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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.
1191. Out of the wisdom flows the power and virtue of the breathing forth, and goes into separability and forming; and therein the divine power is manifest in its virtue. 192. These separable powers and virtues bring themselves into the power of reception, to their own perceptibility; and out of the perceptibility arises own self-will and desire: this own will is the ground of the eternal nature, and it brings itself, with the desire, into the properties as far as fire. 193. In the desire is the original of darkness; and in the fire the eternal Unity is made manifest with the light, in the fiery nature. 194. Out of this fiery property, and the property of the light, the angels and souls have their original; which is a divine manifestation. 195. The power and virtue of fire and light is called tincture; and the motion of this virtue is called the holy and pure element. 196. The darkness becomes substantial in itself; and the light becomes also substantial in the fiery desire: these two make two Principles, viz. God's anger in the darkness, and God's love in the light; each of them works in itself, and there is only such a difference between them, as between day and night, and yet both of them have but one only ground; and the one is always a cause of the other, and that the other becomes manifest and known in it, as light from fire.
2197. The visible world is the third Principle, that is, the third ground and beginning: this is outbreathed out of the inward ground, viz. out of both the first Principles, and brought into the nature and form of a creature. 198. The inward eternal working is hidden in the visible world; and it is in everything, and through everything, yet not to be comprehended by anything in the thing's own power; the outward powers and virtues are but passive, and the house in which the inward work. 199. [1] All the other worldly creatures are but the substance of the outward world, but man, who is created both out of time and eternity, out of the Being of all beings, and made an image of the divine manifestation. [1] the common creatures 200. The eternal manifestation of the divine light is called the kingdom of heaven, and the habitation of the holy angels and souls. 201. The fiery darkness is called hell, or God's anger, wherein the devils dwell, together with the damned souls. 202. In the place of this world, heaven and hell are present everywhere, but according to the inward ground. 203. Inwardly, the divine working is manifest in God's children; but in the wicked, the working of the painful darkness. 204. The place of the eternal paradise is hidden in this world, in the inward ground; but manifest in the inward man, in which God's power and virtue works.
3205. There shall perish of this world only the four elements, together with the starry heaven, and the earthly creatures, viz. the outward gross life of all things. 206. The inward power and virtue of every substance remains eternally. Another Explanation of the Mysterium Magnum 207. God has manifested the [1] Mysterium Magnum out of the power and virtue of his Word; in which Mysterium Magnum the whole creation has lain essentially without forming, in temperamento; and by which he has outspoken the spiritual formings in separability [or variety]: in which formings, the sciences of the powers and virtues in the desire, that is, in the Fiat, have stood, wherein every science, in the desire to manifestation, has brought itself into a corporeal substance. [1] The Great Mystery 208. Such a Mysterium Magnum lies also in man, viz. in the image of God, and is the essential Word of the power of God, according to time and eternity, by which the living Word of God out-speaks, or expresses itself, either in love or anger, or infancy, all as the Mysterium stands in a movable desire to evil or good; according to that saying, "Such as the people is, such a God they also have". 209. For in whatsoever properties the Mysterium in man is awakened, such a word also utters itself from his powers: as we plainly see that nothing else but vanity is uttered by the wicked. Praise the Lord, all ye his works. Hallelujah. Of the Word [1] SCIENCE [1] orSCIENTZ
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.
1191. Out of the wisdom flows the power and virtue of the breathing forth, and goes into separability and forming; and therein the divine power is manifest in its virtue. 192. These separable powers and virtues bring themselves into the power of reception, to their own perceptibility; and out of the perceptibility arises own self-will and desire: this own will is the ground of the eternal nature, and it brings itself, with the desire, into the properties as far as fire. 193. In the desire is the original of darkness; and in the fire the eternal Unity is made manifest with the light, in the fiery nature. 194. Out of this fiery property, and the property of the light, the angels and souls have their original; which is a divine manifestation. 195. The power and virtue of fire and light is called tincture; and the motion of this virtue is called the holy and pure element. 196. The darkness becomes substantial in itself; and the light becomes also substantial in the fiery desire: these two make two Principles, viz. God's anger in the darkness, and God's love in the light; each of them works in itself, and there is only such a difference between them, as between day and night, and yet both of them have but one only ground; and the one is always a cause of the other, and that the other becomes manifest and known in it, as light from fire.
2197. The visible world is the third Principle, that is, the third ground and beginning: this is outbreathed out of the inward ground, viz. out of both the first Principles, and brought into the nature and form of a creature. 198. The inward eternal working is hidden in the visible world; and it is in everything, and through everything, yet not to be comprehended by anything in the thing's own power; the outward powers and virtues are but passive, and the house in which the inward work. 199. [1] All the other worldly creatures are but the substance of the outward world, but man, who is created both out of time and eternity, out of the Being of all beings, and made an image of the divine manifestation. [1] the common creatures 200. The eternal manifestation of the divine light is called the kingdom of heaven, and the habitation of the holy angels and souls. 201. The fiery darkness is called hell, or God's anger, wherein the devils dwell, together with the damned souls. 202. In the place of this world, heaven and hell are present everywhere, but according to the inward ground. 203. Inwardly, the divine working is manifest in God's children; but in the wicked, the working of the painful darkness. 204. The place of the eternal paradise is hidden in this world, in the inward ground; but manifest in the inward man, in which God's power and virtue works.
3205. There shall perish of this world only the four elements, together with the starry heaven, and the earthly creatures, viz. the outward gross life of all things. 206. The inward power and virtue of every substance remains eternally. Another Explanation of the Mysterium Magnum 207. God has manifested the [1] Mysterium Magnum out of the power and virtue of his Word; in which Mysterium Magnum the whole creation has lain essentially without forming, in temperamento; and by which he has outspoken the spiritual formings in separability [or variety]: in which formings, the sciences of the powers and virtues in the desire, that is, in the Fiat, have stood, wherein every science, in the desire to manifestation, has brought itself into a corporeal substance. [1] The Great Mystery 208. Such a Mysterium Magnum lies also in man, viz. in the image of God, and is the essential Word of the power of God, according to time and eternity, by which the living Word of God out-speaks, or expresses itself, either in love or anger, or infancy, all as the Mysterium stands in a movable desire to evil or good; according to that saying, "Such as the people is, such a God they also have". 209. For in whatsoever properties the Mysterium in man is awakened, such a word also utters itself from his powers: as we plainly see that nothing else but vanity is uttered by the wicked. Praise the Lord, all ye his works. Hallelujah. Of the Word [1] SCIENCE [1] orSCIENTZ
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.
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