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.
1them, and one understanding moved the other, namely the human understanding, in their desire, moved the understanding in the soul of the outward world of the expressed and formed word out of the inward dark and fire world, and out of the outward astral and four elemental world, in which soul the meaning of the sphere of time is in the understanding. 11. Through which understanding of the soul of the outward world the prophetical spirit has signified, from the spirit of God, how the formed and expressed word of nature and time should afterwards bring itself into forms of pulling down and setting up among the nations, viz. into the building and rearing up of kingdoms, and of their destruction and ruin; in which soul of the outward world all things stand in time, limit, measusre and weight, like to a clock or horologe, of which the Scripture speaks much. 12. From this soul, viz. from the horologe of the understanding of nature, the heathen were answered by their images and idols, viz. through the sense of the astrum, which their faith (that they powerfully brought thereinto) did move and stir up. 13. And not wholly by the devil, as the calves' eyes judge, who know nothing of the mystery, and say, only devil, devil, and know not what God or devil is: they are themselves idols and men-devils, and serve their image-god Maiisim [and Mammon] in selfhood, and are as much conterfeit images and idols, as the heathen were.
214. And they have at present made the turba in them a false god, which will even bring the deluge of fire upon their necks; of which they have no understanding or faith; and say continually, there is no danger [a brave time of Reformation], whereas they have brought the horologe of nature to its set limit to destruction: for the withheld spirit of the wonders is at the end and limit of its imprisonment, and manifests itself out of the great horologue of the inward and outward nature, with the mental tongue, through the sensual compacted tongue; and this is a wonder, which none can hinder. 15. Now as we are to understand and consider thus, of the sensual compacted tongue of the formed understanding of the Gentiles, who were of Ham's and Japheth's generation, the like also we are to understand of the mental (yet compacted) tongue in the Covenant, which in the manifestation of it from Shem's children and generation fell upon Abraham, where, after the flood, the first spiritual holy oracle did open itself out of the mental tongue of the five vowels, out of the holy name of God in the Covenant, viz. out of the holy fire of the love of God; through which fire the divine voice was made manifest. 16. And we see very excellently and fully how the spirit in Moses does intimate and declare it in the genealogy, even in the names,
3how all the ten forms of fire, 1 viz. the ten properties of the holy tongue to 2 the fire-life (understand to the fiery tongue), are set forth, in the names of the children of Noah, even unto Abraham. 1 Read the first Question of the 40 Questions of the Soul. 2 Of, or producing the fire-life. 17. For in Abraham the spirit of the fiery tongue [viz.] of the holy understanding of the mental tongue did open itself out of the Covenant, and set forth also its figure out of its compacted formed mental tongue, viz. the circumcision and the offerings [or sacrifices], which figures did all point at Christ, who should open and unloose the band of the mental tongue to the divine understanding, and again enkindle the light of grace in love, even in the formed word in the letters of the sensual tongue, and destroy the beast of the formed tongue, in which the devil sported, and set himself therein as God. 18. This guest the holy flaming tongue, viz. the spirit of Christ, did drive forth in the opening and manifestation of the Covenant; and took possession of the throne of prince Lucifer in the human property in God's children.
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.
1them, and one understanding moved the other, namely the human understanding, in their desire, moved the understanding in the soul of the outward world of the expressed and formed word out of the inward dark and fire world, and out of the outward astral and four elemental world, in which soul the meaning of the sphere of time is in the understanding. 11. Through which understanding of the soul of the outward world the prophetical spirit has signified, from the spirit of God, how the formed and expressed word of nature and time should afterwards bring itself into forms of pulling down and setting up among the nations, viz. into the building and rearing up of kingdoms, and of their destruction and ruin; in which soul of the outward world all things stand in time, limit, measusre and weight, like to a clock or horologe, of which the Scripture speaks much. 12. From this soul, viz. from the horologe of the understanding of nature, the heathen were answered by their images and idols, viz. through the sense of the astrum, which their faith (that they powerfully brought thereinto) did move and stir up. 13. And not wholly by the devil, as the calves' eyes judge, who know nothing of the mystery, and say, only devil, devil, and know not what God or devil is: they are themselves idols and men-devils, and serve their image-god Maiisim [and Mammon] in selfhood, and are as much conterfeit images and idols, as the heathen were.
214. And they have at present made the turba in them a false god, which will even bring the deluge of fire upon their necks; of which they have no understanding or faith; and say continually, there is no danger [a brave time of Reformation], whereas they have brought the horologe of nature to its set limit to destruction: for the withheld spirit of the wonders is at the end and limit of its imprisonment, and manifests itself out of the great horologue of the inward and outward nature, with the mental tongue, through the sensual compacted tongue; and this is a wonder, which none can hinder. 15. Now as we are to understand and consider thus, of the sensual compacted tongue of the formed understanding of the Gentiles, who were of Ham's and Japheth's generation, the like also we are to understand of the mental (yet compacted) tongue in the Covenant, which in the manifestation of it from Shem's children and generation fell upon Abraham, where, after the flood, the first spiritual holy oracle did open itself out of the mental tongue of the five vowels, out of the holy name of God in the Covenant, viz. out of the holy fire of the love of God; through which fire the divine voice was made manifest. 16. And we see very excellently and fully how the spirit in Moses does intimate and declare it in the genealogy, even in the names,
3how all the ten forms of fire, 1 viz. the ten properties of the holy tongue to 2 the fire-life (understand to the fiery tongue), are set forth, in the names of the children of Noah, even unto Abraham. 1 Read the first Question of the 40 Questions of the Soul. 2 Of, or producing the fire-life. 17. For in Abraham the spirit of the fiery tongue [viz.] of the holy understanding of the mental tongue did open itself out of the Covenant, and set forth also its figure out of its compacted formed mental tongue, viz. the circumcision and the offerings [or sacrifices], which figures did all point at Christ, who should open and unloose the band of the mental tongue to the divine understanding, and again enkindle the light of grace in love, even in the formed word in the letters of the sensual tongue, and destroy the beast of the formed tongue, in which the devil sported, and set himself therein as God. 18. This guest the holy flaming tongue, viz. the spirit of Christ, did drive forth in the opening and manifestation of the Covenant; and took possession of the throne of prince Lucifer in the human property in God's children.
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.