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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.
130. And the lucid 1) property of the soul has a spiritual, oleous and watery body, wherein the two properties of the highest tincture of the fire and light do open the lustre and beauty of the colours, wonders and virtue of the divine wisdom. This water is the water above the firmament, of which Moses speaks; and this oil is the holy oil of the divine powers; and this was a usual type in the Old Testament, in that the real oily body of the heavenly property did disappear in Adam in the awakened vanity; so God ordained the type of the new Regeneration with an unction of oil, wherein he powerfully wrought through the promised Covenant, as in a type. 1 Or light. 31. The third outward property of the soul has likewise every way such a body of many constellations in it, as always the inward properties; all which multiplicity of properties may be called heavens. For each property of the outward body has a magical constellation; as there is a body of the sulphurean constellation of the earth; also a body or constellation of the mercurial, poisonful life; also a body of the salt-powers of bodies; also a body of the soul of the outward world, viz. of the upper created constellation; all according as the outward powers of the outward soul are. Thus each power has a corporeal property in it: and thus also the inward powers of the spiritual property are to be understood with the inward body. The Sixteenth Chapter
2Of the Difference of the Heavenly and Earthly Man 1. When we consider the image of God which God created in Paradise unto the eternal uncorruptible life, then we can in no wise say of the gross fleshy image, that the gross property of the earthliness is the image of God, which can possess the holy world: for it is not of the same essence and ens, whereof also Christ speaks: The spirit is life; the flesh profiteth nothing: also, flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven. And yet verily the true body is couched in this bestial, gross property; as the gold in the ore. 2. All that is earthly on man, that is bestial and corruptible, and not man. Albeit God created man an external body out of the limus of the earth; yet it is not to be considered of us, as now it is. For the true human body, according to the inward world, is a spiritual Sulphur, a spiritual Mercurius, and a spiritual Sal: each property of the soul has a corporeal or essential quality on it. 3. God created such a body as the soul was in its essence, viz. in the spirated Word of the understanding; and breathed the soul thereinto for the understanding; also, the outward sulphurean body is in no wise the gross beast which passes away and returns not again. The true, real body, which is hidden in the grossness, is a spiritual body, in comparison to the grossness: it is created indeed in flesh and blood; but in a fixed, steadfast [uncorruptible flesh and blood].
34. By the lust and imagination of Adam the grossness was manifest; the true outward body is a sulphureous, mercurial and saltish property; a pure essential power, according to the nature of the soul: That which the soul is in the spirit, the same is the true human body in the essence, as a mansion of the soul. 5. All the properties of the inward holy body, together with the outward, were (in the first man) composed in an equal harmony, none lived in self-desire, but they all gave up their desire unto the soul, in which the divine light was manifest, as in the holy heaven. The light shone through all the properties, and made an equal temperature in the properties; all the properties gave their desire into the light, viz. into the manifested sweetness of God, which penetrated all the properties; in which penetration they were all tinctured with the sweet love; so that there was nothing but mere pleasing relish and love-desire and delight between them. 6. The inward holy corporality from [of] the pure element penetrated through the four elements, and held the limus of the earth (viz. the outward sulphureous body) in itself as it were swallowed up; and it was really there, but in manner as the darkness dwells in the light, and yet its darkness cannot be manifest for the light; but if the light extinguishes, then the darkness is manifest.
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.
130. And the lucid 1) property of the soul has a spiritual, oleous and watery body, wherein the two properties of the highest tincture of the fire and light do open the lustre and beauty of the colours, wonders and virtue of the divine wisdom. This water is the water above the firmament, of which Moses speaks; and this oil is the holy oil of the divine powers; and this was a usual type in the Old Testament, in that the real oily body of the heavenly property did disappear in Adam in the awakened vanity; so God ordained the type of the new Regeneration with an unction of oil, wherein he powerfully wrought through the promised Covenant, as in a type. 1 Or light. 31. The third outward property of the soul has likewise every way such a body of many constellations in it, as always the inward properties; all which multiplicity of properties may be called heavens. For each property of the outward body has a magical constellation; as there is a body of the sulphurean constellation of the earth; also a body or constellation of the mercurial, poisonful life; also a body of the salt-powers of bodies; also a body of the soul of the outward world, viz. of the upper created constellation; all according as the outward powers of the outward soul are. Thus each power has a corporeal property in it: and thus also the inward powers of the spiritual property are to be understood with the inward body. The Sixteenth Chapter
2Of the Difference of the Heavenly and Earthly Man 1. When we consider the image of God which God created in Paradise unto the eternal uncorruptible life, then we can in no wise say of the gross fleshy image, that the gross property of the earthliness is the image of God, which can possess the holy world: for it is not of the same essence and ens, whereof also Christ speaks: The spirit is life; the flesh profiteth nothing: also, flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven. And yet verily the true body is couched in this bestial, gross property; as the gold in the ore. 2. All that is earthly on man, that is bestial and corruptible, and not man. Albeit God created man an external body out of the limus of the earth; yet it is not to be considered of us, as now it is. For the true human body, according to the inward world, is a spiritual Sulphur, a spiritual Mercurius, and a spiritual Sal: each property of the soul has a corporeal or essential quality on it. 3. God created such a body as the soul was in its essence, viz. in the spirated Word of the understanding; and breathed the soul thereinto for the understanding; also, the outward sulphurean body is in no wise the gross beast which passes away and returns not again. The true, real body, which is hidden in the grossness, is a spiritual body, in comparison to the grossness: it is created indeed in flesh and blood; but in a fixed, steadfast [uncorruptible flesh and blood].
34. By the lust and imagination of Adam the grossness was manifest; the true outward body is a sulphureous, mercurial and saltish property; a pure essential power, according to the nature of the soul: That which the soul is in the spirit, the same is the true human body in the essence, as a mansion of the soul. 5. All the properties of the inward holy body, together with the outward, were (in the first man) composed in an equal harmony, none lived in self-desire, but they all gave up their desire unto the soul, in which the divine light was manifest, as in the holy heaven. The light shone through all the properties, and made an equal temperature in the properties; all the properties gave their desire into the light, viz. into the manifested sweetness of God, which penetrated all the properties; in which penetration they were all tinctured with the sweet love; so that there was nothing but mere pleasing relish and love-desire and delight between them. 6. The inward holy corporality from [of] the pure element penetrated through the four elements, and held the limus of the earth (viz. the outward sulphureous body) in itself as it were swallowed up; and it was really there, but in manner as the darkness dwells in the light, and yet its darkness cannot be manifest for the light; but if the light extinguishes, then the darkness is manifest.
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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