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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.
1And in both of them, in the earth and in thy flesh, the Light of the clear Deity is hidden, and it breaks through and gathers to itself a body for each after its kind. As the mother is, so also is the child : man's child is the soul which is born in the astral moving from the flesh ; and the earth's child is the grass, the herbs, the trees, silver, gold, and all mineral ores. CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 45 Out of the earth sprang grass, herbs and trees ; and in the earth silver, gold, and all manner of ore came to be. In the deep above the earth sprang the wonderful forming of power and virtue. I now invite all lovers of the holy and highly to be esteemed arts of philosophy and theology before this mirror wherein I lay open the root and ground of these matters. I use not their tables, formulas, or schemes, rules and ways, for I have not learned from them. I have another teacher, which is the living fountain of nature. What could I, simple layman, teach or write of their high art if it was not given to me by the Spirit of nature, in whom I live and am ? Should I oppose the Spirit that he should not open where and in whom he pleases ? O thou child of man, open the eyes of 46 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME thy spirit, for I will show thee here the right and real proper gate of God.
2Behold ! that is the true, one, only God out of whom thou art created and in whom thou livest ; and when thou beholdest the deep and the stars and the earth, then thou beholdest thy God. In that same thou livest and hast thy being ; and that same God rules thee also, and from that same God thou hast thy senses. Thou art a creature from him and in him ; else thou wouldst never have been. Now perhaps thou wilt say that I write in a heathenish manner. Hearken and behold ! Observe the distinct understanding how all this is so ; for I write not heathenishly, but in the love of wisdom ; neither am I a heathen, but I have the true knowledge of the one only great God who is All. When thou beholdest the deep, the stars, the elements and the earth, then thou comprehendest not with thine eyes the CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 47 bright and clear Deity, though indeed he is there and in them ; but thou seest and comprehendest, with thine eyes, first death and then the wrath of God. But if thou liftest up thy thoughts and dost consider where God is, then thou shalt comprehend the astral moving, where love and wrath move one against another. And when by faith thou drawest near to God who rules in holiness in this dominion, then thou layest hold on him in his holy Heart. When this is done, then thou art as God is, who himself is heaven, earth, stars and the elements. CHAPTER VI
3WHERE will you seek for God? Seek him in your soul that is proceeded out of the eternal nature, the living fountain of forces wherein the divine working stands. O that I had but the pen of a man, and were able therewith to write down the spirit of knowledge ! I can but stammer of great mysteries like a child that is beginning to speak ; so very little can the earthly tongue express of that which the spirit comprehends. Yet I will venture to try whether I may incline some to seek the pearl of true knowledge, and myself labour in the works of God in my paradisical garden of roses ; for the longing of the eternal nature-mother drives me on to write 48 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 49 and to exercise myself in this my knowledge. No money, nor goods, nor art, nor power can bring you to the eternal rest of the eternal paradise, but only the knowledge in which you may steep your soul. That is the pearl which no thief can steal away ; seek after it and you will find the noble treasure. Our skill and understanding are so cramped and narrowed that we have no more any knowledge of paradise at all. And except we be born anew, the veil of Moses lies continually before our eyes, and we suppose that was paradise whereof he said : God placed Adam in the garden of Eden which he had planted, that he might till it.
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.
1And in both of them, in the earth and in thy flesh, the Light of the clear Deity is hidden, and it breaks through and gathers to itself a body for each after its kind. As the mother is, so also is the child : man's child is the soul which is born in the astral moving from the flesh ; and the earth's child is the grass, the herbs, the trees, silver, gold, and all mineral ores. CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 45 Out of the earth sprang grass, herbs and trees ; and in the earth silver, gold, and all manner of ore came to be. In the deep above the earth sprang the wonderful forming of power and virtue. I now invite all lovers of the holy and highly to be esteemed arts of philosophy and theology before this mirror wherein I lay open the root and ground of these matters. I use not their tables, formulas, or schemes, rules and ways, for I have not learned from them. I have another teacher, which is the living fountain of nature. What could I, simple layman, teach or write of their high art if it was not given to me by the Spirit of nature, in whom I live and am ? Should I oppose the Spirit that he should not open where and in whom he pleases ? O thou child of man, open the eyes of 46 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME thy spirit, for I will show thee here the right and real proper gate of God.
2Behold ! that is the true, one, only God out of whom thou art created and in whom thou livest ; and when thou beholdest the deep and the stars and the earth, then thou beholdest thy God. In that same thou livest and hast thy being ; and that same God rules thee also, and from that same God thou hast thy senses. Thou art a creature from him and in him ; else thou wouldst never have been. Now perhaps thou wilt say that I write in a heathenish manner. Hearken and behold ! Observe the distinct understanding how all this is so ; for I write not heathenishly, but in the love of wisdom ; neither am I a heathen, but I have the true knowledge of the one only great God who is All. When thou beholdest the deep, the stars, the elements and the earth, then thou comprehendest not with thine eyes the CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 47 bright and clear Deity, though indeed he is there and in them ; but thou seest and comprehendest, with thine eyes, first death and then the wrath of God. But if thou liftest up thy thoughts and dost consider where God is, then thou shalt comprehend the astral moving, where love and wrath move one against another. And when by faith thou drawest near to God who rules in holiness in this dominion, then thou layest hold on him in his holy Heart. When this is done, then thou art as God is, who himself is heaven, earth, stars and the elements. CHAPTER VI
3WHERE will you seek for God? Seek him in your soul that is proceeded out of the eternal nature, the living fountain of forces wherein the divine working stands. O that I had but the pen of a man, and were able therewith to write down the spirit of knowledge ! I can but stammer of great mysteries like a child that is beginning to speak ; so very little can the earthly tongue express of that which the spirit comprehends. Yet I will venture to try whether I may incline some to seek the pearl of true knowledge, and myself labour in the works of God in my paradisical garden of roses ; for the longing of the eternal nature-mother drives me on to write 48 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 49 and to exercise myself in this my knowledge. No money, nor goods, nor art, nor power can bring you to the eternal rest of the eternal paradise, but only the knowledge in which you may steep your soul. That is the pearl which no thief can steal away ; seek after it and you will find the noble treasure. Our skill and understanding are so cramped and narrowed that we have no more any knowledge of paradise at all. And except we be born anew, the veil of Moses lies continually before our eyes, and we suppose that was paradise whereof he said : God placed Adam in the garden of Eden which he had planted, that he might till it.
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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