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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.
116. God created all things in six days out of the seven properties, and introduced the six days' works of the manifestation of his creature into the seventh, wherein every life should work as in one body; for the seventh day and the first belong mutually to one another as one. For the six properties of the eternal nature are all couched in the seventh, as in a structure [operate or work-house] of the other six; the seventh property is a mystery or essence of all the others; and out of the seventh day the first day has taken its original and beginning. SEVENTH DAY, SATURNUS 17. For on the seventh day, viz. Saturday, Saturn has the first hour of the day [under] his dominion in the planetic orb; which is a figure of the sevenfold generation of the eternal nature. For like as the first form of the eternal nature is the astringent desire, viz. the Fiat, which in the desire impresses the free lubet (which is as a thin nothing in the eternal will of God, in the divine understanding) and introduces it into a spiritual essence, in which desire-essence all the properties do arise, as is above mentioned. 18. So likewise Saturn, or the seventh property of the seventh day, is the rest or mansion of the other six days works, wherein they work as a spirit in the body: the seventh property stands still as a senseless life.
219. But that now Moses says, God rested on the seventh day from all his works, and sanctified the seventh day for rest: this has a very peculiar emphatical deep meaning; and yet it were but plain and child-like, if we were in Paradise, and dwelt in the Sabbath. Understand it thus: 20. Out of the Verbum Fiat, viz. out of the divine Word, and out of the divine desire (which is the Fiat in the Word, wherewith the Word forms itself, or introduces itself in the spiritual essence to the dark fire-and-light- world), the six properties of the eternal and temporal nature proceeded; and each has introduced itself into a sundry degree of a sundry property, which degree may be called a heaven, or a magical spiritual-constellation. 21. For each property is a spirated essence, viz. a heaven: for heaven [Text, Himmel, expounded in the Language of nature] does properly and exactly denote and signify, in the Language of nature, a spiration or formation, where the Fiat forms what the Word speaks or breathes forth; and thus the spiration or speaking was introduced into six degrees or days'-works.
322. Each spiration continued [for] a time, viz. the length of a day and night in the formation and conception, and each property of a day was mutually spoken or breathed forth out of the other, even unto the sixth, in which the formed Word was manifest, which in the fifth form, viz. in the love-desire, did receive its aspect or illustration through the fire from the light; and amassed or formed itself in the sixth form of nature; in which formation the image of God (man) was created, as an image of the formed Word, which God introduced into the Sabbath, viz. into the seventh day, understand, into the Verbum Fiat, viz. into the first divine desire to nature, wherein Paradise and the eternal day was. 23. For in the seventh property lieth the eternal day, whence the days of time are proceeded; and the ancients have called it Sonnabend
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.
116. God created all things in six days out of the seven properties, and introduced the six days' works of the manifestation of his creature into the seventh, wherein every life should work as in one body; for the seventh day and the first belong mutually to one another as one. For the six properties of the eternal nature are all couched in the seventh, as in a structure [operate or work-house] of the other six; the seventh property is a mystery or essence of all the others; and out of the seventh day the first day has taken its original and beginning. SEVENTH DAY, SATURNUS 17. For on the seventh day, viz. Saturday, Saturn has the first hour of the day [under] his dominion in the planetic orb; which is a figure of the sevenfold generation of the eternal nature. For like as the first form of the eternal nature is the astringent desire, viz. the Fiat, which in the desire impresses the free lubet (which is as a thin nothing in the eternal will of God, in the divine understanding) and introduces it into a spiritual essence, in which desire-essence all the properties do arise, as is above mentioned. 18. So likewise Saturn, or the seventh property of the seventh day, is the rest or mansion of the other six days works, wherein they work as a spirit in the body: the seventh property stands still as a senseless life.
219. But that now Moses says, God rested on the seventh day from all his works, and sanctified the seventh day for rest: this has a very peculiar emphatical deep meaning; and yet it were but plain and child-like, if we were in Paradise, and dwelt in the Sabbath. Understand it thus: 20. Out of the Verbum Fiat, viz. out of the divine Word, and out of the divine desire (which is the Fiat in the Word, wherewith the Word forms itself, or introduces itself in the spiritual essence to the dark fire-and-light- world), the six properties of the eternal and temporal nature proceeded; and each has introduced itself into a sundry degree of a sundry property, which degree may be called a heaven, or a magical spiritual-constellation. 21. For each property is a spirated essence, viz. a heaven: for heaven [Text, Himmel, expounded in the Language of nature] does properly and exactly denote and signify, in the Language of nature, a spiration or formation, where the Fiat forms what the Word speaks or breathes forth; and thus the spiration or speaking was introduced into six degrees or days'-works.
322. Each spiration continued [for] a time, viz. the length of a day and night in the formation and conception, and each property of a day was mutually spoken or breathed forth out of the other, even unto the sixth, in which the formed Word was manifest, which in the fifth form, viz. in the love-desire, did receive its aspect or illustration through the fire from the light; and amassed or formed itself in the sixth form of nature; in which formation the image of God (man) was created, as an image of the formed Word, which God introduced into the Sabbath, viz. into the seventh day, understand, into the Verbum Fiat, viz. into the first divine desire to nature, wherein Paradise and the eternal day was. 23. For in the seventh property lieth the eternal day, whence the days of time are proceeded; and the ancients have called it Sonnabend
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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