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.
19. The right prophetic ground of the magical seeing and understanding is thus: Every prophet is a limit, wherein a time is included or an age comprehended; and he is the mouth of that kingdom or dominion; that is, when that kingdom has awakened and generated the turba in it, then is he the mouth of the inward ground, which declares and expresses the vanity in the turba, and also the grace of God which has taken compassion on the human misery, and opposed the wrath of the turba, and [he] reproves that kingdom for their vanity and idolatry, and comforts them with the introverted grace again. 10. For his spirit stands in the figure, in the eternal speaking Word of God (from which the life was expressed or spoken forth, and became a creature), introverted again as an instrument of the spirit of God, whereby the spirit of God speaks and intimates. For the prophetic spirit could not, in its own might and power, declare future hidden things, if the spirit of God did not see through it, and that the Word of God did also go together through his Word into the magic figure which the prophet sees. 11. For the prophet knows not anything beforehand in his own power and authority, which he declares, but when the word models itself together in the figure, then the prophetic spirit sees through God's seeing, how the word of God goes also together upon the figure. And then the Word expresses, declares and expounds
2the figure through the prophetic spirit: as here was done by Joseph. When the king's officers told their dreams, then the Word set the figure in Joseph's understanding how it should come to pass, so that Joseph knew what their visions meant. 12. But he knew it not beforehand; but in the telling of the dream, the word of understanding modelled itself in Joseph's understanding, that he knew it. For Joseph's spirit stood in a magic figure, introverted again into the Word, after the manner as the new birth in the spirit of Christ stands introverted again. So also the other prophets, through whose mouth God's Word expounded and expressed from the inward ground, through their mouth, the wonders of God in nature, viz. in the formed creaturely word. 13. By this figure of Joseph, in that he obtained divine knowledge and skill, and could expound hidden things, we see how the introverted spirit of man resigned up into God, when he forsakes all that is his own, does attain the divine eye to see and understand; so that he gets much more again than he forsook, and that he is much richer than when he enjoyed his own. For in his own will he had and possessed only a particular; but in the resignation he gets into the total, viz. [into the universal] into all; for ALL is from the Word of God.
314. Therefore if he comes into that he comes into the ground wherein all lies in the eternity, and from being poor becomes rich. As Joseph's figure declares, that a poor prisoner became a prince, and that only by the divine Word that had manifested itself in him, when the Word, in his submissive dereliction and forsaking all, expressed or spoke forth itself again, and so spoke or pronounced Joseph into a regal government and dominion, through whom the Word of God would rule in Egypt, and give the understanding for such a kingly government. 15. We see further in this figure of Joseph, How at length all must serve for the best to God's children (Rom. viii. 28): all the wrong they must suffer that will turn to mere joy in the issue. For in trouble and affliction they learn to know what they are, how very weak and miserable they are in their own selves, and how near death and misery attend them; and how all the trust, confidence and expectation they have of men, in that they will rely upon man and trust to the favour of man, is a very fickle uncertain thing; also how man should turn his hope towards God, when he expects to be delivered out of trouble by the favour of man: yet [even] so at length the favour and counsel of man must stand him in stead.
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.
19. The right prophetic ground of the magical seeing and understanding is thus: Every prophet is a limit, wherein a time is included or an age comprehended; and he is the mouth of that kingdom or dominion; that is, when that kingdom has awakened and generated the turba in it, then is he the mouth of the inward ground, which declares and expresses the vanity in the turba, and also the grace of God which has taken compassion on the human misery, and opposed the wrath of the turba, and [he] reproves that kingdom for their vanity and idolatry, and comforts them with the introverted grace again. 10. For his spirit stands in the figure, in the eternal speaking Word of God (from which the life was expressed or spoken forth, and became a creature), introverted again as an instrument of the spirit of God, whereby the spirit of God speaks and intimates. For the prophetic spirit could not, in its own might and power, declare future hidden things, if the spirit of God did not see through it, and that the Word of God did also go together through his Word into the magic figure which the prophet sees. 11. For the prophet knows not anything beforehand in his own power and authority, which he declares, but when the word models itself together in the figure, then the prophetic spirit sees through God's seeing, how the word of God goes also together upon the figure. And then the Word expresses, declares and expounds
2the figure through the prophetic spirit: as here was done by Joseph. When the king's officers told their dreams, then the Word set the figure in Joseph's understanding how it should come to pass, so that Joseph knew what their visions meant. 12. But he knew it not beforehand; but in the telling of the dream, the word of understanding modelled itself in Joseph's understanding, that he knew it. For Joseph's spirit stood in a magic figure, introverted again into the Word, after the manner as the new birth in the spirit of Christ stands introverted again. So also the other prophets, through whose mouth God's Word expounded and expressed from the inward ground, through their mouth, the wonders of God in nature, viz. in the formed creaturely word. 13. By this figure of Joseph, in that he obtained divine knowledge and skill, and could expound hidden things, we see how the introverted spirit of man resigned up into God, when he forsakes all that is his own, does attain the divine eye to see and understand; so that he gets much more again than he forsook, and that he is much richer than when he enjoyed his own. For in his own will he had and possessed only a particular; but in the resignation he gets into the total, viz. [into the universal] into all; for ALL is from the Word of God.
314. Therefore if he comes into that he comes into the ground wherein all lies in the eternity, and from being poor becomes rich. As Joseph's figure declares, that a poor prisoner became a prince, and that only by the divine Word that had manifested itself in him, when the Word, in his submissive dereliction and forsaking all, expressed or spoke forth itself again, and so spoke or pronounced Joseph into a regal government and dominion, through whom the Word of God would rule in Egypt, and give the understanding for such a kingly government. 15. We see further in this figure of Joseph, How at length all must serve for the best to God's children (Rom. viii. 28): all the wrong they must suffer that will turn to mere joy in the issue. For in trouble and affliction they learn to know what they are, how very weak and miserable they are in their own selves, and how near death and misery attend them; and how all the trust, confidence and expectation they have of men, in that they will rely upon man and trust to the favour of man, is a very fickle uncertain thing; also how man should turn his hope towards God, when he expects to be delivered out of trouble by the favour of man: yet [even] so at length the favour and counsel of man must stand him in stead.
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.