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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.
17. Thus by the seventh form of the Eternal Nature we understand the Eternal Kingdom of Heaven, wherein the Power of God is Essential; which Essence is tinctured by the Lustre and Power of the Fire and Light; for the Lustre of the Spiritual Fire and Light, is the WorkingLife in the Spiritual Water, viz. in the holy Element; for this Water (being the amassed or congealed Essence of the divine Powers) is moving. But yet it is as an Essence void of Understanding in reference to the divine Powers; for it is a Degree more external, as every Substance or Body is inferior to the Spirit. The oily Essence is the Spirit of the Water, viz. of the watery Spirit, and the manifested Powers of God are the Spirit of the Oil or oily Spirit; and the Eternal Understanding of the Word is the Beginning of the manifested Powers; and one Degree goes forth mutually from another; and all Essence [Or Beings] is nothing else but the manifested [revealed or expressed] God. 8. When we consider what Kind of Life, Motion, and Dominion was before the Times of this outward World, in the Place of this World, and what Eternity is, then we find that it was and is to Eternity, such a Life, Motion and Dominion, as is above-mentioned.
29. The outward World with the four Elements and Stars is a Figure of the internal Powers of the Spiritual World, and was expressed or breathed forth by the Motion of God (when he moved the internal Spiritual World) and amassed by the divine Desire of the inward Powers, and introduced into a creatural Being, both out of the internal spiritual dark World, and also out of the holy Light World. 10. This outward World is as a Smoak, or vaporous Steam of the Fire Spirit and Water Spirit, breathed forth, both out of the holy, and then also out of the dark World; and therefore it is evil and good, and consists in Love and Anger, and is only as a Smoke or misty Exhalation, in reference and respect to the spiritual World; and has again introduced itself, with its Properties, into forms of the Powers, to be a Pregnatress; as is to be seen in the Stars, Elements and Creatures, and likewise in the growing Trees and Herbs. It makes in itself, with its Birth, another Principle or Beginning; for the Pregnatress of Time is a Model or Plat-form of the Eternal Pregnatress; and Time couches in Eternity; and it is nothing else, but that the Eternity, in its wonderful Birth and Manifestation in its Powers and Strength, does thus behold itself in a form or Time.
311. And now as we acknowledge that in the spiritual holy World there is an Essence, viz. a comprehensive Essence, which consists in the Spiritual Sulphur, Mercurius, and Sal in an oily and watery Byss, wherein the divine Powers play, and work; so likewise in the dark World there is such a Property, but altogether adverse, odious, opposite, spiteful, envious, bitter, and compunctive : It has also Essence according to [or of] its Desire, but altogether of a fell, raw, indigested, watery Nature, wholly sharp and harsh, like to the Property of the rough hard Stones or wild Earth; of a cold and scorching, dark and fiery Property; all which is a Contrariety to Love; that so it might be known what Love or Sorrow is. 12. That the Fullness of Joy might know itself in itself, the keen Tartness of the Source must be a Cause of the Joy, and the Darkness a Manifestation of the Light; that so the Light might be manifestly known, which could not be in the ONE. 13. But to answer the Readers Desire briefly and fully concerning the seven Properties of the Eternal Nature, which make three Principles, or Worlds, I will (out of Love for the Sake of the Simple) once more set down the Forms in brief, as an A, B, C, for his further Consideration and Meditation. I. Form. Astringent; Desire. 14. Lo! the Desire of the Eternal Word, which is good, is the Beginning of the
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.
17. Thus by the seventh form of the Eternal Nature we understand the Eternal Kingdom of Heaven, wherein the Power of God is Essential; which Essence is tinctured by the Lustre and Power of the Fire and Light; for the Lustre of the Spiritual Fire and Light, is the WorkingLife in the Spiritual Water, viz. in the holy Element; for this Water (being the amassed or congealed Essence of the divine Powers) is moving. But yet it is as an Essence void of Understanding in reference to the divine Powers; for it is a Degree more external, as every Substance or Body is inferior to the Spirit. The oily Essence is the Spirit of the Water, viz. of the watery Spirit, and the manifested Powers of God are the Spirit of the Oil or oily Spirit; and the Eternal Understanding of the Word is the Beginning of the manifested Powers; and one Degree goes forth mutually from another; and all Essence [Or Beings] is nothing else but the manifested [revealed or expressed] God. 8. When we consider what Kind of Life, Motion, and Dominion was before the Times of this outward World, in the Place of this World, and what Eternity is, then we find that it was and is to Eternity, such a Life, Motion and Dominion, as is above-mentioned.
29. The outward World with the four Elements and Stars is a Figure of the internal Powers of the Spiritual World, and was expressed or breathed forth by the Motion of God (when he moved the internal Spiritual World) and amassed by the divine Desire of the inward Powers, and introduced into a creatural Being, both out of the internal spiritual dark World, and also out of the holy Light World. 10. This outward World is as a Smoak, or vaporous Steam of the Fire Spirit and Water Spirit, breathed forth, both out of the holy, and then also out of the dark World; and therefore it is evil and good, and consists in Love and Anger, and is only as a Smoke or misty Exhalation, in reference and respect to the spiritual World; and has again introduced itself, with its Properties, into forms of the Powers, to be a Pregnatress; as is to be seen in the Stars, Elements and Creatures, and likewise in the growing Trees and Herbs. It makes in itself, with its Birth, another Principle or Beginning; for the Pregnatress of Time is a Model or Plat-form of the Eternal Pregnatress; and Time couches in Eternity; and it is nothing else, but that the Eternity, in its wonderful Birth and Manifestation in its Powers and Strength, does thus behold itself in a form or Time.
311. And now as we acknowledge that in the spiritual holy World there is an Essence, viz. a comprehensive Essence, which consists in the Spiritual Sulphur, Mercurius, and Sal in an oily and watery Byss, wherein the divine Powers play, and work; so likewise in the dark World there is such a Property, but altogether adverse, odious, opposite, spiteful, envious, bitter, and compunctive : It has also Essence according to [or of] its Desire, but altogether of a fell, raw, indigested, watery Nature, wholly sharp and harsh, like to the Property of the rough hard Stones or wild Earth; of a cold and scorching, dark and fiery Property; all which is a Contrariety to Love; that so it might be known what Love or Sorrow is. 12. That the Fullness of Joy might know itself in itself, the keen Tartness of the Source must be a Cause of the Joy, and the Darkness a Manifestation of the Light; that so the Light might be manifestly known, which could not be in the ONE. 13. But to answer the Readers Desire briefly and fully concerning the seven Properties of the Eternal Nature, which make three Principles, or Worlds, I will (out of Love for the Sake of the Simple) once more set down the Forms in brief, as an A, B, C, for his further Consideration and Meditation. I. Form. Astringent; Desire. 14. Lo! the Desire of the Eternal Word, which is good, is the Beginning of the
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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