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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.
122. This twofold outward body is now punctually to be pondered and considered ot if we would understand nature; and without this understanding let none call himself a master [or learned]. For in these (bodies) the dominion of all external creatures and essences is couched; they oftentimes are contrary one unto another, whence sickness, corruption and death arises in the body, that one severs from the other. 23. The sidereal body is the highest excepting the divine in man; the elemental body is only its servant or dwellinghouse, as the four elements are only a body or habitation of the dominion of the stars. 24. The elemental spirit and body is inanimate and void of understanding, it has only lust and desire in it, vegetation is its right life; for the air has no understanding without the astrum. The astrum gives the distinct understanding of the knowledge of all essences in the elements. 25. But the inward light, and power of the light, gives in man the right divine understanding; but there is no right divine apprehension in the sidereal spirit; for the astrum has another Principle. The Sidereal body dwells in the elemental, as the light- world in the darkness: it is the true rational life of all creatures.
226. The whole astrum is nothing else but the external expressed Word in the sound; it is the instrument whereby the holy eternal speaking Word speaks and forms externally; it is as a great harmony of unsearchable manifold voices and tunes, of all manner of instruments, which play and melodise before the holy God. 27. For they are mere powers, which enter into and mutually embrace each other, whence arises the sound in the essence; and the desire, viz. the Fiat, receives this sound and makes it substantial. This substance is a spirit of the stars, which the elements receive into themselves, and coagulate it in themselves, and hatch it, as a hen her eggs: therefrom is the true rational life in the elements. And thus also the Sidereal spirit is hatched and coagulated in all creatures. 28. For the male and female do mutually cast a seed into each other; which is only a sulphur of the astrum and four elements; afterwards it is hatched in the matrix, and coagulated to a living spirit. 29. For when the fire is enkindled in the seed which is sown in the matrix, the spirit severs itself again from the body, as a propriate; just as the light from the fire, according to the right of the eternal nature; and two become manifest in one, viz. a spiritual body from the astrum, and a fleshy body from the four elements.
330. And this sidereal spirit is the soul of the great world, which depends on Punctum Solis, and receives its light and life from it; as all the stars do take light and power from the sun, so likewise [they take] their spirit. 31. The sun is the centre of the astrum, and the earth the centre of the elements: they are to each other as spirit and body, or as man and wife; albeit the astrum has another wife, where it hatches its essence, viz. the moon, which is the wife of all the stars (but especially of the sun). I mean it in the essence of the operation. 32. Not that we mean that the astrum is wholly arisen from the punctum of Sol, in that I call it the centre of the stars. It is the centre of the powers, the cause that the powers of the stars do act in the essence; it opens their powers, and gives its power into them, as a heart of the powers, and they mutually rejoice in its essence, that they are moved to act or desire in its essence. 33. And even here lies the great Mystery of the creation, viz. that the internal, viz. God, has thus manifested himself with his eternal speaking Word, which he himself is: the external is a type of the internal. God is not alienate: in him all things live and move, each in its Principle and degree.
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.
122. This twofold outward body is now punctually to be pondered and considered ot if we would understand nature; and without this understanding let none call himself a master [or learned]. For in these (bodies) the dominion of all external creatures and essences is couched; they oftentimes are contrary one unto another, whence sickness, corruption and death arises in the body, that one severs from the other. 23. The sidereal body is the highest excepting the divine in man; the elemental body is only its servant or dwellinghouse, as the four elements are only a body or habitation of the dominion of the stars. 24. The elemental spirit and body is inanimate and void of understanding, it has only lust and desire in it, vegetation is its right life; for the air has no understanding without the astrum. The astrum gives the distinct understanding of the knowledge of all essences in the elements. 25. But the inward light, and power of the light, gives in man the right divine understanding; but there is no right divine apprehension in the sidereal spirit; for the astrum has another Principle. The Sidereal body dwells in the elemental, as the light- world in the darkness: it is the true rational life of all creatures.
226. The whole astrum is nothing else but the external expressed Word in the sound; it is the instrument whereby the holy eternal speaking Word speaks and forms externally; it is as a great harmony of unsearchable manifold voices and tunes, of all manner of instruments, which play and melodise before the holy God. 27. For they are mere powers, which enter into and mutually embrace each other, whence arises the sound in the essence; and the desire, viz. the Fiat, receives this sound and makes it substantial. This substance is a spirit of the stars, which the elements receive into themselves, and coagulate it in themselves, and hatch it, as a hen her eggs: therefrom is the true rational life in the elements. And thus also the Sidereal spirit is hatched and coagulated in all creatures. 28. For the male and female do mutually cast a seed into each other; which is only a sulphur of the astrum and four elements; afterwards it is hatched in the matrix, and coagulated to a living spirit. 29. For when the fire is enkindled in the seed which is sown in the matrix, the spirit severs itself again from the body, as a propriate; just as the light from the fire, according to the right of the eternal nature; and two become manifest in one, viz. a spiritual body from the astrum, and a fleshy body from the four elements.
330. And this sidereal spirit is the soul of the great world, which depends on Punctum Solis, and receives its light and life from it; as all the stars do take light and power from the sun, so likewise [they take] their spirit. 31. The sun is the centre of the astrum, and the earth the centre of the elements: they are to each other as spirit and body, or as man and wife; albeit the astrum has another wife, where it hatches its essence, viz. the moon, which is the wife of all the stars (but especially of the sun). I mean it in the essence of the operation. 32. Not that we mean that the astrum is wholly arisen from the punctum of Sol, in that I call it the centre of the stars. It is the centre of the powers, the cause that the powers of the stars do act in the essence; it opens their powers, and gives its power into them, as a heart of the powers, and they mutually rejoice in its essence, that they are moved to act or desire in its essence. 33. And even here lies the great Mystery of the creation, viz. that the internal, viz. God, has thus manifested himself with his eternal speaking Word, which he himself is: the external is a type of the internal. God is not alienate: in him all things live and move, each in its Principle and degree.
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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