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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. Each Property is to itself essential, and has also in its Essence the Essence of all the other six forms, and makes the Essence of the other six forms also Essential in its Essence; as we see in the Earth and Stones, especially in Metals, where oftentimes in one Compaction all seven Metals are couched together, and only one Property is principal, which coagulates and captivates all the Rest in itself; and always one is more manifest than the rest, according as each Property has its powerful Predominance in a Thing: The like is also to be understood in Vegetables; where often in an Herb or Piece of Wood there is an astringent, sour, harsh, bitter, anxious or sulphureous Property; also a fiery, sweet or luscious, flashy or watery Quality. The Seventh Chapter. Of the Holy Trinity, and Divine Essence. 1. The Eternal and Temporal Nature are especially understood in the dark and Fire-World, viz. in the four first Forms; as, 1. In the astringent Desire. 2. In the bitter Compunction. 3. In the Anguish, or Sensation. 4. In the Fire; where the Severation proceeds forth in the enkindling [of the Fire] in the Flagrat. But the Powers both in the internal and external World are all understood in the Light, or Lovefire, viz. in the Love-desire. 2. For their first Ground is the Eternal Word, viz. the One, wherein all Things are couched. The second Ground is the Free Lubet of the Word, viz. the Wisdom,
2wherein all the Colours of the only Power are manifest in the Will of the Deity. The third Ground is the Love-desire, wherein the Free Lubet, with its Colours and Virtues of the Powers, has exacuated [sharpened] itself through Nature, and introduced itself through the Fire's Inflammation into a spiritual Dominion; which [Lubet] displays itself with the Powers in the Light in an Eternal Kingdom of Joy. 3. The fourth Ground is the oily Spirit; in that the Free Lubet amasses itself in the fiery Love-desire in the Meekness, as in its own peculiar Form, and with it amasses the Lustre and Essence of the Fire and Light, and introduces it into the first Essence; which Power of the Fire and Light in the Meekness of the Free Lubet, in the oily Property, is the true and holy Tincture.
34. The fifth Ground is the watery Spirit, arising from the Mortification in the Fire, where the first Spiritual Essence in the astringent, harsh, dark Desire was consumed in the Fire. Now out of the Devouring of the Fire proceeds forth a Spiritual Essence, which is the oily Ground, and a watery Essence from the Mortification, which deprives the Fire Spirit of its Wrath, so that it is not able to set its wrathful Properties on Fire in the oily Ground; so that the Fire must burn through Death, and be only a Light: Else the oily Ground would be enflamed. Thus the Fire in its Devouring must beget the Water, viz. its Death, and yet must again have it for its Life; else neither the Fire nor the Light could subsist. And thus there is an Eternal Generation, devouring, receiving, and again consuming; and yet also it is thus an Eternal Giving, and has no Beginning nor End. 5. Thus we now understand what God and his Essence is; We Christians say, that God is threefold, but only one in Essence: But that we generally say and hold that God is threefold in Person, the same is very wrongly apprehended and understood by the Ignorant, yea by a great Part of the Learned: for God is no Person but only in Christ; but he is the eternal begetting Power, and the Kingdom with all Beings; all Things receive their Original from him.
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. Each Property is to itself essential, and has also in its Essence the Essence of all the other six forms, and makes the Essence of the other six forms also Essential in its Essence; as we see in the Earth and Stones, especially in Metals, where oftentimes in one Compaction all seven Metals are couched together, and only one Property is principal, which coagulates and captivates all the Rest in itself; and always one is more manifest than the rest, according as each Property has its powerful Predominance in a Thing: The like is also to be understood in Vegetables; where often in an Herb or Piece of Wood there is an astringent, sour, harsh, bitter, anxious or sulphureous Property; also a fiery, sweet or luscious, flashy or watery Quality. The Seventh Chapter. Of the Holy Trinity, and Divine Essence. 1. The Eternal and Temporal Nature are especially understood in the dark and Fire-World, viz. in the four first Forms; as, 1. In the astringent Desire. 2. In the bitter Compunction. 3. In the Anguish, or Sensation. 4. In the Fire; where the Severation proceeds forth in the enkindling [of the Fire] in the Flagrat. But the Powers both in the internal and external World are all understood in the Light, or Lovefire, viz. in the Love-desire. 2. For their first Ground is the Eternal Word, viz. the One, wherein all Things are couched. The second Ground is the Free Lubet of the Word, viz. the Wisdom,
2wherein all the Colours of the only Power are manifest in the Will of the Deity. The third Ground is the Love-desire, wherein the Free Lubet, with its Colours and Virtues of the Powers, has exacuated [sharpened] itself through Nature, and introduced itself through the Fire's Inflammation into a spiritual Dominion; which [Lubet] displays itself with the Powers in the Light in an Eternal Kingdom of Joy. 3. The fourth Ground is the oily Spirit; in that the Free Lubet amasses itself in the fiery Love-desire in the Meekness, as in its own peculiar Form, and with it amasses the Lustre and Essence of the Fire and Light, and introduces it into the first Essence; which Power of the Fire and Light in the Meekness of the Free Lubet, in the oily Property, is the true and holy Tincture.
34. The fifth Ground is the watery Spirit, arising from the Mortification in the Fire, where the first Spiritual Essence in the astringent, harsh, dark Desire was consumed in the Fire. Now out of the Devouring of the Fire proceeds forth a Spiritual Essence, which is the oily Ground, and a watery Essence from the Mortification, which deprives the Fire Spirit of its Wrath, so that it is not able to set its wrathful Properties on Fire in the oily Ground; so that the Fire must burn through Death, and be only a Light: Else the oily Ground would be enflamed. Thus the Fire in its Devouring must beget the Water, viz. its Death, and yet must again have it for its Life; else neither the Fire nor the Light could subsist. And thus there is an Eternal Generation, devouring, receiving, and again consuming; and yet also it is thus an Eternal Giving, and has no Beginning nor End. 5. Thus we now understand what God and his Essence is; We Christians say, that God is threefold, but only one in Essence: But that we generally say and hold that God is threefold in Person, the same is very wrongly apprehended and understood by the Ignorant, yea by a great Part of the Learned: for God is no Person but only in Christ; but he is the eternal begetting Power, and the Kingdom with all Beings; all Things receive their Original from him.
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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