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.
141. Therefore we say, as we have found it in the grace of the One, that all men's imaginations, opinions and knowings of God, his being, and will, without the divine light [or illumination of the spirit], 2 are this same whore's beast, which is flown forth and arisen from the compacted spirits of the letters; whereby men contend about the spirits of the letters. 1 Text, images. 2 The undoubted Unction of the Holy Ghost. 42. We have lost the five vowels in the Alphabet; which do introduce all the spirits of the letters into one pure harmony; and the five vowels are as 't were senseless or dumb, in reference to the other letters; and yet they are the life of the rest, for there cannot any word be formed but there must be a vowel. 43. Now there is no better way or remedy to bring us into union, that so we may become ONE again with one another, one people, one tree, one man in soul and body, than to destroy and kill all the images or forms of the letters in us; and suffer none of them at all to have its own self-life; not desiring to know or will any more of God, save only and alone what God wills to know in us and through us; and also that we do immerse or resign the soul's hunger and desire merely, only, and nakedly, without any other knowing or willing, into the five vowels; and therein the great holy name of JEOVA or JESUS (viz. the living Word) is manifest;
2which gives life unto all things, and [that we should] not, according to the property of nature, desire and will the different variety of many things, but give up ourselves into the one only love-sun: therein is he manifest. 44. As the outward sun gives life and power to the whole world, so likewise this only name, in its power, gives life and understanding to all the letters; and understand us aright what we mean by the whoredoms of the letters. 45. The letters, viz. the properties of the sensual tongue, have introduced themselves into an external form, or self-full will and understanding, and brought themselves with the vowels into a compaction [self-comprehension or particular formation] . And when this was done, then JESUS, viz. the holy name JEOVA, died [or disappeared] in the sensual tongue in the letters with the five vowels of the one only holy mental tongue; that is, the spiritual man, which was resigned in [and to] God, died to the divine understanding and will. 46. Now there is a self-willed beast of selfishness and ownhood brought forth out of the spirit of the other letters, which does only kill, and bring forth dead fruit. For Paul says, the letter kills, but the spirit makes alive (2 Cor. iii. 6). Understand this thus:
347. The divided sensual tongue kills us, sets us at odds and variance, and leads us into Babel. But the spirit of the vowels, viz. the holy name of God, does again revive and quicken us in him. Therefore the holy word of the five vowels did again (when as the spirits of the letters were divided and brought into the selfhood of the wonders of God) espouse and incorporate itself forthwith in Paradise with the precious Covenant, into the letter, viz. into the natural man; for to manifest itself again with a motion in the compacted tongue, and to introduce the holy sense again into the sensual tongue. 48. Thus understand us aright: The literal form in the sensual tongue is now the evil beast, which will domineer in its own power. Now into this evil beast the spirit of the five vowels, viz. the name JEHOVAH (which with the H, has breathed the JESUS thereinto) has given in itself and killed the evil beast, viz. the self-will, and has again tinctured the spirits of the letter, viz. the right natural man, with the tincture of the holy name of the vowels, or JEHSUS; and with the love has slain the death or deaths in the letters, and destroyed their self-will;
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.
141. Therefore we say, as we have found it in the grace of the One, that all men's imaginations, opinions and knowings of God, his being, and will, without the divine light [or illumination of the spirit], 2 are this same whore's beast, which is flown forth and arisen from the compacted spirits of the letters; whereby men contend about the spirits of the letters. 1 Text, images. 2 The undoubted Unction of the Holy Ghost. 42. We have lost the five vowels in the Alphabet; which do introduce all the spirits of the letters into one pure harmony; and the five vowels are as 't were senseless or dumb, in reference to the other letters; and yet they are the life of the rest, for there cannot any word be formed but there must be a vowel. 43. Now there is no better way or remedy to bring us into union, that so we may become ONE again with one another, one people, one tree, one man in soul and body, than to destroy and kill all the images or forms of the letters in us; and suffer none of them at all to have its own self-life; not desiring to know or will any more of God, save only and alone what God wills to know in us and through us; and also that we do immerse or resign the soul's hunger and desire merely, only, and nakedly, without any other knowing or willing, into the five vowels; and therein the great holy name of JEOVA or JESUS (viz. the living Word) is manifest;
2which gives life unto all things, and [that we should] not, according to the property of nature, desire and will the different variety of many things, but give up ourselves into the one only love-sun: therein is he manifest. 44. As the outward sun gives life and power to the whole world, so likewise this only name, in its power, gives life and understanding to all the letters; and understand us aright what we mean by the whoredoms of the letters. 45. The letters, viz. the properties of the sensual tongue, have introduced themselves into an external form, or self-full will and understanding, and brought themselves with the vowels into a compaction [self-comprehension or particular formation] . And when this was done, then JESUS, viz. the holy name JEOVA, died [or disappeared] in the sensual tongue in the letters with the five vowels of the one only holy mental tongue; that is, the spiritual man, which was resigned in [and to] God, died to the divine understanding and will. 46. Now there is a self-willed beast of selfishness and ownhood brought forth out of the spirit of the other letters, which does only kill, and bring forth dead fruit. For Paul says, the letter kills, but the spirit makes alive (2 Cor. iii. 6). Understand this thus:
347. The divided sensual tongue kills us, sets us at odds and variance, and leads us into Babel. But the spirit of the vowels, viz. the holy name of God, does again revive and quicken us in him. Therefore the holy word of the five vowels did again (when as the spirits of the letters were divided and brought into the selfhood of the wonders of God) espouse and incorporate itself forthwith in Paradise with the precious Covenant, into the letter, viz. into the natural man; for to manifest itself again with a motion in the compacted tongue, and to introduce the holy sense again into the sensual tongue. 48. Thus understand us aright: The literal form in the sensual tongue is now the evil beast, which will domineer in its own power. Now into this evil beast the spirit of the five vowels, viz. the name JEHOVAH (which with the H, has breathed the JESUS thereinto) has given in itself and killed the evil beast, viz. the self-will, and has again tinctured the spirits of the letter, viz. the right natural man, with the tincture of the holy name of the vowels, or JEHSUS; and with the love has slain the death or deaths in the letters, and destroyed their self-will;
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.