free Lubet, which is made essential with impression or Desire; and in the Fire the Spirit and Essence severize, and yet are mutually in one another, as Soul and Body are one. And now as the Spirit is, so is the Essence; and as there is an holy sweet Essence, and an holy sweet Spirit, in the Impression of the Free Lubet, so likewise in the dark Impression there is an astringent harsh, raw and bitter Essence and Spirit; as the Essence is, so is also the Mind of the Understanding! and Will in the Essence. 9. Although the Eternal [Essence] in reference to the Temporal is Spiritual, yet the true Spirit is much more subtile than that which it makes to a Substance in the Conception. For out of the Substance the true intellective Spirit primely proceeds, which before the Substance is only a Will, and not manifest to itself: for the Will introduces itself into Substance and Essence, that it might be manifest to itself.
310. Now we are to consider of the Severation in the Fire: When the Fire is enkindled, then is the Fire-blaze, or Flagrat Salnitral, where the Powers mutually unfold, and display themselves, and come into Division, where the Eternal only Power of God manifests itself, and in the Distinction does seperate itself into Properties, both spiritually and substantially ; as is to be seen in this World ; whence also the manifold Salts arise; which with the Creation came to be such Matter, which in the Eternity was only a Spiritual Essence, but in the Beginning of Time became gross and hard. 11. Also the manifold Spirits both good and evil originally spring from this Eternal Root; and likewise the manifold Stars, with the four Elements, and all whatsoever lives and moves. But the Seperation in itself is thus to be understood; when the Blaze arises, then out of the Fire proceeds the Seperation; the Fire-flagrat is consuming, it apprehends the conceived Essence, both in the Free Lubet, and in the Austere Impression, and consumes it in the Twinkling of an Eye, for here the Eternal Will, which is an Abyss becomes manifest in the Fire: No Essence can subsist before it; it devours all into its Nothing.
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.
15. Therefore the great Angle waves downwards, betokening the great Humility, and also that we have lost the fiery Angle which ascends on High; in which we were the Image and Likeness of God: Therefore the Angle in the Regeneration in the T« has turned itself downward, and ascends not upward any more with its Cusp, betokening now unto us the true Resignation under the T» where we in the Spirit of Christ shall be born again through the great Humility of God in the Light. 6. Now the Will seperates itself in the Fire's Flagrat into two Kingdoms, where each dwells in itself, viz. the Flagrat in the Darkness is God's Anger, and the Flagrat in the Re-conception to the Free Lubet becomes the Highly Triumphant Divine Kingdom of Joy in the Free Lubet: for thus the free Lubet is elevated and brought into a wrestling Love-play, and so it becomes springing and working. 7. Not that we mean that God thus receives a Beginning; but it is the eternal Beginning of God manifested; viz. how the Divine Understanding manifests itself with Power in distinct Variety, and works itself forth into a Kingdom; which is an eternal Generation. We only speak here how the invisible unperceivable God introduces himself into Perception for his own Manifestation.
28. Now we are to understand by the Inflammation of the Fire a twofold Fire, a twofold Spirit, and a twofold Essence; viz. a Love-fire in the Free Lubet, which is made essential with impression or Desire; and in the Fire the Spirit and Essence severize, and yet are mutually in one another, as Soul and Body are one. And now as the Spirit is, so is the Essence; and as there is an holy sweet Essence, and an holy sweet Spirit, in the Impression of the Free Lubet, so likewise in the dark Impression there is an astringent harsh, raw and bitter Essence and Spirit; as the Essence is, so is also the Mind of the Understanding! and Will in the Essence. 9. Although the Eternal [Essence] in reference to the Temporal is Spiritual, yet the true Spirit is much more subtile than that which it makes to a Substance in the Conception. For out of the Substance the true intellective Spirit primely proceeds, which before the Substance is only a Will, and not manifest to itself: for the Will introduces itself into Substance and Essence, that it might be manifest to itself.
310. Now we are to consider of the Severation in the Fire: When the Fire is enkindled, then is the Fire-blaze, or Flagrat Salnitral, where the Powers mutually unfold, and display themselves, and come into Division, where the Eternal only Power of God manifests itself, and in the Distinction does seperate itself into Properties, both spiritually and substantially ; as is to be seen in this World ; whence also the manifold Salts arise; which with the Creation came to be such Matter, which in the Eternity was only a Spiritual Essence, but in the Beginning of Time became gross and hard. 11. Also the manifold Spirits both good and evil originally spring from this Eternal Root; and likewise the manifold Stars, with the four Elements, and all whatsoever lives and moves. But the Seperation in itself is thus to be understood; when the Blaze arises, then out of the Fire proceeds the Seperation; the Fire-flagrat is consuming, it apprehends the conceived Essence, both in the Free Lubet, and in the Austere Impression, and consumes it in the Twinkling of an Eye, for here the Eternal Will, which is an Abyss becomes manifest in the Fire: No Essence can subsist before it; it devours all into its Nothing.
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.