Fetching
One moment.
Fetching
One moment.
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.
18. For the devil thought that if Eve should bring forth children in Paradise then his design would miscarry: they might then possess his angelical kingdom. 9. Now the question is, Wherefore the devil did deceive Eve by the Serpent only, and not by some other means? Could he not do it in his own form: why did he even speak through the Serpent to Eve? And wherefore did the Serpent address itself to the Tree, to persuade her against God's prohibition? 10. Here the veil lies before Moses his clear eyes, for he sets down the history very right. But how can an unilluminated mind understand it, in that he writes of the Serpent, saying, that the Serpent spoke with Eve, and deceived her, whereas indeed it cannot speak. And also is only a beast, without divine understanding, and in its selfhood cannot know the image of God; much less did the Serpent understand the heavenly powers, or the prohibition. 11. But hear what Moses says: The Serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field, which the Lord God had made: Here the first question is, whence its subtlety came, that even the devil would choose to speak through its subtlety, and deceive Eve? Herein sticks the Mystery.
212. When God moved himself according to his expressed Word in the Verbum Fiat, according to both the inward worlds, viz. according to God's love and anger, according to the eternal nature of the darkness, and according to the eternal nature and power of the light, then all the properties in evil and good did amass [compacted] themselves; for the Fiat was the centre in all those properties, as well as in those wherein the divine power was manifest in holiness. Now, according as each [central] point was opened, understand, according as the lubet to the manifestation of the Grand Mystery of all essences [was in every punctum], even so the Fiat, viz. the first form to nature did apprehend and bring forth an ens or limus out of the earth, and so also above the earth, in each magical astrum [star or planet], according to the degrees of severation. And so in the same ens there was a spirit according to the same degree or magical astrum, and the Fiat did figure and shape even such a body or corpus as the same spirit was.
313. Now, seeing that prince Lucifer did sit as a hierarch in divine pomp, and would domineer in divine power in the fire's might, above and in all, and contemned God's love and humility, and entered with his false desire into the essence of the expressed Word in the Fiat, as a juggler or wicked impostor, that would also form and make [according to his proud perverse will], thereupon he infected that same essence, according to the dark world's property, which came forth also in the Fiat into a compaction, viz. into an ens, wherein evil and good are mutually linked together. For he, the devil, as an apostate rebellious juggler, did desire the greatest subtlety [proceeding] from the centre of nature, and would domineer in the revealed magic in the Fiat. 14. And out of the like ens, [proceeding] from this infected ens (where evil and good was manifest in great power), the Serpent was created in the Fiat. Therefore Moses says very right, it was more subtle than all the beasts of the field; for the devil's will, viz. his desire, which he introduced into that ens, whence it was created, was in it; it had the devil's subtlety and will. And as the devil was an angel in the beginning, and was from a good essence, and yet introduced himself into an evil one, so likewise the Serpent's ens was good before the devil's infection, before its creation; but in the devil's desire it was brought into a property of subtlety and craft.
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.
18. For the devil thought that if Eve should bring forth children in Paradise then his design would miscarry: they might then possess his angelical kingdom. 9. Now the question is, Wherefore the devil did deceive Eve by the Serpent only, and not by some other means? Could he not do it in his own form: why did he even speak through the Serpent to Eve? And wherefore did the Serpent address itself to the Tree, to persuade her against God's prohibition? 10. Here the veil lies before Moses his clear eyes, for he sets down the history very right. But how can an unilluminated mind understand it, in that he writes of the Serpent, saying, that the Serpent spoke with Eve, and deceived her, whereas indeed it cannot speak. And also is only a beast, without divine understanding, and in its selfhood cannot know the image of God; much less did the Serpent understand the heavenly powers, or the prohibition. 11. But hear what Moses says: The Serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field, which the Lord God had made: Here the first question is, whence its subtlety came, that even the devil would choose to speak through its subtlety, and deceive Eve? Herein sticks the Mystery.
212. When God moved himself according to his expressed Word in the Verbum Fiat, according to both the inward worlds, viz. according to God's love and anger, according to the eternal nature of the darkness, and according to the eternal nature and power of the light, then all the properties in evil and good did amass [compacted] themselves; for the Fiat was the centre in all those properties, as well as in those wherein the divine power was manifest in holiness. Now, according as each [central] point was opened, understand, according as the lubet to the manifestation of the Grand Mystery of all essences [was in every punctum], even so the Fiat, viz. the first form to nature did apprehend and bring forth an ens or limus out of the earth, and so also above the earth, in each magical astrum [star or planet], according to the degrees of severation. And so in the same ens there was a spirit according to the same degree or magical astrum, and the Fiat did figure and shape even such a body or corpus as the same spirit was.
313. Now, seeing that prince Lucifer did sit as a hierarch in divine pomp, and would domineer in divine power in the fire's might, above and in all, and contemned God's love and humility, and entered with his false desire into the essence of the expressed Word in the Fiat, as a juggler or wicked impostor, that would also form and make [according to his proud perverse will], thereupon he infected that same essence, according to the dark world's property, which came forth also in the Fiat into a compaction, viz. into an ens, wherein evil and good are mutually linked together. For he, the devil, as an apostate rebellious juggler, did desire the greatest subtlety [proceeding] from the centre of nature, and would domineer in the revealed magic in the Fiat. 14. And out of the like ens, [proceeding] from this infected ens (where evil and good was manifest in great power), the Serpent was created in the Fiat. Therefore Moses says very right, it was more subtle than all the beasts of the field; for the devil's will, viz. his desire, which he introduced into that ens, whence it was created, was in it; it had the devil's subtlety and will. And as the devil was an angel in the beginning, and was from a good essence, and yet introduced himself into an evil one, so likewise the Serpent's ens was good before the devil's infection, before its creation; but in the devil's desire it was brought into a property of subtlety and craft.
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.
No commentary for this page.