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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.
140. The fire is the workmaster thereunto, which puts forth from a small power a little sprout out of the earth, and displays it into a great tree with many boughs, branches and fruits; and does again consume it, and reduces it again to one thing, viz. to ashes and earth, whence it first proceeded: and so also all things of this world do enter again into the one whence they came. 41. The essence of this world may easily be searched out, but the centre or point of motion will remain dark unto reason, unless there be another light in it: it supposes that it has it in the circle, and can measure it; 1) but it has it not in the understanding. 42. When we consider the hierarchy and the kingly dominion in all the three Principles in the place of this world, so far as the Verbum Fiat reached forth itself to the creation of the outward world, with the stars, and elements, then we have the ground of the punctum 2) of the royal throne, of which the whole creation is but a member. 43. For the stars and four elements, and all whatsoever is bred and engendered out of them, and live therein, does hang [or appertain] unto one punctum; where the divine power has manifested itself from itself in a form: and this punctum stands in three Principles, viz. in three worlds: nothing can live in this world without this punctum, it is the only cause of the life and motion of all the powers; and without it all would be in the stillness 3) without motion.
244. For if there were no light, then the elements would be motionless: all would be an astringent harsh property, wholly raw and cold: the fire would remain hidden in the cold; and the water would be only a keen spirit, like to the property of the stars; and the air would be hidden in the water-source, in the sulphur, and be a still, unmoving essence. 45. We see in very deed, that the light is the only cause of all stirring, motion and life; for every life desires the power of the light, viz. the disclosed punctum: and yet the life is not the punctum, but the form of Nature. And if this punctum did not stand open, then the kingdom of darkness would be manifest in the place of this world; 1 Or mathematically describe and demonstrate it. 2. Central fire or radical heat; the point of motion, the virtue of the light. 3. Or eternal silence. in which [place of wrath] Lucifer is a prince, and possesses the princely throne in the wrath of the eternal nature, in the place of this world. 46. Therefore, O man, consider with yourself where [now] you are at home, viz on one part 1) in the stars and four elements; and on the other part 2) in the dark world among the devils; and as to the third part 3) in the divine power in heaven. That property which is master in you, its servant you are, pranck and vapour as stately and gloriously in the sun's light as you will; have you not the eternal [light], yet your fountain shall be made manifest to you.
347. By the two words Himmel und Erde (heaven and earth) we understand the whole ground of the creation; for, in the language of nature, the understanding is couched in those two words. For by the word Himmel (heaven) is understood the spiration of the Verbum Fiat, which created that essence (wherein Lucifer was enthroned) with the creative Word out of itself, that is, out of the spiritual holy world, into a time or beginning. And by the word Erde (earth) is understood the wrath in the essence, that the essence was amassed in the wrath; and reduced out of the properties of the dark Sulphur, Mercury and Salt, viz. out of the powers of the original of nature, and introduced into a compaction or coagulation. 48. This coagulation is the syllable Er, the other syllable, de or den, is the element. For the earth is not the element, but the [element is] the moving, viz. the power, whence it was coagulated; this is that element which is spiritual, and takes its true original in the fire, where the nature, which is a senseless life, dies in the fire; from which dying or mortification there proceeds forth a living motion; and from that which is mortified [in the fire] a dead matter, viz. earth, and a dead water, and also a deadly fire, and venomous air, which makes a dying source in the earthly bodies.
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.
140. The fire is the workmaster thereunto, which puts forth from a small power a little sprout out of the earth, and displays it into a great tree with many boughs, branches and fruits; and does again consume it, and reduces it again to one thing, viz. to ashes and earth, whence it first proceeded: and so also all things of this world do enter again into the one whence they came. 41. The essence of this world may easily be searched out, but the centre or point of motion will remain dark unto reason, unless there be another light in it: it supposes that it has it in the circle, and can measure it; 1) but it has it not in the understanding. 42. When we consider the hierarchy and the kingly dominion in all the three Principles in the place of this world, so far as the Verbum Fiat reached forth itself to the creation of the outward world, with the stars, and elements, then we have the ground of the punctum 2) of the royal throne, of which the whole creation is but a member. 43. For the stars and four elements, and all whatsoever is bred and engendered out of them, and live therein, does hang [or appertain] unto one punctum; where the divine power has manifested itself from itself in a form: and this punctum stands in three Principles, viz. in three worlds: nothing can live in this world without this punctum, it is the only cause of the life and motion of all the powers; and without it all would be in the stillness 3) without motion.
244. For if there were no light, then the elements would be motionless: all would be an astringent harsh property, wholly raw and cold: the fire would remain hidden in the cold; and the water would be only a keen spirit, like to the property of the stars; and the air would be hidden in the water-source, in the sulphur, and be a still, unmoving essence. 45. We see in very deed, that the light is the only cause of all stirring, motion and life; for every life desires the power of the light, viz. the disclosed punctum: and yet the life is not the punctum, but the form of Nature. And if this punctum did not stand open, then the kingdom of darkness would be manifest in the place of this world; 1 Or mathematically describe and demonstrate it. 2. Central fire or radical heat; the point of motion, the virtue of the light. 3. Or eternal silence. in which [place of wrath] Lucifer is a prince, and possesses the princely throne in the wrath of the eternal nature, in the place of this world. 46. Therefore, O man, consider with yourself where [now] you are at home, viz on one part 1) in the stars and four elements; and on the other part 2) in the dark world among the devils; and as to the third part 3) in the divine power in heaven. That property which is master in you, its servant you are, pranck and vapour as stately and gloriously in the sun's light as you will; have you not the eternal [light], yet your fountain shall be made manifest to you.
347. By the two words Himmel und Erde (heaven and earth) we understand the whole ground of the creation; for, in the language of nature, the understanding is couched in those two words. For by the word Himmel (heaven) is understood the spiration of the Verbum Fiat, which created that essence (wherein Lucifer was enthroned) with the creative Word out of itself, that is, out of the spiritual holy world, into a time or beginning. And by the word Erde (earth) is understood the wrath in the essence, that the essence was amassed in the wrath; and reduced out of the properties of the dark Sulphur, Mercury and Salt, viz. out of the powers of the original of nature, and introduced into a compaction or coagulation. 48. This coagulation is the syllable Er, the other syllable, de or den, is the element. For the earth is not the element, but the [element is] the moving, viz. the power, whence it was coagulated; this is that element which is spiritual, and takes its true original in the fire, where the nature, which is a senseless life, dies in the fire; from which dying or mortification there proceeds forth a living motion; and from that which is mortified [in the fire] a dead matter, viz. earth, and a dead water, and also a deadly fire, and venomous air, which makes a dying source in the earthly bodies.
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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