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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.
15. The inward spiritual soul of man was breathed into the visible image by the in-speaking, or inspiration, of the invisible Word of the divine power; (for an understanding to the created image) wherein man's science and knowledge of the invisible and visible essence consists. 6. Thus man has now received ability from the invisible Word of God to the re-expression: that he again expresses the hidden Word of the divine science into formation and severation: in manner and form of the temporal creatures; and forms this spiritual Word according to animals and vegetables; whereby the invisible wisdom of God is portrayed and modellised into several distinct forms: as we plainly see, that the understanding of man expresses all powers in their property, and gives names unto all things, according to each thing's property, by which the hidden wisdom is known and understood in its power: and the hidden God is made manifest with 1 the visible things, for the delight and play of the divine Power: so that the invisible might play with the visible, and therein introduce itself into the sight and sense of itself. 1 In.
27. As the mind does introduce itself with the body and by the body into senses and thoughts, whereby it works and acts sensibly to itself, so also the invisible world (works) through the visible, and with the visible world: we are not in any wise to think that a man cannot search out what the hidden divine world is, and what its operation and essence is, for on the visible essence of the creation we see a figure of the internal spiritual operation of the powerful world. 8. And we ought not to think otherwise of God, but that he is the most internal ground of all essences; and yet so, as that he cannot be comprehended of any thing by the own-peculiar power of the thing; but as the sun doth introduce itself with its light and power into the sensible living things, and worketh with [or in] all things, and introduceth itself also into an essence; the same likewise is to be understood concerning the divine Word with the life of the creatures.
39. Seeing then this visible world is the expressed, formed word, according to God's love and anger, viz. according to the Grand Mystery of the eternal spiritual nature, which spiritual world is hidden in the visible; and yet the human soul is a spark out of the eternal-speaking Word of the divine science and power: and the body an ens of the stars and elements; and also as to the internal ground an ens of heaven, viz. of the hidden world; therefore he has might and ability to speak of the Grand Mystery whence all essences do originally arise. 10. Since then the great Mysteries, the beginning of and original of all things, do befall us by divine grace; that we are able (as through the ground of the soul) to understand the same in real knowledge, with the inspired word of the divine science, we will write down its ground (so far as it is permitted to us) in this book: for a Memorial to ourself, and for the exercise of divine knowledge to the Reader. 11. And I. we will signify and declare what the centre and ground of all essences is. II. What the divine manifestation (through the speaking of the word of God) is. III. How evil and good have their original from one only ground, viz. light and darkness; life and death; joy and sorrow; and how it is in its ground; also whereunto every essence and source is profitable and necessary [unavoidable]. IV. How all things have their ground from the Grand Mystery, viz. from the spiration of the eternal One.
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. The inward spiritual soul of man was breathed into the visible image by the in-speaking, or inspiration, of the invisible Word of the divine power; (for an understanding to the created image) wherein man's science and knowledge of the invisible and visible essence consists. 6. Thus man has now received ability from the invisible Word of God to the re-expression: that he again expresses the hidden Word of the divine science into formation and severation: in manner and form of the temporal creatures; and forms this spiritual Word according to animals and vegetables; whereby the invisible wisdom of God is portrayed and modellised into several distinct forms: as we plainly see, that the understanding of man expresses all powers in their property, and gives names unto all things, according to each thing's property, by which the hidden wisdom is known and understood in its power: and the hidden God is made manifest with 1 the visible things, for the delight and play of the divine Power: so that the invisible might play with the visible, and therein introduce itself into the sight and sense of itself. 1 In.
27. As the mind does introduce itself with the body and by the body into senses and thoughts, whereby it works and acts sensibly to itself, so also the invisible world (works) through the visible, and with the visible world: we are not in any wise to think that a man cannot search out what the hidden divine world is, and what its operation and essence is, for on the visible essence of the creation we see a figure of the internal spiritual operation of the powerful world. 8. And we ought not to think otherwise of God, but that he is the most internal ground of all essences; and yet so, as that he cannot be comprehended of any thing by the own-peculiar power of the thing; but as the sun doth introduce itself with its light and power into the sensible living things, and worketh with [or in] all things, and introduceth itself also into an essence; the same likewise is to be understood concerning the divine Word with the life of the creatures.
39. Seeing then this visible world is the expressed, formed word, according to God's love and anger, viz. according to the Grand Mystery of the eternal spiritual nature, which spiritual world is hidden in the visible; and yet the human soul is a spark out of the eternal-speaking Word of the divine science and power: and the body an ens of the stars and elements; and also as to the internal ground an ens of heaven, viz. of the hidden world; therefore he has might and ability to speak of the Grand Mystery whence all essences do originally arise. 10. Since then the great Mysteries, the beginning of and original of all things, do befall us by divine grace; that we are able (as through the ground of the soul) to understand the same in real knowledge, with the inspired word of the divine science, we will write down its ground (so far as it is permitted to us) in this book: for a Memorial to ourself, and for the exercise of divine knowledge to the Reader. 11. And I. we will signify and declare what the centre and ground of all essences is. II. What the divine manifestation (through the speaking of the word of God) is. III. How evil and good have their original from one only ground, viz. light and darkness; life and death; joy and sorrow; and how it is in its ground; also whereunto every essence and source is profitable and necessary [unavoidable]. IV. How all things have their ground from the Grand Mystery, viz. from the spiration of the eternal One.
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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