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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.
13. Here we now understand very fundamentally how the separation in the fire of the eternal nature has manifested itself in the essence of the outward world with form and shape; for in the enkindling of the fire in the salnitral flagrat two essences do severise, viz. one watery from the devoration in the fire, where the fire devours the rough harsh source of the impression in itself; then out of the consuming there proceeds a great meekness, which is mortified to the fire, and is insensible, and gives the water-source. 4. Secondly, the fire-source does sever itself [likewise into its Principle], viz. the properties to the fire-source, which now with the enkindling of the fire are full of pain and sense. This fire-source could not subsist, unless it did again devour [or take] the water into itself whereby it does strengthen itself; whence also the salnitral flagrat arises, where the wrath is dismayed at the essence of the water's meekness; whence arises the feeling, so also the lustre, of the fire. 5. For that water which is devoured in the fire is dissolved into a spiritual oil, in which the fire shines; and out of the oil proceeds the air, viz. the moving spirit of the fire which is motive in the fire.
26. The air is nothing else but the moving life, where the speaking Word does diffuse itself in the water-source through nature, through the powers of nature, through the fire, in the oil of the nature of the light. It is the fire's life: but it is mortified to the fire, and yet it is made manifest by the fire; it is the life of nature according to the property of meekness. 7. Thus in 1) the enkindling of the fire in the light of the fire, which is the light of nature, four properties are to be understood, viz. a fiery, an airy, and an oily (wherein the light is manifest), and a watery; all which do originally spring forth out of the first desire to nature; in that the free lubet introduces itself into a desire and nature; and they all display themselves through the fire into a moving life; and yet there is no intellective life, but only properties to the true life. The intellectual life is the spirited Word, which manifests itself through the properties. These properties are impressed in the Crea T, that is, in the Verbum Fiat, and brought into an essentiality; wherefrom is come a Sulphur Salnitri, that is, a magical astrum, in manner and mode as the mind of man is; which also has thence its real original.
38. This salnitral and sulphureous property was brought forth out of the third day's work, viz. out of the fire-flagrat; and thence the fourth motion is arisen, viz. the mercurial, which the Fiat has amassed, and impressed it into it, and made it visible, which are the stars; which are nothing else but properties of the powers of nature. Whatsoever nature is in a little spark in itself, that the whole astrum is in its circle; and what nature is in its hiddenness, and secretness, the same the astrum is, in an open working life. Understand it thus: 9. Each star has the property of all stars in it, but hidden in nature, and the star is manifest only in one sole property; else, if the whole nature were manifest in each thing, then all things and essences would be but one thing and essence; and therefore God has, by his sounding Word, moved the Sulphur Salnitri according to the properties, that the distinct severation might be manifest: and this manifestation is a Mercurius; for the eternal-speaking Word, which is called God, has manifested his voice or will through nature. 10. Therefore the whole astrum is a pronounced voice (or breathed tone) of the powers, an expressed Word, which does again give forth from itself its spiration and speaking out of the properties. It is an echo out of God's love and anger, out of the dark-and-light-world.
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.
13. Here we now understand very fundamentally how the separation in the fire of the eternal nature has manifested itself in the essence of the outward world with form and shape; for in the enkindling of the fire in the salnitral flagrat two essences do severise, viz. one watery from the devoration in the fire, where the fire devours the rough harsh source of the impression in itself; then out of the consuming there proceeds a great meekness, which is mortified to the fire, and is insensible, and gives the water-source. 4. Secondly, the fire-source does sever itself [likewise into its Principle], viz. the properties to the fire-source, which now with the enkindling of the fire are full of pain and sense. This fire-source could not subsist, unless it did again devour [or take] the water into itself whereby it does strengthen itself; whence also the salnitral flagrat arises, where the wrath is dismayed at the essence of the water's meekness; whence arises the feeling, so also the lustre, of the fire. 5. For that water which is devoured in the fire is dissolved into a spiritual oil, in which the fire shines; and out of the oil proceeds the air, viz. the moving spirit of the fire which is motive in the fire.
26. The air is nothing else but the moving life, where the speaking Word does diffuse itself in the water-source through nature, through the powers of nature, through the fire, in the oil of the nature of the light. It is the fire's life: but it is mortified to the fire, and yet it is made manifest by the fire; it is the life of nature according to the property of meekness. 7. Thus in 1) the enkindling of the fire in the light of the fire, which is the light of nature, four properties are to be understood, viz. a fiery, an airy, and an oily (wherein the light is manifest), and a watery; all which do originally spring forth out of the first desire to nature; in that the free lubet introduces itself into a desire and nature; and they all display themselves through the fire into a moving life; and yet there is no intellective life, but only properties to the true life. The intellectual life is the spirited Word, which manifests itself through the properties. These properties are impressed in the Crea T, that is, in the Verbum Fiat, and brought into an essentiality; wherefrom is come a Sulphur Salnitri, that is, a magical astrum, in manner and mode as the mind of man is; which also has thence its real original.
38. This salnitral and sulphureous property was brought forth out of the third day's work, viz. out of the fire-flagrat; and thence the fourth motion is arisen, viz. the mercurial, which the Fiat has amassed, and impressed it into it, and made it visible, which are the stars; which are nothing else but properties of the powers of nature. Whatsoever nature is in a little spark in itself, that the whole astrum is in its circle; and what nature is in its hiddenness, and secretness, the same the astrum is, in an open working life. Understand it thus: 9. Each star has the property of all stars in it, but hidden in nature, and the star is manifest only in one sole property; else, if the whole nature were manifest in each thing, then all things and essences would be but one thing and essence; and therefore God has, by his sounding Word, moved the Sulphur Salnitri according to the properties, that the distinct severation might be manifest: and this manifestation is a Mercurius; for the eternal-speaking Word, which is called God, has manifested his voice or will through nature. 10. Therefore the whole astrum is a pronounced voice (or breathed tone) of the powers, an expressed Word, which does again give forth from itself its spiration and speaking out of the properties. It is an echo out of God's love and anger, out of the dark-and-light-world.
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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