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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.
117. And with the spiration the sixfold life of the six degrees of the days' works and forms of the centre came forth externally and severised itself; after the kind and nature of the eternal birth. As first, Venus which is the water-source out of the meekness out of the mortification in the fire, which is a desire of meekness from 1) the fire, for the fire enkindles the meekness whence it is desirous. This is now the love-desire according to the spirit, and according to its essence it is water; which water in the metals affords the noble corpus solis. 1 By reason of. 18. This Venus, seeing she (as to her own natural right) is mortified to the fire, is submissive, and gives the holy water; understand, as to her own peculiar property; which [water] is holy in the spirit, and yet in the essence it is captivated in the wrath, where it gives the material water according to the deadly property. It gives body unto all the seven metals, and essence to all the six planets: which we see in the metals; for each planet makes its essence in its property according to itself. As the Sun, in gold; the Moon in silver; Jupiter in tin; Saturn in lead; Mercurius in quicksilver; Mars in iron; and yet it is the essence of the Venus property alone: but they give their power and spirit into it, and hold the body for their own, seeing they rule the same.
219. This Venus property in the place of Sol sank downwards in the first egress; and the fire-source above it is Mars; and out of Venus property beneath, the heavy sound, and that is Mercurius, out of the Sulphur Salnitri through the water; and upwards out of Mars, the power of the fire and light, that is Jupiter; and beneath, from Mercurius, the essence of the desire, where Venus comprehends the essence in her fiery desire, as a body of the powers, that is Luna; and above Jupiter, Saturnus, viz. the expressed or spirated impression of the first form of nature. 20. These properties were spherated in the spiration, in manner as the birth of nature is in the essence, which the Verbum Fiat received and amassed into a body, and ordained it for dominion unto the four astrums, over which he has appointed angelical rulers as a supreme council: which we give only a hint of here, seeing we have spoken thereof at large in another place. The Fourteenth Chapter Of the Creation of the Fifth Day 1. Now when God had opened the astrum and four elements as a moving life, wherein the superior astrum gave the distinction in the moving life, and actuated the four astrums in the four elements, then he educed out of the essence of all the astrums and elements, through the motion of his speaking Word in the Verbum Fiat, the impress or express, as the power of that same life, which was free from
3the pain, and amassed it through the Verbum Fiat, and spoke forth that same life, by the holy eternal- speaking Word through the Fiat, into forms and shapes, according to the properties of the astrums in the spiritual corpus, in which the Fiat or the desire attracted the elements according to the outward essence unto itself as a body. 2. And thence were creatures produced in all the four elements; in each astrum according to its property: as birds in the astrum of the air; fishes in the astrum of the water; cattle and four-footed beasts out of the astrum of the earth, and four elements; likewise spirits in the fire-astrum, which also is in the other elements. And we see very exactly in the difference of the creatures that the degrees of the astrum [or constellations] are so distinct and various. For the worms of the earth live in the third degree, viz. in the fire-flagrat, in the Sulphur, Mars, and Mercury, in the life devoid of understanding; and whereas they have an understanding [or instinct] by the enkindling of the superior astrum, in which third degree in the property also grass, herbs and trees do stand, and yet they receive assisting influence from the superior [astrum] in the enkindling, by which they are otherwise qualified.
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.
117. And with the spiration the sixfold life of the six degrees of the days' works and forms of the centre came forth externally and severised itself; after the kind and nature of the eternal birth. As first, Venus which is the water-source out of the meekness out of the mortification in the fire, which is a desire of meekness from 1) the fire, for the fire enkindles the meekness whence it is desirous. This is now the love-desire according to the spirit, and according to its essence it is water; which water in the metals affords the noble corpus solis. 1 By reason of. 18. This Venus, seeing she (as to her own natural right) is mortified to the fire, is submissive, and gives the holy water; understand, as to her own peculiar property; which [water] is holy in the spirit, and yet in the essence it is captivated in the wrath, where it gives the material water according to the deadly property. It gives body unto all the seven metals, and essence to all the six planets: which we see in the metals; for each planet makes its essence in its property according to itself. As the Sun, in gold; the Moon in silver; Jupiter in tin; Saturn in lead; Mercurius in quicksilver; Mars in iron; and yet it is the essence of the Venus property alone: but they give their power and spirit into it, and hold the body for their own, seeing they rule the same.
219. This Venus property in the place of Sol sank downwards in the first egress; and the fire-source above it is Mars; and out of Venus property beneath, the heavy sound, and that is Mercurius, out of the Sulphur Salnitri through the water; and upwards out of Mars, the power of the fire and light, that is Jupiter; and beneath, from Mercurius, the essence of the desire, where Venus comprehends the essence in her fiery desire, as a body of the powers, that is Luna; and above Jupiter, Saturnus, viz. the expressed or spirated impression of the first form of nature. 20. These properties were spherated in the spiration, in manner as the birth of nature is in the essence, which the Verbum Fiat received and amassed into a body, and ordained it for dominion unto the four astrums, over which he has appointed angelical rulers as a supreme council: which we give only a hint of here, seeing we have spoken thereof at large in another place. The Fourteenth Chapter Of the Creation of the Fifth Day 1. Now when God had opened the astrum and four elements as a moving life, wherein the superior astrum gave the distinction in the moving life, and actuated the four astrums in the four elements, then he educed out of the essence of all the astrums and elements, through the motion of his speaking Word in the Verbum Fiat, the impress or express, as the power of that same life, which was free from
3the pain, and amassed it through the Verbum Fiat, and spoke forth that same life, by the holy eternal- speaking Word through the Fiat, into forms and shapes, according to the properties of the astrums in the spiritual corpus, in which the Fiat or the desire attracted the elements according to the outward essence unto itself as a body. 2. And thence were creatures produced in all the four elements; in each astrum according to its property: as birds in the astrum of the air; fishes in the astrum of the water; cattle and four-footed beasts out of the astrum of the earth, and four elements; likewise spirits in the fire-astrum, which also is in the other elements. And we see very exactly in the difference of the creatures that the degrees of the astrum [or constellations] are so distinct and various. For the worms of the earth live in the third degree, viz. in the fire-flagrat, in the Sulphur, Mars, and Mercury, in the life devoid of understanding; and whereas they have an understanding [or instinct] by the enkindling of the superior astrum, in which third degree in the property also grass, herbs and trees do stand, and yet they receive assisting influence from the superior [astrum] in the enkindling, by which they are otherwise qualified.
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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