Bô Yin Râ in English:

The 'Authorized/Endorsed Translation'

The 'Authorized/Endorsed Translation' as published by The Kober Press, compares with this painting one might say as the great baroque 18th century St Charles’s Church (Karlskirche) designed by the great Austrian architect Fischer von Erlach in Vienna compares with it. One feels intrigued and taken on, but this is due to the frills of elegance and complicated details and not to the intrinsic design or substance of the structure.

In order to even enhance the frills liberties are taken with the translation: as an example...: the 'authorized/endorsed translation' mixes the genetive and dative at liberty, but The Book ON the Royal Art is definitely different from The Book OF the Royal Art to give but one example.

Interpretation, instead of following Bô Yin Râ who was certainly able to choose the wording of his teaching, we find for instance in The Book on HUMAN NATURE instead of The Book on Man (in German: Das Buch vom Menschen). To be noticed are also insertions like “To all who strive toward TIMELESS light”.

All these frills guide the reader merely along the lines of the comprehension of the translator instead of providing a clear and clean translation of Bô Yin Râ for the reader to base himself on.

(The designation 'authorized/endorsed translation', applicable to almost all of the volumes of the Hortus Conclusus, should probably be appreciated in the sense that the Swiss Foundation has consented to this translation: until 12/31/2013 all rights, especially the rights of translation, belonged to this Foundation as the trustee of the Bô Yin Râ estate.)