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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.
113. Thus understand by the inward creating the true heavenly image, viz. a holy [spiritual] man out of all the properties of the angelical divine world. Understand the inward body for the one only element, whence the four were expressed; and understand the outward man for the outward world, with the stars and four elements, viz. fire, air, water and earth, and also for the outward tincture, which is linked with the inward in the holy expressed Word, and is only severed by a Principle; where also the inward puts forth an external life out of itself. The inward is holy, and the outward [life or Principle] in the tincture were likewise holy, if the curse were not come into it by reason of the awakened vanity; yet if the vanity be severed by 1) the tincture, then it is holy, and a paradise, which shall open itself at the end of this world. 1 Or from. 14. And Moses says further, God breathed into man the breath of life, and he became a living soul: this signifies the living, speaking, understanding spirit, out of all the three Principles, viz. out of the inward fire-world, which is manifest through the dark world; and out of the holy light-world, and out of the outward aerial-world: this is the soul.
215. The inward fire-breath is the true eternal creatural soul; and the light-breath is the true understanding spirit of the soul, wherein it is an angel; and the outward air-breath is the rational soul in the vegetative bestial life, wherewith man rules over all the creatures of this world. That is one only soul in three Principles, according to the image or likeness of God. 16. As the only understanding of the abyssal unsearchable Deity has manifested itself with three Principles, so likewise he has breathed into the created image the same spirit, viz. the true life out of all the three Principles. The body is a limus of all essences, and the soul is the expressed Word, viz. the power and understanding of all essences, viz. the manifestation of the divine understanding. 17. The spirit of God has inspired or given in itself from the properties of all the three Principles, into the created image, viz. the Father of all essences has breathed or spoken forth the spirit, through his eternal-speaking Word, out of all the three Principles, out of the whole essence of the powers; or, as I might set it down, he has inspoken it, viz. the egressed sound or expressed voice of the understanding which, through the motion of God, did educe and manifest itself through the eternal and temporal nature. The same [spirit] God did again in-speak or, as the text in Moses has it, breathed [itself] into this only image, for a ruler of the body and all other creatures.
318. And the soul, in its real life and understanding, consists in three kingdoms: the first is the eternal nature, viz. the potent might of eternity, the dark and fire-world, according to which God calls himself a strong zealous angry God, and a consuming fire, in which Lucifer has wholly diabolised himself. 19. The second is the holy light-world, where the eternal understanding has displayed itself through the fire's-sharpness, in the light of the great fiery love-desire, and turned the wrathful dark-and-fiery propery to a kingdom of joy; which is the true manifestation of the Deity; and it is called the holy heaven of the angelical delight and bliss. 20. The third kingdom or world is the outward astral and elemental kingdom, viz. the air, with its domineering constellations, wherein all the five outward constellations rule, viz. the superior, and the inferior of the four elements, out of which the five senses take their original, wherein the vegetable and reasonable life consists. This is the animal soul, which rules in all the creatures of this world, so also in all the outward heavens or constellations, and in all the earth or essences of the outward 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.
113. Thus understand by the inward creating the true heavenly image, viz. a holy [spiritual] man out of all the properties of the angelical divine world. Understand the inward body for the one only element, whence the four were expressed; and understand the outward man for the outward world, with the stars and four elements, viz. fire, air, water and earth, and also for the outward tincture, which is linked with the inward in the holy expressed Word, and is only severed by a Principle; where also the inward puts forth an external life out of itself. The inward is holy, and the outward [life or Principle] in the tincture were likewise holy, if the curse were not come into it by reason of the awakened vanity; yet if the vanity be severed by 1) the tincture, then it is holy, and a paradise, which shall open itself at the end of this world. 1 Or from. 14. And Moses says further, God breathed into man the breath of life, and he became a living soul: this signifies the living, speaking, understanding spirit, out of all the three Principles, viz. out of the inward fire-world, which is manifest through the dark world; and out of the holy light-world, and out of the outward aerial-world: this is the soul.
215. The inward fire-breath is the true eternal creatural soul; and the light-breath is the true understanding spirit of the soul, wherein it is an angel; and the outward air-breath is the rational soul in the vegetative bestial life, wherewith man rules over all the creatures of this world. That is one only soul in three Principles, according to the image or likeness of God. 16. As the only understanding of the abyssal unsearchable Deity has manifested itself with three Principles, so likewise he has breathed into the created image the same spirit, viz. the true life out of all the three Principles. The body is a limus of all essences, and the soul is the expressed Word, viz. the power and understanding of all essences, viz. the manifestation of the divine understanding. 17. The spirit of God has inspired or given in itself from the properties of all the three Principles, into the created image, viz. the Father of all essences has breathed or spoken forth the spirit, through his eternal-speaking Word, out of all the three Principles, out of the whole essence of the powers; or, as I might set it down, he has inspoken it, viz. the egressed sound or expressed voice of the understanding which, through the motion of God, did educe and manifest itself through the eternal and temporal nature. The same [spirit] God did again in-speak or, as the text in Moses has it, breathed [itself] into this only image, for a ruler of the body and all other creatures.
318. And the soul, in its real life and understanding, consists in three kingdoms: the first is the eternal nature, viz. the potent might of eternity, the dark and fire-world, according to which God calls himself a strong zealous angry God, and a consuming fire, in which Lucifer has wholly diabolised himself. 19. The second is the holy light-world, where the eternal understanding has displayed itself through the fire's-sharpness, in the light of the great fiery love-desire, and turned the wrathful dark-and-fiery propery to a kingdom of joy; which is the true manifestation of the Deity; and it is called the holy heaven of the angelical delight and bliss. 20. The third kingdom or world is the outward astral and elemental kingdom, viz. the air, with its domineering constellations, wherein all the five outward constellations rule, viz. the superior, and the inferior of the four elements, out of which the five senses take their original, wherein the vegetable and reasonable life consists. This is the animal soul, which rules in all the creatures of this world, so also in all the outward heavens or constellations, and in all the earth or essences of the outward 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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