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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.
112. And here is the Original of the Eternal Death, or Devouring; and in this Devouring is the highest Arcanum or Secret: For the true essential lively Spirit and Understanding proceeds out of this Devouring, and makes another Beginning; for the first Beginning is God's, who introduces himself from the Abyss into Byss to his own Contemplation : But this Beginning, which proceeds again out of the Devouring, is a Spiritual Beginning, and makes three Worlds; namely, 1. The dark Fire-world in Heat, and Cold; a Rawness wholly austere, void of Essence. 2. The other World is the Spiritual Light, or Angelical World. 3. And the third began with the Beginning of Time; when God moved both the inward Worlds, he thence brought forth and created this outward visible World into a Form of Time. 13. Now the Separation in the Fire of Devouring is thus to be understood: The Powers, which the first Impression made essential, are in the Fire reduced into a Spirituality, viz. 1. From the Free Lubet proceeds forth a Spiritual Mysterium ; which is, as to the Deity, (viz, the Eternal Understanding,) Spiritual; and it is the angelical Light and Life; and also the real humane [Life;] and so of all whatsoever is like unto them; for they are Powers of God : Therefore the Angels bear in them the great Name of God; and like- wise all true Men who have the divine Power.
214. From the Essence of the Free Lubet there proceeds forth in the Fire an oily Power, which is the Body or Essence of the Understanding; therein the Fire burns ; and thence the shining Lustre or Glance arises. Thirdly, from the Understanding and Spiritual Oil there proceeds forth a moving Lubet like an Element; and it is also the Divine Element. 15. Fourthly, out of the Element there proceeds forth a watery Property ; and yet it is only to be understood spiritually : This is the Water of which Christ said he would give us to drink : And whosoever should drink thereof it should spring up in him to a Fountain of Eternal Life: It is the Water above the Firmament of which Moses speaks, that God has seperated from the external Waters under the Firmament: This watery and elemental Property proceeds from the Essence of the Free Lubet, which is consumed in the Fire and the Word of the Understanding (which has now manifested itself in the Fire) does express these Powers from itself, as a living and moving Essence; and herein the Angelical World is understood.
316.1n the Seperation which is from the dark Property, there proceeds forth, through the Speaking Word in the Seperation out of the Fire, viz. out of the astringent harsh Impression, 1. An hellish thirsty wrathful Source, being as another Principle, or Beginning of another Property; which Source is wholly rough like the cold or hard Stones; a Mind which is horrible like to the Fire-blaze. 2. There proceeds forth from this fiery Spirit, from the Darkness, an Oil which is of a poisonful Property: For it is the Evil Mercurius arising from the Compunction in the anxious Astringenc 17. 3. The Anguish likewise makes a moving Mind like the Element; but altogether in an exceeding wrathful very piercing Property; in which the great Fire's Might and Will in the Anger of God, or the Wrath of God, arises, which Lucifer desired to be, and to rule therein and therefore he is a Devil, that is, one spewed out of the Love-fire into the Dark Fire. 4. There proceeds forth also from the wrathful Property, through the Devouring in the Fire, viz. from the first dark Impression, a watery Property : But it is much rather a Poisonful Source, in which the Life of Darkness consists [the dark Life burns].
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.
112. And here is the Original of the Eternal Death, or Devouring; and in this Devouring is the highest Arcanum or Secret: For the true essential lively Spirit and Understanding proceeds out of this Devouring, and makes another Beginning; for the first Beginning is God's, who introduces himself from the Abyss into Byss to his own Contemplation : But this Beginning, which proceeds again out of the Devouring, is a Spiritual Beginning, and makes three Worlds; namely, 1. The dark Fire-world in Heat, and Cold; a Rawness wholly austere, void of Essence. 2. The other World is the Spiritual Light, or Angelical World. 3. And the third began with the Beginning of Time; when God moved both the inward Worlds, he thence brought forth and created this outward visible World into a Form of Time. 13. Now the Separation in the Fire of Devouring is thus to be understood: The Powers, which the first Impression made essential, are in the Fire reduced into a Spirituality, viz. 1. From the Free Lubet proceeds forth a Spiritual Mysterium ; which is, as to the Deity, (viz, the Eternal Understanding,) Spiritual; and it is the angelical Light and Life; and also the real humane [Life;] and so of all whatsoever is like unto them; for they are Powers of God : Therefore the Angels bear in them the great Name of God; and like- wise all true Men who have the divine Power.
214. From the Essence of the Free Lubet there proceeds forth in the Fire an oily Power, which is the Body or Essence of the Understanding; therein the Fire burns ; and thence the shining Lustre or Glance arises. Thirdly, from the Understanding and Spiritual Oil there proceeds forth a moving Lubet like an Element; and it is also the Divine Element. 15. Fourthly, out of the Element there proceeds forth a watery Property ; and yet it is only to be understood spiritually : This is the Water of which Christ said he would give us to drink : And whosoever should drink thereof it should spring up in him to a Fountain of Eternal Life: It is the Water above the Firmament of which Moses speaks, that God has seperated from the external Waters under the Firmament: This watery and elemental Property proceeds from the Essence of the Free Lubet, which is consumed in the Fire and the Word of the Understanding (which has now manifested itself in the Fire) does express these Powers from itself, as a living and moving Essence; and herein the Angelical World is understood.
316.1n the Seperation which is from the dark Property, there proceeds forth, through the Speaking Word in the Seperation out of the Fire, viz. out of the astringent harsh Impression, 1. An hellish thirsty wrathful Source, being as another Principle, or Beginning of another Property; which Source is wholly rough like the cold or hard Stones; a Mind which is horrible like to the Fire-blaze. 2. There proceeds forth from this fiery Spirit, from the Darkness, an Oil which is of a poisonful Property: For it is the Evil Mercurius arising from the Compunction in the anxious Astringenc 17. 3. The Anguish likewise makes a moving Mind like the Element; but altogether in an exceeding wrathful very piercing Property; in which the great Fire's Might and Will in the Anger of God, or the Wrath of God, arises, which Lucifer desired to be, and to rule therein and therefore he is a Devil, that is, one spewed out of the Love-fire into the Dark Fire. 4. There proceeds forth also from the wrathful Property, through the Devouring in the Fire, viz. from the first dark Impression, a watery Property : But it is much rather a Poisonful Source, in which the Life of Darkness consists [the dark Life burns].
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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