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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.
1Most deep Love of God in Christ Jesus, leave me not in this distress. I confess I am guilty of the sins which now rise up in my mind and conscience ; if thou forsake me I must perish. But hast thou not promised me in thy word, saying, If a mother could forget her child (which can hardly be), yet thou wilt not foi'get mel Thou hast set me as a sign in thy hands which were pierced through with sharp nails, and in thy open side whence blood and water gushed out. Poor wretch that 138 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME I am ! I can in my own ability do nothing before thee ; I sink myself down into thy wounds and death ; into thee I sink down in the anguish of my conscience ; do with me what thou wilt. Beloved Reader, this is no light matter ; he that accounteth it so hath not yet passed through the trial. His conscience is still asleep. Happy is he who passeth through this fire in the time of his youth, before the Devil buildeth up in him a stronghold ; he may prove a labourer in the heavenly vineyard, and sow his seed in the garden of Christ, where in due time he shall reap the fruit. This trial continueth a long while with many a poor soul, several years if he do not earnestly and early put on the armour of Christ. But to him who with a firm purpose striveth to depart from his evil ways the temptation will not be so hard, neither will it continue so long. Yet he must stand out valiantly till victory CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 139
2be gotten over the Devil. He shall be mightily assisted, and all shall end in the best for him ; so that afterwards, when the day breaketh in his soul, he turneth all to the great praise and glory of God. CHAPTER XVI ALL sorrow, anguish, and fear concerning spiritual things, whereby a man is dejected and terrified in himself, proceeded from the soul. The outward spirit, which is from the stars and elements, is not thus disturbed and perplexed ; because it liveth in its own matrix from which it had its birth. But the poor soul is entered into a strange lodging, into the spirit of this world, which is not its proper home. Whereby that fair creature is obscured and defaced, and is also held captive therein, as in a dark dungeon. The soul is in its first being a magical fire-source from God's nature. It is an intense and incessant desire after the divine Light. 140 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 141 So then, the soul, being of itself a hungry magical fire-spirit, desireth spiritual virtue in order to sustain and preserve thereby its fire-life and allay the hunger of its source. But seeing that the hungry soul, from the mother's womb, is involved in the spirit of the great world and its own temperament ; therefore it feedeth, immediately from its birth, yea, even in the mother's womb, of the spirit of this world.
3The soul eateth spiritual food according to its temperament ; it is the kindling of its fire. The fuel of its fire must be either its temperament or a divine sustenance from God. Hence we may understand the cause of that infinite variety which there is in the wills and actions of men. Of whatever the soul eateth, wherewith its fire-life is fed, according to that the soul's life is led and governed. If it goes out from its own temperament 142 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB B OEHME into God's love-fire, into the heavenly substantiality which is Christ's, then it eateth of Christ and of the meekness of the light of his majesty, wherein is the fountain of eternal life. From thence the soul getteth a divine will, and bringeth the body to do that which, according to its natural inclination and the spirit of this world, it would not do. In such a soul the temperament ruleth not ; it bears sway only over the outward body. Such a man hath a continual longing after God. Oftentimes when his soul eateth of the divine love-essence, it bringeth to him an exulting triumph, and a divine taste into the temperament itself. So that the whole body is thereby affected and even trembleth for joy, being lifted up to such a degree of divine sensation, as if it was on the very borders of paradise. But this rapturous state rarely continueth long. The soul is soon clouded with someCONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 143
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.
1Most deep Love of God in Christ Jesus, leave me not in this distress. I confess I am guilty of the sins which now rise up in my mind and conscience ; if thou forsake me I must perish. But hast thou not promised me in thy word, saying, If a mother could forget her child (which can hardly be), yet thou wilt not foi'get mel Thou hast set me as a sign in thy hands which were pierced through with sharp nails, and in thy open side whence blood and water gushed out. Poor wretch that 138 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME I am ! I can in my own ability do nothing before thee ; I sink myself down into thy wounds and death ; into thee I sink down in the anguish of my conscience ; do with me what thou wilt. Beloved Reader, this is no light matter ; he that accounteth it so hath not yet passed through the trial. His conscience is still asleep. Happy is he who passeth through this fire in the time of his youth, before the Devil buildeth up in him a stronghold ; he may prove a labourer in the heavenly vineyard, and sow his seed in the garden of Christ, where in due time he shall reap the fruit. This trial continueth a long while with many a poor soul, several years if he do not earnestly and early put on the armour of Christ. But to him who with a firm purpose striveth to depart from his evil ways the temptation will not be so hard, neither will it continue so long. Yet he must stand out valiantly till victory CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 139
2be gotten over the Devil. He shall be mightily assisted, and all shall end in the best for him ; so that afterwards, when the day breaketh in his soul, he turneth all to the great praise and glory of God. CHAPTER XVI ALL sorrow, anguish, and fear concerning spiritual things, whereby a man is dejected and terrified in himself, proceeded from the soul. The outward spirit, which is from the stars and elements, is not thus disturbed and perplexed ; because it liveth in its own matrix from which it had its birth. But the poor soul is entered into a strange lodging, into the spirit of this world, which is not its proper home. Whereby that fair creature is obscured and defaced, and is also held captive therein, as in a dark dungeon. The soul is in its first being a magical fire-source from God's nature. It is an intense and incessant desire after the divine Light. 140 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 141 So then, the soul, being of itself a hungry magical fire-spirit, desireth spiritual virtue in order to sustain and preserve thereby its fire-life and allay the hunger of its source. But seeing that the hungry soul, from the mother's womb, is involved in the spirit of the great world and its own temperament ; therefore it feedeth, immediately from its birth, yea, even in the mother's womb, of the spirit of this world.
3The soul eateth spiritual food according to its temperament ; it is the kindling of its fire. The fuel of its fire must be either its temperament or a divine sustenance from God. Hence we may understand the cause of that infinite variety which there is in the wills and actions of men. Of whatever the soul eateth, wherewith its fire-life is fed, according to that the soul's life is led and governed. If it goes out from its own temperament 142 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB B OEHME into God's love-fire, into the heavenly substantiality which is Christ's, then it eateth of Christ and of the meekness of the light of his majesty, wherein is the fountain of eternal life. From thence the soul getteth a divine will, and bringeth the body to do that which, according to its natural inclination and the spirit of this world, it would not do. In such a soul the temperament ruleth not ; it bears sway only over the outward body. Such a man hath a continual longing after God. Oftentimes when his soul eateth of the divine love-essence, it bringeth to him an exulting triumph, and a divine taste into the temperament itself. So that the whole body is thereby affected and even trembleth for joy, being lifted up to such a degree of divine sensation, as if it was on the very borders of paradise. But this rapturous state rarely continueth long. The soul is soon clouded with someCONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 143
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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