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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.
1The wrath is called the Cross, and the love-heaven is called patience, and the spirit that rises up therein is called hope and faith, which unites with God and wrestles with the wrath till it overcomes and gets the victory. 36 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 0 ye theologists, the spirit here opens a door and gate for you ! If you will not now see and feed your sheep and lambs on a green meadow, instead of a dry, parched heath, you must be accountable for it before the severe, earnest and wrathful judgement of God ; therefore look to it. 1 take heaven to witness that I do here what I must. The Spirit drives me to it, so that I am wholly led captive thereby, and cannot be freed from it whatever may befal me hereafter, or ensue upon it. The third moving in the body of God in this world is hidden. In it is the almighty and holy Heart of God, wherein our King, Jesus Christ, with his natural body, sits at the right hand of God, as a King and Lord of the whole body of this world. The body of Christ is no more in the hard palpability, but in the divine palpability, of nature, like the angels. Our bodies also at the resurrection will have no CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 37 more such hard flesh and bones, but be like the angels ; and though indeed all forms and powers shall be therein, yet we shall not have the hard palpability.
2Christ says to Mary Magdalen in Joseph's garden at the Sepulchre, after his resurrection, Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my God and to your God, as if he would say, I have not now the animal body any more, although I show myself to thee in my form or shape which I had, because otherwise thou in thy animal body couldst not see me. So during the forty days after his resurrection he did not always walk visibly among the disciples, but invisibly, according to his heavenly and angelical property. When he would speak or talk with his disciples, then he showed himself in a palpable manner and form, that thereby he might speak natural words with them, for corruption cannot apprehend the divine. Also it sufficiently appears that his body 38 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME was of an angelical kind, in that he went to his disciples through the doors, being shut. Thus thou must know that his bodyunites with all the seven spirits in nature in the astral moving in the part of love ; and holds sin, death and the Devil captive in its wrath part.
3Thou seest also how thou art in this world everywhere in heaven and also in hell, and dwellest between heaven and hell in great danger. Thou seest how heaven is in a holy man, and that everywhere, wheresoever thou standest, goest or liest, if thy spirit does but co-operate with God, then as to that part thou art in heaven and thy soul is in God. Therefore says Christ : My sheep are in my hands, no man can pull them away from me. In like manner thou seest also how thou art always in hell among all the devils as to the wrath ; if thine eyes were but open thou wouldst see wonderful things, but CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 39 thou standest between heaven and hell, and canst see neither of them, and walkest upon a very narrow bridge. Some men have many times, in the astral spirit, entered in thither, being ravished in an ecstasy, as men term it, and have in this life known the gates of heaven and of hell, and have shown and declared how that many men dwell in hell with their living bodies. Such indeed have been scorned, derided or laughed at, but with great ignorance and indiscretion, for it is just so as they declare. CHAPTER V
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 wrath is called the Cross, and the love-heaven is called patience, and the spirit that rises up therein is called hope and faith, which unites with God and wrestles with the wrath till it overcomes and gets the victory. 36 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 0 ye theologists, the spirit here opens a door and gate for you ! If you will not now see and feed your sheep and lambs on a green meadow, instead of a dry, parched heath, you must be accountable for it before the severe, earnest and wrathful judgement of God ; therefore look to it. 1 take heaven to witness that I do here what I must. The Spirit drives me to it, so that I am wholly led captive thereby, and cannot be freed from it whatever may befal me hereafter, or ensue upon it. The third moving in the body of God in this world is hidden. In it is the almighty and holy Heart of God, wherein our King, Jesus Christ, with his natural body, sits at the right hand of God, as a King and Lord of the whole body of this world. The body of Christ is no more in the hard palpability, but in the divine palpability, of nature, like the angels. Our bodies also at the resurrection will have no CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 37 more such hard flesh and bones, but be like the angels ; and though indeed all forms and powers shall be therein, yet we shall not have the hard palpability.
2Christ says to Mary Magdalen in Joseph's garden at the Sepulchre, after his resurrection, Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my God and to your God, as if he would say, I have not now the animal body any more, although I show myself to thee in my form or shape which I had, because otherwise thou in thy animal body couldst not see me. So during the forty days after his resurrection he did not always walk visibly among the disciples, but invisibly, according to his heavenly and angelical property. When he would speak or talk with his disciples, then he showed himself in a palpable manner and form, that thereby he might speak natural words with them, for corruption cannot apprehend the divine. Also it sufficiently appears that his body 38 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME was of an angelical kind, in that he went to his disciples through the doors, being shut. Thus thou must know that his bodyunites with all the seven spirits in nature in the astral moving in the part of love ; and holds sin, death and the Devil captive in its wrath part.
3Thou seest also how thou art in this world everywhere in heaven and also in hell, and dwellest between heaven and hell in great danger. Thou seest how heaven is in a holy man, and that everywhere, wheresoever thou standest, goest or liest, if thy spirit does but co-operate with God, then as to that part thou art in heaven and thy soul is in God. Therefore says Christ : My sheep are in my hands, no man can pull them away from me. In like manner thou seest also how thou art always in hell among all the devils as to the wrath ; if thine eyes were but open thou wouldst see wonderful things, but CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 39 thou standest between heaven and hell, and canst see neither of them, and walkest upon a very narrow bridge. Some men have many times, in the astral spirit, entered in thither, being ravished in an ecstasy, as men term it, and have in this life known the gates of heaven and of hell, and have shown and declared how that many men dwell in hell with their living bodies. Such indeed have been scorned, derided or laughed at, but with great ignorance and indiscretion, for it is just so as they declare. CHAPTER V
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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