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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.
111. The transmutation of all things must be effected by simility, 1) viz. by its own native propriety: for the alienate is its enemy. Like as man must be regenerated again by the divine essentiality in the simility; by the simility in his holiness of the divine essentiality which he lost. 1 Assimulation or likeness. 12. And as the false Magus wounds man through enchantment with the assimulate, and through the desire introduces evil into his evil, viz. into the assimulate; and as the upright holy faith or divine desire also enters into the assimulate, and forfends man so that the false desire takes no place. 13. Thus all things consist in the assimulate; every thing may be introduced into its assimulate. And if it comes into its assimulate it rejoices in its property, be it good or evil, and begins effectually to work: as is to be seen both in good and in evil. 14. As for example: let a man take down a little poison: it will presently receive with great desire the poison in the body, which before rested; and therein strengthen itself and begin to work powerfully; and corrupt and destroy the contrary, viz. the good. And that now which the evil is able to do in its property, that likewise the good can do in its property; when it is freed from the wrath it may also introduce its assimulate into the real true joy.
215. The essence of this world consists in evil and good; and the one cannot be without the other. But this is the greatest iniquity of this world; that the evil overpowers the good; that the anger is stronger therein than the love. And this by reason of the sin of the devil, and men; who have disturbed nature by the false desire, that it mightily and effectually works in the wrath, as a poison in the body. 16. Otherwise, if nature in its forms did stand in the property in equal weight, and in equal concord and harmony, then one property were not manifest above the other: heat and cold would be equally poised in the operation and qualification. And then Paradise would be still upon the earth; and though it were not outside man, yet it would be in man; if his properties were in equal weight [number and measure, if they did yet stand in the temperature], then he were incorruptible and immortal. 17. This is the death and misery of man and all creatures: that the properties are divided, and each aspiring in itself; and powerfully working and acting in its own will; whence sickness and pain arises. And all this is hence arisen: when the one element did manifest and put forth itself into four properties, then each property desired the assimulate, viz. an essence out of and according to itself; which the astringent Fiat did impress and coagulate; so that earth and stones were produced in the properties.
318. But now we are to consider of the greatest Mystery of the outward world between the elements and the astrum. The elemental spirit is severised from the astral spirit, and yet not parted asunder; they dwell in each other as body and soul; but the one is not the other. The astral spirit makes its bodies as well as the elemental, and that in all creatures, in animals and vegetables. 19. All things of this world have a twofold body, viz. an elemental, from the fire, air, water and earth; and a spiritual body from the astrum. And likewise a twofold spirit, viz. one astral, the other elemental. 20. Man only (among all the earthly creatures) has a threefold body and spirit. For he has also the internal spiritual world in him; which is likewise twofold, viz. light and darkness; and [this] also corporally and spiritually. This spirit is the soul; but this body is from the water of the holy element, which died in Adam, that is, disappeared as to his life, when the divine power departed from him, and would not dwell in the awakened vanity. 21. Which holy body must be regenerated, if his spirit will see God; otherwise he cannot see him, except he be again born anew of the water of the holy element in the spirit of God (who has manifested himself in Christ with this same water-source); that man's disappeared body may be made alive in the holy water and spirit; else he has no sense nor sight in the holy life 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.
111. The transmutation of all things must be effected by simility, 1) viz. by its own native propriety: for the alienate is its enemy. Like as man must be regenerated again by the divine essentiality in the simility; by the simility in his holiness of the divine essentiality which he lost. 1 Assimulation or likeness. 12. And as the false Magus wounds man through enchantment with the assimulate, and through the desire introduces evil into his evil, viz. into the assimulate; and as the upright holy faith or divine desire also enters into the assimulate, and forfends man so that the false desire takes no place. 13. Thus all things consist in the assimulate; every thing may be introduced into its assimulate. And if it comes into its assimulate it rejoices in its property, be it good or evil, and begins effectually to work: as is to be seen both in good and in evil. 14. As for example: let a man take down a little poison: it will presently receive with great desire the poison in the body, which before rested; and therein strengthen itself and begin to work powerfully; and corrupt and destroy the contrary, viz. the good. And that now which the evil is able to do in its property, that likewise the good can do in its property; when it is freed from the wrath it may also introduce its assimulate into the real true joy.
215. The essence of this world consists in evil and good; and the one cannot be without the other. But this is the greatest iniquity of this world; that the evil overpowers the good; that the anger is stronger therein than the love. And this by reason of the sin of the devil, and men; who have disturbed nature by the false desire, that it mightily and effectually works in the wrath, as a poison in the body. 16. Otherwise, if nature in its forms did stand in the property in equal weight, and in equal concord and harmony, then one property were not manifest above the other: heat and cold would be equally poised in the operation and qualification. And then Paradise would be still upon the earth; and though it were not outside man, yet it would be in man; if his properties were in equal weight [number and measure, if they did yet stand in the temperature], then he were incorruptible and immortal. 17. This is the death and misery of man and all creatures: that the properties are divided, and each aspiring in itself; and powerfully working and acting in its own will; whence sickness and pain arises. And all this is hence arisen: when the one element did manifest and put forth itself into four properties, then each property desired the assimulate, viz. an essence out of and according to itself; which the astringent Fiat did impress and coagulate; so that earth and stones were produced in the properties.
318. But now we are to consider of the greatest Mystery of the outward world between the elements and the astrum. The elemental spirit is severised from the astral spirit, and yet not parted asunder; they dwell in each other as body and soul; but the one is not the other. The astral spirit makes its bodies as well as the elemental, and that in all creatures, in animals and vegetables. 19. All things of this world have a twofold body, viz. an elemental, from the fire, air, water and earth; and a spiritual body from the astrum. And likewise a twofold spirit, viz. one astral, the other elemental. 20. Man only (among all the earthly creatures) has a threefold body and spirit. For he has also the internal spiritual world in him; which is likewise twofold, viz. light and darkness; and [this] also corporally and spiritually. This spirit is the soul; but this body is from the water of the holy element, which died in Adam, that is, disappeared as to his life, when the divine power departed from him, and would not dwell in the awakened vanity. 21. Which holy body must be regenerated, if his spirit will see God; otherwise he cannot see him, except he be again born anew of the water of the holy element in the spirit of God (who has manifested himself in Christ with this same water-source); that man's disappeared body may be made alive in the holy water and spirit; else he has no sense nor sight in the holy life 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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