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.
156. Comment veujt-lu recevoir dau5 ton corps , le saint corps du Christ , si tu es un démon ? cependant le démon a élé aussi un ange , pourquoi est-il passé de Dieu (dans la matrice colérique)? Si ton vieil homme dans la colère, est la seule chose qui se trouve dans ton ame , et qu'il ne s'y présente rien du nouvel homme , alors ton ame reçoit la colère de Dieu , et ton vieil homme reçoit le pain et le vin élémentaires. On ne jèle point la noble perle devant les pourceaux. Il est vrai , le testament est là , et le testateur t'y convie, mais tu t'en mocques y il voudroil bien l'aider, et tu ne veux pas. 57. Je ne dis pa^ que tu reçoives la colère de Dieu dans le pain et dans le vin , mais bien dans ta fausse confiance. Tu es dans la colère par l'ame et le corps ; et tu ne la veux pas fuir. Pourquoi t'approches - tu tant de l'alliance de Dieu si tu es prisonnier du démou ? crois-tu que Dieu secondera ton hypocrisie , et y attachera sa perle si tu es un loup? Tu hurles avec les chiens , ta bouche prie et ton ame est un repaire de fourberies. 58. Quand elle revient du testament du Christ , elle retourne dans les cavernes de voleurs, et est une meurtrière ; elle hurle avec les chiens ; elle est une parjure et une prostituée. Quand elle revient ihi ( 280 ) CB- a'* l'alliance , elle va dans les cavernes de proslitulion, dans les antres des voleurs : on s'y lient Iranqu.l.e et on se croit dans une grande sainteté. Ah! cest aujourd'hui pour moi un saint jour ; il ne faut pas que je pèche; et lu penses cependant que demaui ou après demain tu y retourneras (à ton péché).
2ïQ O ! toi , malicieuse , reste plutôt loin du testament du Christ ; si tu n'y apportes pas un nouvel homme , lu n'es qu'un meurtrier , et tu scandalises tes voisins tant que tu marches dans ces voies. Ta pTicVe est fausse , elle ne vient point du fond de ton cœur. Ton cœur ne désire que la cupidité de ce monde ; c'est à l'instigateur que s'adie=.se ta prière ; c'est lui qui est ion Dieu : c'est pourquoi prends garde à ce que tu fais. ^ 60. O! Babel , nous aurions beaucoup de choses a te dire ; mais ce n'est pas pour l'époque actuelle. On te parlera un jour dans la colère , ce dont les élémens trembleront ; sors , il est tems que la colère s'étende. . » > (281 ) CHAPITRE VINGT-QUATRIEME. De la juste et vraie pénitence ; comment le pauvre pécheur peut retourner à Dieu dans son alliance , et comment il pçut être relevé de ses péchés. La porte de la justification du pauvre pécheur devant Dieu. Un beau miroir pour toutes les âmes affamées et pénitentes. 1. Moîï cher lecteur, nous t'ajoutons ceci : Que toute chose , à commencer de la source de Tessence de toutes les essences , a (chacuue depuis son origine) son impulsion dans sa forme, et opère toujours cette même essence dont l'esprit est enceint. La conscription ou le corps doit toujours travailler dans cette même chose dans laquelle l'esprit est enflammé. Quand je réfléchis et que je pense pourquoi j'écris ainsi , et que je ne le laisse pas à d'autres plus pénétrans , je trouve que mon esprit a été enflammé dans cette chose dont )'écris. Car il y a un vif courant de feu de cette chose dans mon esprit. C'est pourquoi faurois beau former d'autres résolutions , ( 282 ) en. 24.
3cependant la chose prendroit toujours le dessus , et aiusi je suis lié par là dans mon esprit, et cela m'est imposé comme uneœuvre qu'il me faut faire. Si c'est donc mon œuvre et qu'elle poursuive mon esprit , je veux l'écrire pour moi comme un mémorial, nonseiilemenl de la manière dont cette chose se fait connoîlre à mon esprit , mais aussi de la manière même dont j'y suis parvenu , et je ne veux rien poser d'étranger que je i/aie éprouvé moi-même , afin que jo ne sois pas reconnu devant Dieu comme ayant meuli à moi-même. 2. S'il arrivoil donc que quelqu'un eût envie de me suivre, et désirât la connoissance des choses que j'écris, je lui dounerois le conseil de me suivre au banquet ci -après, non pas à Tinslant , avec la plume; mais avec le travail de la base afTeclive : alors il éprouvera comment j'ai pu écrire ainsi , tandis que cependant je n'ai point été enseigné dans les écoles de ce monde ; mais seulement un peu par ces foibles manuscrits , comme on peut le voir. 3. Mais puisqu'ici je m'occupe de l'objet de la penilence , Rajouterai pour le lecteur : Que dans mon «rdeur cette plume me fut donnée 5 que l'instigaleuT voulut me la briser ; que j'éprouvai alors de sa part tin furieux assaut , tellement que j'en fus jeté par terre sons les pieds de rinsligatour ; mais que le soulTle de Dieu me soutint , en sort^ que je tiens encore ferme, et que j'ai encore dans ma base afTeclive l'ardenle plume avec laquelle je continuerai d'écrire , quand même le démon, par méchancelé, ^'branîeroit l'enfer. en. 24. ( 283 )
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.
156. How wilt thou receive in5 thy body, the holy body of the Christ, if thou art a demon? nevertheless the demon has been also an angel, why has he passed from God (into the choleric matrix)? If thy old man in the anger, is the only thing that is found in thy soul, and if nothing of the new man presents itself there, then thy soul receives the anger of God, and thy old man receives the elementary bread and wine. One casts not the noble pearl before the swine. It is true, the testament is there, and the testator invites thee to it, but thou mockest at it, he would indeed aid thee, and thou wilt not. 57. I say not that thou receivest the anger of God in the bread and in the wine, but indeed in thy false confidence. Thou art in the anger by the soul and the body; and thou wilt not flee it. Why drawest thou so near to the alliance of God if thou art prisoner of the demon? believest thou that God will second thy hypocrisy, and will attach his pearl to it if thou art a wolf? Thou howlest with the dogs, thy mouth prays and thy soul is a den of knaveries. 58. When she comes back from the testament of the Christ, she returns into the caverns of thieves, and is a murderess; she howls with the dogs; she is a perjurer and a prostitute. When she comes back from ( 280 ) CB- a'* the alliance, she goes into the caverns of prostitution, into the dens of the thieves: one keeps oneself quiet there and one believes oneself in a great sanctity. Ah! it is to-day for me a holy day; I must not sin; and thou thinkest nevertheless that to-morrow or the day after to-morrow thou wilt return to it (to thy sin).
2ïQ O! thou, malicious one, remain rather far from the testament of the Christ; if thou bringest not there a new man, thou art but a murderer, and thou scandalisest thy neighbours so long as thou walkest in these ways. Thy prayer is false, it comes not from the bottom of thy heart. Thy heart desires but the covetousness of this world; it is to the instigator that thy prayer addresses itself; it is he who is thy God: it is why take heed to what thou doest. ^ 60. O! Babel, we should have many things to say to thee; but it is not for the actual epoch. Thou shalt be spoken to one day in the anger, whereat the elements shall tremble; go forth, it is time that the anger extend itself. . » > (281 ) CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURTH. Of the just and true penitence; how the poor sinner may return to God in his alliance, and how he may be raised up from his sins. The gate of the justification of the poor sinner before God. A fair mirror for all famished and penitent souls. 1. My dear reader, we add thee this: That every thing, beginning from the source of the essence of all the essences, has (each one from its origin) its impulsion in its form, and operates always this same essence wherewith the spirit is pregnant. The circumscription or the body must always work in this same thing in which the spirit is enkindled. When I reflect and when I think why I write thus, and why I leave it not to others more penetrating, I find that my spirit has been enkindled in this thing whereof I write. For there is a lively current of fire of this thing in my spirit. It is why in vain should I form other resolutions, ( 282 ) en. 24.
3nevertheless the thing would always take the upper hand, and thus I am bound thereby in my spirit, and that is imposed upon me as a work which I must do. If it is then my work and if it pursues my spirit, I will write it for myself as a memorial, not only of the manner in which this thing makes itself known to my spirit, but also of the very manner in which I attained to it, and I will lay down nothing strange that I have not experienced myself, in order that I be not recognised before God as having lied to myself. 2. If it happened then that some one had a mind to follow me, and desired the knowledge of the things that I write, I would give him the counsel to follow me to the banquet hereafter, not at the instant, with the pen; but with the labour of the affective base: then he shall experience how I have been able to write thus, whilst nevertheless I have not been taught in the schools of this world; but only a little by these feeble manuscripts, as one may see. 3. But since here I occupy myself with the object of the penitence, I will add for the reader: That in my ardour this pen was given me 5 that the instigator would break it for me; that I experienced then on his part a furious assault, so much that I was thereby cast to the ground under the feet of the instigator; but that the breath of God sustained me, so that I hold still firm, and that I have still in my affective base the ardent pen with which I shall continue to write, even though the demon, by wickedness, should shake hell. en. 24. ( 283 )
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
Saint-Martin's French rendering of Boehme's 'Von den drei Principien göttlichen Wesens'. The same work stands in this estate in English as boehme:2. The title page also advertises 'L'Aurore naissante, du même Auteur' from the same booksellers — Saint-Martin's translation of the Aurora, whose English counterpart the estate holds as boehme:1. Reading the two versions against each other shows what a Martinist made of a German shoemaker's theosophy.
→ boehme:2
This work carries, in the author's own voice, both a set of hostile comparisons drawn against named peoples and an explicit refusal of any such boundary, and the Press publishes both rather than either alone. At Ch.25 §85 he calls the Jews blind; at Ch.17 §106 he warns of a coming visitation of the Jews and the Turks; and at Ch.26 §32-33, asked whence the Turks are grown, he answers "From thy perverted sense" — laying the rise of Mahomet at the door of christian pride and disputation. Against these stands Ch.25 §72, which opens the grace with no boundary at all: all men are invited to it, of whatever race, "whether Turks, Jews, Pagans, Christians", and no one is excluded. The same chapter that indicts turns the indictment inward at §105-106 — each believes not to dwell in Babel, and the author includes himself — and §33 concludes that God should be as near the one as the other. The contradiction is the author's, it is not resolved by him, and removing either half would misrepresent the work. Operator ruling, 2026-08-29.
This work carries, in the author's own voice, both a set of hostile comparisons drawn against named peoples and an explicit refusal of any such boundary, and the Press publishes both rather than either alone. At Ch.25 §85 he calls the Jews blind; at Ch.17 §106 he warns of a coming visitation of the Jews and the Turks; and at Ch.26 §32-33, asked whence the Turks are grown, he answers "From thy perverted sense" — laying the rise of Mahomet at the door of christian pride and disputation. Against these stands Ch.25 §72, which opens the grace with no boundary at all: all men are invited to it, of whatever race, "whether Turks, Jews, Pagans, Christians", and no one is excluded. The same chapter that indicts turns the indictment inward at §105-106 — each believes not to dwell in Babel, and the author includes himself — and §33 concludes that God should be as near the one as the other. The contradiction is the author's, it is not resolved by him, and removing either half would misrepresent the work. Operator ruling, 2026-08-29.
This work carries, in the author's own voice, both a set of hostile comparisons drawn against named peoples and an explicit refusal of any such boundary, and the Press publishes both rather than either alone. At Ch.25 §85 he calls the Jews blind; at Ch.17 §106 he warns of a coming visitation of the Jews and the Turks; and at Ch.26 §32-33, asked whence the Turks are grown, he answers "From thy perverted sense" — laying the rise of Mahomet at the door of christian pride and disputation. Against these stands Ch.25 §72, which opens the grace with no boundary at all: all men are invited to it, of whatever race, "whether Turks, Jews, Pagans, Christians", and no one is excluded. The same chapter that indicts turns the indictment inward at §105-106 — each believes not to dwell in Babel, and the author includes himself — and §33 concludes that God should be as near the one as the other. The contradiction is the author's, it is not resolved by him, and removing either half would misrepresent the work. Operator ruling, 2026-08-29.