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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.
129. Now we see here, how, in the compaction of the Verbum Fiat, the holy entered along with the unholy into a coagulation. For in all things there is a deadly and also a living water; and also a mortal poisonful virtue, and a good vital virtue; a gross, and a subtile [power] ; one evil, the other good: all which is according to the nature of God's love and anger. 30. The grossness of the stones, metals and earth proceed from the property of the dark world, all which are in a mortal [property], understand substance and not spirit: the spirit of the grossness is in the poison-life, in which Lucifer is a prince of this world. 31. But the heavenly [part] holds the grossness and poison-source captive; so that the devil is the poorest creature in the essence of this world; and has nothing in this world for his own possession, save what he can cheat from the living creatures which have an eternal being; that they enter with the desire into the wrath of the eternal; viz. into his juggling incantations. 32. If we would rightly consider the creation, then we need no more than a divine light and contemplation: it is very easy unto the illuminated mind, and may very well be searched out. Let a man but consider the degrees of nature, and he sees it very clearly in the sun, stars, and elements. The stars are nothing else but a crystalline waterspirit; yet not a material water, but powers of the salnitral flagrat in the fire.
233. For their orb, wherein they stand, is fiery; that is, a salnitral fire, a property of the matter of the earth, metals, trees, herbs and the three elements, fire, air and water. What the superior is, that also is the inferior; and that which I find in the compaction of the earth, that likewise is in the astrum; 1) and they belong both together as body and soul. 1 Or constellation. 34. The astrum betokens the spirit, and the earth the body; before the creation all was mutually in each other in the eternal generation; but in no coagulation or creature; but as a powerful wrestling love-play, without any such material substance. 35. But it was enkindled in the motion of the Word, viz. the Verbum Fiat: and therewith the inflammation in the salnitral flagrat, each property did divide itself in itself; and was amassed by the awakened astringent impression (viz. the first form of nature, which is called the Fiat), and so each became coagulated in its property; the subtile in its property, and the gross in its property; all according to the degrees; as the eternal generation of nature derives itself from the unity into an infinite multiplicity. 36. Good and evil is manifest in the astrum: 1) for the wrathful fiery power of the eternal nature, so also the power of the holy spiritual world, is manifest in the stars, as an essential spiration. Therefore there are many obscure stars, all which we see not, and many light stars, which we see.
337. We have a likeness of this in the matter of the earth, which is so manifold, whence divers sorts of fruit grow, viz. according to the properties of the superior spheres: for so likewise is the earth, being the grossest substance, where the mortal water is coagulated. 38. The earth was coagulated in the seventh form of nature, viz. in the essence; for it is that same essence which the other six properties do make in their desire: it chiefly consists in seven properties, as is above mentioned; but the unfoldment or various explication of the properties is effected in the salnitral fire, where each property does again explicate itself into seven; where the infiniteness and great possibility 2) arises, that of one thing, another can be made, which it was not in the beginning. 1 Or constellation 2 Or potency. 39. The being of all beings is only a magical birth [deriving itself], out of one only, into an infiniteness; the One is God, the infinite is time and eternity, and a manifestation of the One; where each thing may be reduced out of one into many, and again out of many into 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.
129. Now we see here, how, in the compaction of the Verbum Fiat, the holy entered along with the unholy into a coagulation. For in all things there is a deadly and also a living water; and also a mortal poisonful virtue, and a good vital virtue; a gross, and a subtile [power] ; one evil, the other good: all which is according to the nature of God's love and anger. 30. The grossness of the stones, metals and earth proceed from the property of the dark world, all which are in a mortal [property], understand substance and not spirit: the spirit of the grossness is in the poison-life, in which Lucifer is a prince of this world. 31. But the heavenly [part] holds the grossness and poison-source captive; so that the devil is the poorest creature in the essence of this world; and has nothing in this world for his own possession, save what he can cheat from the living creatures which have an eternal being; that they enter with the desire into the wrath of the eternal; viz. into his juggling incantations. 32. If we would rightly consider the creation, then we need no more than a divine light and contemplation: it is very easy unto the illuminated mind, and may very well be searched out. Let a man but consider the degrees of nature, and he sees it very clearly in the sun, stars, and elements. The stars are nothing else but a crystalline waterspirit; yet not a material water, but powers of the salnitral flagrat in the fire.
233. For their orb, wherein they stand, is fiery; that is, a salnitral fire, a property of the matter of the earth, metals, trees, herbs and the three elements, fire, air and water. What the superior is, that also is the inferior; and that which I find in the compaction of the earth, that likewise is in the astrum; 1) and they belong both together as body and soul. 1 Or constellation. 34. The astrum betokens the spirit, and the earth the body; before the creation all was mutually in each other in the eternal generation; but in no coagulation or creature; but as a powerful wrestling love-play, without any such material substance. 35. But it was enkindled in the motion of the Word, viz. the Verbum Fiat: and therewith the inflammation in the salnitral flagrat, each property did divide itself in itself; and was amassed by the awakened astringent impression (viz. the first form of nature, which is called the Fiat), and so each became coagulated in its property; the subtile in its property, and the gross in its property; all according to the degrees; as the eternal generation of nature derives itself from the unity into an infinite multiplicity. 36. Good and evil is manifest in the astrum: 1) for the wrathful fiery power of the eternal nature, so also the power of the holy spiritual world, is manifest in the stars, as an essential spiration. Therefore there are many obscure stars, all which we see not, and many light stars, which we see.
337. We have a likeness of this in the matter of the earth, which is so manifold, whence divers sorts of fruit grow, viz. according to the properties of the superior spheres: for so likewise is the earth, being the grossest substance, where the mortal water is coagulated. 38. The earth was coagulated in the seventh form of nature, viz. in the essence; for it is that same essence which the other six properties do make in their desire: it chiefly consists in seven properties, as is above mentioned; but the unfoldment or various explication of the properties is effected in the salnitral fire, where each property does again explicate itself into seven; where the infiniteness and great possibility 2) arises, that of one thing, another can be made, which it was not in the beginning. 1 Or constellation 2 Or potency. 39. The being of all beings is only a magical birth [deriving itself], out of one only, into an infiniteness; the One is God, the infinite is time and eternity, and a manifestation of the One; where each thing may be reduced out of one into many, and again out of many into 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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