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.
1The Master. — They came from one Original ; they are Branches or Out-births of the Divine Science of the JQfdine Wtifrf sprung from the Divine Word , and made Objects of the Divine Love . They are come out of the (f round of Eternity , from whence Light and Darkness spring, viz . , Darkness consisting in the harbouring and cherishing Self-desire , and Light consisting in Willing the same with God. In which Willing the Love of God readily and gladly worketh ; but in the receiving and entertaining Self in the Willing of the Soul, God's Will worketh in Pain , and becometh a Darkness that the Light may be known . Xhus Heaven and Hell are nothing else but a Manifestation of the Divine Will, either in Light or Darkness , according to the Properties of the spiritual World . 44. The Scholar. — What then is the Body of Man ? What the Body of Man is ; and why the Soul is capable of receiving Good and Evil. The Master. — It is the visible World ; an Image and Quintessence or Compound of all that the World is ; and the visible World is a Manifestation of the inward spiritual World, come out of the eternal Light and out of the eternal Darkness, out of the spiritual Compaction or Connection ; and it is also an Image or Figure of Eternity, whereby Eternity hath made itself visible ; where Self Will and resigned Will, viz., Evil and Qood work one with the other.
2Such a Substance is the outward Man. For God created Man of the outward World, and breathed into him the inward spiritual World for a Soul and an intelligent Life, and therefore in the Things of the outward World Man can receive and work evil and good. Of the Super-Sensual Life, iop i 45. The Scholar. — What shall be after this World, when all Things perish, and come to an End ? Of the Destruction of the World ; of Man s Body in and after the Resurrection ; where Heaven and Hell shall be ; of the hast ^Judgment ; and wherefore the Strife in the Creature must be. The Master. — The material Substance only ceaseth ; viz., the four Elements, the Sun, Moon, and Stars. And then the inward World will be wholly visible and manifest. But whatsoever hath been wrought by the Will or Spirit of Man in this Worlds Time, pjSifcether evil or good, I say, every such Work, shall there separate itself i n "a spiritual Manner, either into the eternal Light or into the eternal Darkness. For that which is born from each Will penetrateth and passeth again into that which is like itself. And there the Darkness is called Hell, and is an eternal forgetting of all Cjood ; and the Light is called the Kingdom of (jod, and is an eternal Joy in and to the Saints, who continually glorify and praise GOD, for having delivered them from the Torment of Evil.
3The Last Judgment is a Kindling of the Fire both of God’S Love and * Anger , in which the Matter of every Substance perisheth, and each Fire shall attract into itself its own, that is, the Substance that is like itself : Thus God’s Fire of Love will draw into it whatsoever is born in the Love of God, or LovePrinciple, in which also it shall burn after the Manner of Love, and yield itself into that Substance. But the Torment will draw into itself what is wrought in the Anger of God in Darkness , and consume the false Substance ; and then there will remain only the painful aching Will in its own proper Nature, Image , and Figure. * 46. The SCHOLAR. — With what Matter and Form shall the human Body rise ? The Master. — It is sown a natural Gross and Elementary Body, which in this Life-Time is like the outward Elements ; yet in this gross Body there is a subtle Power and Virtue. As in the Earth also there is a subtle good Virtue, which is like the Sun and is one and the same with the Sun ; which also in the Beginning of T'ime did spring and proceed out of the Divine Power and Virtue, from whence all the good Virtue of the Body is likewise derived. This good Virtue of the mortal Body shall come again and live for ever in a kind of transparent Crystalline material Property, in spiritual Flesh and Blood-, as shall also the I IO The TVay to Qhrist . ** " " ' 1
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.
1The Master. — They came from one Original ; they are Branches or Out-births of the Divine Science of the JQfdine Wtifrf sprung from the Divine Word , and made Objects of the Divine Love . They are come out of the (f round of Eternity , from whence Light and Darkness spring, viz . , Darkness consisting in the harbouring and cherishing Self-desire , and Light consisting in Willing the same with God. In which Willing the Love of God readily and gladly worketh ; but in the receiving and entertaining Self in the Willing of the Soul, God's Will worketh in Pain , and becometh a Darkness that the Light may be known . Xhus Heaven and Hell are nothing else but a Manifestation of the Divine Will, either in Light or Darkness , according to the Properties of the spiritual World . 44. The Scholar. — What then is the Body of Man ? What the Body of Man is ; and why the Soul is capable of receiving Good and Evil. The Master. — It is the visible World ; an Image and Quintessence or Compound of all that the World is ; and the visible World is a Manifestation of the inward spiritual World, come out of the eternal Light and out of the eternal Darkness, out of the spiritual Compaction or Connection ; and it is also an Image or Figure of Eternity, whereby Eternity hath made itself visible ; where Self Will and resigned Will, viz., Evil and Qood work one with the other.
2Such a Substance is the outward Man. For God created Man of the outward World, and breathed into him the inward spiritual World for a Soul and an intelligent Life, and therefore in the Things of the outward World Man can receive and work evil and good. Of the Super-Sensual Life, iop i 45. The Scholar. — What shall be after this World, when all Things perish, and come to an End ? Of the Destruction of the World ; of Man s Body in and after the Resurrection ; where Heaven and Hell shall be ; of the hast ^Judgment ; and wherefore the Strife in the Creature must be. The Master. — The material Substance only ceaseth ; viz., the four Elements, the Sun, Moon, and Stars. And then the inward World will be wholly visible and manifest. But whatsoever hath been wrought by the Will or Spirit of Man in this Worlds Time, pjSifcether evil or good, I say, every such Work, shall there separate itself i n "a spiritual Manner, either into the eternal Light or into the eternal Darkness. For that which is born from each Will penetrateth and passeth again into that which is like itself. And there the Darkness is called Hell, and is an eternal forgetting of all Cjood ; and the Light is called the Kingdom of (jod, and is an eternal Joy in and to the Saints, who continually glorify and praise GOD, for having delivered them from the Torment of Evil.
3The Last Judgment is a Kindling of the Fire both of God’S Love and * Anger , in which the Matter of every Substance perisheth, and each Fire shall attract into itself its own, that is, the Substance that is like itself : Thus God’s Fire of Love will draw into it whatsoever is born in the Love of God, or LovePrinciple, in which also it shall burn after the Manner of Love, and yield itself into that Substance. But the Torment will draw into itself what is wrought in the Anger of God in Darkness , and consume the false Substance ; and then there will remain only the painful aching Will in its own proper Nature, Image , and Figure. * 46. The SCHOLAR. — With what Matter and Form shall the human Body rise ? The Master. — It is sown a natural Gross and Elementary Body, which in this Life-Time is like the outward Elements ; yet in this gross Body there is a subtle Power and Virtue. As in the Earth also there is a subtle good Virtue, which is like the Sun and is one and the same with the Sun ; which also in the Beginning of T'ime did spring and proceed out of the Divine Power and Virtue, from whence all the good Virtue of the Body is likewise derived. This good Virtue of the mortal Body shall come again and live for ever in a kind of transparent Crystalline material Property, in spiritual Flesh and Blood-, as shall also the I IO The TVay to Qhrist . ** " " ' 1
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.