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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.
125. But now he is only called a God, according to his Light in his Love, and not according to the Darkness, also not according to this outward World : Although he himself be ALL, yet we must consider the Degrees, how one Thing mutually proceeds from another: For I can neither say of Heaven, nor of Darkness, or of this outward World, that they are God; none of them are God; but the expressed and formed Word of God; a Mirror of the Spirit which is called God; wherewith the Spirit manifests itself, and plays in its Lubet to itself with this Manifestation as with its own Essence, which it has made; and yet the Essence is not set asunder from the Spirit of God; and yet also the Essence comprehends not the Deity. 26. As Body and Soul are one, and yet the one is not the other; or as the Fire and the Water, or the Air and the Earth, are from one Original, and yet they are particularly distinct, but yet they are mutually bound to each other; and the one were a Nothing without the other; thus we are to conceive and consider likewise of the Divine Essence, and also of the Divine Power. 27. The Power in the Light is God's Love-fire, and the Power in the Darkness is the Fire of God's Anger, and yet it is but one only Fire, but divided into two Principles, that the one might be manifest in the other; for the Flame of Anger is the Manifestation of the great Love, and in the Darkness the Light is made known, else it were not manifest to itself.
228. Thus we are to understand that the Evil and Good Angels dwell near one another, and yet there is the greatest immense Distance (between them :] for the Heaven is in Hell, and the Hell is in Heaven, and yet the one is not manifest to the other; and although the Devil should go many Millions of Miles, desiring to enter into Heaven, and to see it, yet he would be still in Hell, and not see it; also the Angels see not the Darkness, for their Sight is mere Light of divine Power; and the Devil's Sight is mere Darkness of God's Anger. The like is also to be understood of the Saints, and again of the Wicked : Therefore in that we in Adam have lost the Divine Sight, in which Adam saw by the Divine Power, Christ says, You must be born again, else you cannot see the Kingdom of God. 29. In the Fire-spirit we are to understand the angelical Creation; where the Will of the Abyss introduces itself into Byss, and manifests the Eternal Speaking Word or Life with the fiery Birth, viz. with the first Principle, where the spiritual Dominion is manifest by the Firebirth. In this spiritual Fire, all Angels take their Original, viz. out of the Forms to the Fire-source; for no Creature can be created out of the Fire, for it is no Essence: But out of the Properties to the Fire a Creature may be apprehended in the Desire, viz. in the Verbum Fiat, and introduced into a creaturely form and Property.
330. And therefore there are many, and divers sorts of Angels; also in many distinct Offices: And as there are three forms to the Firesource, so there are also three Hierarchies, and therein their Princely Dominions; and likewise three Worlds in one another as one, which make three Principles or Beginnings, for each Property of the Eternal Nature has its Degrees; for they explicate and mutually unfold themselves in the Fire-blaze, and out of those Degrees the different Distinction of Spirits is created. 31. And we are to understand nothing else by the Creation of the Angels, and of all other Spirits, but that the Abyssal God has introduced himself into his manifested Properties, and out of these Properties into living Creatures; by which he possesses the Degrees, and therewith plays in the Properties. They are his Strings in the AllEssential Speaking, and are all of them tuned for the great Harmony of his Eternal Speaking Word; so that in all Degrees and Properties the Voice of the unsearchable God is manifest and made known; they are all created for the praise of God. 32. For all whatsoever has Life, lives in the Speaking Word; the Angels in the Eternal Speaking and the Temporal Spirits in the Reexpression or Echoing forth of the Formings of Time, out of the Sound, or Breath of Time, and the Angels out of the Sound of Eternity, viz. out of the Voice of the manifested Word of God.
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.
125. But now he is only called a God, according to his Light in his Love, and not according to the Darkness, also not according to this outward World : Although he himself be ALL, yet we must consider the Degrees, how one Thing mutually proceeds from another: For I can neither say of Heaven, nor of Darkness, or of this outward World, that they are God; none of them are God; but the expressed and formed Word of God; a Mirror of the Spirit which is called God; wherewith the Spirit manifests itself, and plays in its Lubet to itself with this Manifestation as with its own Essence, which it has made; and yet the Essence is not set asunder from the Spirit of God; and yet also the Essence comprehends not the Deity. 26. As Body and Soul are one, and yet the one is not the other; or as the Fire and the Water, or the Air and the Earth, are from one Original, and yet they are particularly distinct, but yet they are mutually bound to each other; and the one were a Nothing without the other; thus we are to conceive and consider likewise of the Divine Essence, and also of the Divine Power. 27. The Power in the Light is God's Love-fire, and the Power in the Darkness is the Fire of God's Anger, and yet it is but one only Fire, but divided into two Principles, that the one might be manifest in the other; for the Flame of Anger is the Manifestation of the great Love, and in the Darkness the Light is made known, else it were not manifest to itself.
228. Thus we are to understand that the Evil and Good Angels dwell near one another, and yet there is the greatest immense Distance (between them :] for the Heaven is in Hell, and the Hell is in Heaven, and yet the one is not manifest to the other; and although the Devil should go many Millions of Miles, desiring to enter into Heaven, and to see it, yet he would be still in Hell, and not see it; also the Angels see not the Darkness, for their Sight is mere Light of divine Power; and the Devil's Sight is mere Darkness of God's Anger. The like is also to be understood of the Saints, and again of the Wicked : Therefore in that we in Adam have lost the Divine Sight, in which Adam saw by the Divine Power, Christ says, You must be born again, else you cannot see the Kingdom of God. 29. In the Fire-spirit we are to understand the angelical Creation; where the Will of the Abyss introduces itself into Byss, and manifests the Eternal Speaking Word or Life with the fiery Birth, viz. with the first Principle, where the spiritual Dominion is manifest by the Firebirth. In this spiritual Fire, all Angels take their Original, viz. out of the Forms to the Fire-source; for no Creature can be created out of the Fire, for it is no Essence: But out of the Properties to the Fire a Creature may be apprehended in the Desire, viz. in the Verbum Fiat, and introduced into a creaturely form and Property.
330. And therefore there are many, and divers sorts of Angels; also in many distinct Offices: And as there are three forms to the Firesource, so there are also three Hierarchies, and therein their Princely Dominions; and likewise three Worlds in one another as one, which make three Principles or Beginnings, for each Property of the Eternal Nature has its Degrees; for they explicate and mutually unfold themselves in the Fire-blaze, and out of those Degrees the different Distinction of Spirits is created. 31. And we are to understand nothing else by the Creation of the Angels, and of all other Spirits, but that the Abyssal God has introduced himself into his manifested Properties, and out of these Properties into living Creatures; by which he possesses the Degrees, and therewith plays in the Properties. They are his Strings in the AllEssential Speaking, and are all of them tuned for the great Harmony of his Eternal Speaking Word; so that in all Degrees and Properties the Voice of the unsearchable God is manifest and made known; they are all created for the praise of God. 32. For all whatsoever has Life, lives in the Speaking Word; the Angels in the Eternal Speaking and the Temporal Spirits in the Reexpression or Echoing forth of the Formings of Time, out of the Sound, or Breath of Time, and the Angels out of the Sound of Eternity, viz. out of the Voice of the manifested Word of God.
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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