Fetching
One moment.
Fetching
One moment.
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.
134. The outward properties dwell in themselves in the external, viz. in the expressed Word, and are wholly external; they cannot in their own strength reach the powers of the holy world; the holy world alone penetrates them: it dwells also in itself: But in the punctum of Sol the eighth number is open, viz. the eternal nature, the eternal magical fire; and in the fire the eternal tincture, which is the ninth number; and in the tincture the cross, where the Deity manifests itself, which is the tenth number: and beyond this manifestation is the eternal understanding, viz. the ONE, that is, God, JEHOVAH, viz. the ABYSS. 35. Not that God is divided: we speak of his manifestation alone, from what ability and power the sun has its shining lustre, that the same is immutable, so long as time endures; namely, from the lustre of the fiery tincture of the eternal, spiritual, magical fire. 36. For its lustre or shining light has a degree of a more deep original than the external world has manifest in itself. This the wise heathen have observed, and adored it for God, seeing the true God, who dwells outside all nature in himself, was not known unto them. The Twelfth Chapter Of the Six Days' Works of the Creation 1. That God has created heaven and earth and all things in six days, as Moses says, is the greatest Mystery, wholly hidden
2from the external reason. There is neither night, morning, nor evening in the deep above the moon; but a continual day from the beginning of the outward world even to the end of the same. 2. And albeit the creation was finished in such a time as in the length of six days, yet the days' works have a far more subtle [or abstruse] meaning: for the seven properties are also understood therewith, six whereof belong to the active dominion, to good and evil, and the seventh, viz. the essence, is the rest, wherein the other properties rest, which God has expressed and made visible. 3. We have in the dominion of the planetic orb the figure, how the six properties of the active life (which rest in the seventh) have, in six days, out of the inward spiritual world, introduced and manifested themselves in an external visible world of four elements: for the planetic orb has its rise from the punctum of Sol; for there was the royal place of the hierarchies, of which the whole circle (between the stars in the internal and external) is a member or Corpus. 4. But seeing the prince of the hierarchies (when he sat in the heavenly essence in the rest) did fall, and aspired to or for the centre of the eternal nature, he was cast into the darkness: and God by his motion created [for] him[-self] another prince out of this place (but without divine understanding) for a ruler of the essence; and that is the sun.
35. From this place proceeded, in the divine motion, the seven properties of nature (understand, the planets) which govern the essential being in good and evil (in which [essence] Lucifer sat, and whence he was cast, and lost his dominion in the essence); and as the seven properties have their dominion in the beginning of each day in the week, even so were the six days' works of the creation. 6. for Lucifer forsook the rest of his hierarchies, and entered into the eternal disquietness. Now, God has created all things of this world in six days, and rested on the seventh day from the creation, which is Saturday, according to the Scripture; that is, from the day of rest, understand from the eternal day of rest, he has moved himself to the creation; and in the first form of nature he began the first day; that is, he has brought it forth out of the impression, and moved himself with his Word: this was the most inward motion according to the speaking Word of power. 7. Then began, in the expressed Word, Sunday, that is, the true paradisical day, where the powers did mutually work in each other in great holiness and glory; for on Sunday the enkindled sulphur and salniter of the earthly property was created out of the great deep of the whole hierarchy, out of the spiritual worlds, into a mass (which is the terrestrial globe), and was put forth out of the austere property of the first form of nature.
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.
134. The outward properties dwell in themselves in the external, viz. in the expressed Word, and are wholly external; they cannot in their own strength reach the powers of the holy world; the holy world alone penetrates them: it dwells also in itself: But in the punctum of Sol the eighth number is open, viz. the eternal nature, the eternal magical fire; and in the fire the eternal tincture, which is the ninth number; and in the tincture the cross, where the Deity manifests itself, which is the tenth number: and beyond this manifestation is the eternal understanding, viz. the ONE, that is, God, JEHOVAH, viz. the ABYSS. 35. Not that God is divided: we speak of his manifestation alone, from what ability and power the sun has its shining lustre, that the same is immutable, so long as time endures; namely, from the lustre of the fiery tincture of the eternal, spiritual, magical fire. 36. For its lustre or shining light has a degree of a more deep original than the external world has manifest in itself. This the wise heathen have observed, and adored it for God, seeing the true God, who dwells outside all nature in himself, was not known unto them. The Twelfth Chapter Of the Six Days' Works of the Creation 1. That God has created heaven and earth and all things in six days, as Moses says, is the greatest Mystery, wholly hidden
2from the external reason. There is neither night, morning, nor evening in the deep above the moon; but a continual day from the beginning of the outward world even to the end of the same. 2. And albeit the creation was finished in such a time as in the length of six days, yet the days' works have a far more subtle [or abstruse] meaning: for the seven properties are also understood therewith, six whereof belong to the active dominion, to good and evil, and the seventh, viz. the essence, is the rest, wherein the other properties rest, which God has expressed and made visible. 3. We have in the dominion of the planetic orb the figure, how the six properties of the active life (which rest in the seventh) have, in six days, out of the inward spiritual world, introduced and manifested themselves in an external visible world of four elements: for the planetic orb has its rise from the punctum of Sol; for there was the royal place of the hierarchies, of which the whole circle (between the stars in the internal and external) is a member or Corpus. 4. But seeing the prince of the hierarchies (when he sat in the heavenly essence in the rest) did fall, and aspired to or for the centre of the eternal nature, he was cast into the darkness: and God by his motion created [for] him[-self] another prince out of this place (but without divine understanding) for a ruler of the essence; and that is the sun.
35. From this place proceeded, in the divine motion, the seven properties of nature (understand, the planets) which govern the essential being in good and evil (in which [essence] Lucifer sat, and whence he was cast, and lost his dominion in the essence); and as the seven properties have their dominion in the beginning of each day in the week, even so were the six days' works of the creation. 6. for Lucifer forsook the rest of his hierarchies, and entered into the eternal disquietness. Now, God has created all things of this world in six days, and rested on the seventh day from the creation, which is Saturday, according to the Scripture; that is, from the day of rest, understand from the eternal day of rest, he has moved himself to the creation; and in the first form of nature he began the first day; that is, he has brought it forth out of the impression, and moved himself with his Word: this was the most inward motion according to the speaking Word of power. 7. Then began, in the expressed Word, Sunday, that is, the true paradisical day, where the powers did mutually work in each other in great holiness and glory; for on Sunday the enkindled sulphur and salniter of the earthly property was created out of the great deep of the whole hierarchy, out of the spiritual worlds, into a mass (which is the terrestrial globe), and was put forth out of the austere property of the first form of nature.
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.
No commentary for this page.