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.
129. It is indeed in man, but not in the possession of the fiery soul's essence; it has another Principle than the soul, and yet is in the soul, and through the soul, and from the soul, after the manner as the light is from the fire, which is through the fire, and in the fire, and has its manifestation from the fire, out of which fire and light air proceeds, and out of which air dewy water proceeds; and that same dewy water denotes the substance of this inward ground, which gives to the fire again nourishment, food, lustre and life. 30. So also it is to be considered and understood concerning the soul. When it extinguished as to the divine light, then this substance was generated no more from it, nor in it, but remained faded, extinguished, or quenched; and then the soul had no divine food more for its source of fire, for it had turned its desire forth into the third Principle, and was overcome by the earthly Lucifer, and by Satan, viz. by the property of the wrath, of the dark world's property in the place of this world. 31. This grace came to help this averted soul, which was bought through Christ's blood; for the buyer entered with his money of grace into this faded image, and took it to himself and set the soul therein for a high priest and teacher.
232. And this image now was the priests' fields, which he bought not, for it was God's, beforehand. God only set his High Priest, Christ, therein, that he should therein feed and teach the poor soul, that it should not eat of the vanity, and fully darken and again bring to nothing this image. 33. And this is also the same in the figure of Joseph, in that he bought not the priests' fields; and so is the figure concerning Moses and the Levites, that they kept their fields and ground, and yet possessed them as tenants. All which denotes the inward man of the heavenly world's substance, which is God's ground, wherein God sows his word of grace, viz. Christ's spirit. Which ground or substance belongs only to the High Priest, Christ, for a possession, and not to the creaturely life; but the creaturely life receives power and virtue from it: it has it indeed in itself; but it is not one and the same thing with nature: as the light and the painful source of the fire are not one and the same thing. 34. This figure of Joseph, in that he bought the Egyptians to be Pharaoh's proper own, and made them his own servants, signifies nothing else but that Christ should buy us from the anger of God in the famine of our destruction, through his grace, to be his obliged servants, through his blood and death, and would give us his word for seed, that we might sow his purchased goods, 1 viz. our natural life, therewith.
335. And for this cause now should we give him again the fifth part of this fruit, viz. the birth of love, the fifth property of life. For in the fifth property stands faith; and that, his children should give to him again. And this he gathers into his Father's barns, for an eternal praise, and to the divine manifestation of his wonders. 36. But that earthly men have made such bondage,2 and keep one another for bondslaves, and vex, torment and misuse one another therein, and squeeze out their sweat for their pomp and pride, this is an image of the anger of God, which represents itself 3 also according to the heavenly figure. 37. For everything must fashion itself according to the ordinance or appointment of the Word of God: whether a thing fashion itself in evil, viz. in God's anger, according to the property of hell, or in good, in heaven, in the kingdom of Christ; for with the holy, the Word is holy, and with the perverse and froward it is manifest in God's wrath (Ps. xviii. 25, 26): as the people is, such also is their God, says the Scripture. 38. Earthly men represent the image in the anger of God, in that they vex, torment, squeeze and plague them with bondage, and hold it for just and right: and it is right, in the wrath of nature in God's anger, and it is a figure of hell : and it is also a figure of the kingdom of
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.
129. It is indeed in man, but not in the possession of the fiery soul's essence; it has another Principle than the soul, and yet is in the soul, and through the soul, and from the soul, after the manner as the light is from the fire, which is through the fire, and in the fire, and has its manifestation from the fire, out of which fire and light air proceeds, and out of which air dewy water proceeds; and that same dewy water denotes the substance of this inward ground, which gives to the fire again nourishment, food, lustre and life. 30. So also it is to be considered and understood concerning the soul. When it extinguished as to the divine light, then this substance was generated no more from it, nor in it, but remained faded, extinguished, or quenched; and then the soul had no divine food more for its source of fire, for it had turned its desire forth into the third Principle, and was overcome by the earthly Lucifer, and by Satan, viz. by the property of the wrath, of the dark world's property in the place of this world. 31. This grace came to help this averted soul, which was bought through Christ's blood; for the buyer entered with his money of grace into this faded image, and took it to himself and set the soul therein for a high priest and teacher.
232. And this image now was the priests' fields, which he bought not, for it was God's, beforehand. God only set his High Priest, Christ, therein, that he should therein feed and teach the poor soul, that it should not eat of the vanity, and fully darken and again bring to nothing this image. 33. And this is also the same in the figure of Joseph, in that he bought not the priests' fields; and so is the figure concerning Moses and the Levites, that they kept their fields and ground, and yet possessed them as tenants. All which denotes the inward man of the heavenly world's substance, which is God's ground, wherein God sows his word of grace, viz. Christ's spirit. Which ground or substance belongs only to the High Priest, Christ, for a possession, and not to the creaturely life; but the creaturely life receives power and virtue from it: it has it indeed in itself; but it is not one and the same thing with nature: as the light and the painful source of the fire are not one and the same thing. 34. This figure of Joseph, in that he bought the Egyptians to be Pharaoh's proper own, and made them his own servants, signifies nothing else but that Christ should buy us from the anger of God in the famine of our destruction, through his grace, to be his obliged servants, through his blood and death, and would give us his word for seed, that we might sow his purchased goods, 1 viz. our natural life, therewith.
335. And for this cause now should we give him again the fifth part of this fruit, viz. the birth of love, the fifth property of life. For in the fifth property stands faith; and that, his children should give to him again. And this he gathers into his Father's barns, for an eternal praise, and to the divine manifestation of his wonders. 36. But that earthly men have made such bondage,2 and keep one another for bondslaves, and vex, torment and misuse one another therein, and squeeze out their sweat for their pomp and pride, this is an image of the anger of God, which represents itself 3 also according to the heavenly figure. 37. For everything must fashion itself according to the ordinance or appointment of the Word of God: whether a thing fashion itself in evil, viz. in God's anger, according to the property of hell, or in good, in heaven, in the kingdom of Christ; for with the holy, the Word is holy, and with the perverse and froward it is manifest in God's wrath (Ps. xviii. 25, 26): as the people is, such also is their God, says the Scripture. 38. Earthly men represent the image in the anger of God, in that they vex, torment, squeeze and plague them with bondage, and hold it for just and right: and it is right, in the wrath of nature in God's anger, and it is a figure of hell : and it is also a figure of the kingdom of
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.