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.
19. C'est pourquoi Sâint^auldit:Ocio«^f'o«*«'«« rendez Vesclav^e en obéissance ( soit le péché pour la mjort , soit V obéissance à Dieu pour la justice) vous en étesVesclave, Nous avons cette même source ; nous vivons dans son règne ; et ce même règne , par son bouillonnement , nous enlraîue. Comme donc, tout dans cette vie est en semence et en végétation , la moisson suivra aussi un jour , attendu qu'alors un règne sera sépaié de l'autre. 10. Car , dans Vame de l'homme il y a trois principes qui doivent , tous les trois, s'ouvrir dans cette vie; mais, quand le corps e^ détruit, alors Vhomme ne vit que dans un 5 il a perdu la clef; il i^ peut plus eu QUVïir utt autre i et il lui faut rester éternellement dans cette môme source, qu'il a allumée ici. 11. En efiPet , nous savons qu'Adam , par son passage du paradis dans ce monde , nous a conduils dans la mort , et que l'enfer croît de la mort dans la colère de Dieu. Ainsi notre ame est susceptible d'aller dans le royaume de l'enfer , et elle est dans la colère de Dieu , où la guenle de l'enfer est toujours ouverte devant nous , et toujours prête à nous dévorer. Nous avons un pacle avec la mort , et nous nous livrons à elle dans l'aiguillon de la colère, dans le premier principe.
212. Non-seulement nous savons cela , mais nous savons aussi que Dieu nous a régénérés dans la vie de Jésus-Christ , son fils , pour que nous fussions une nouvelle créature rivante, et que nous vécussions en lui ; or comme il est entré dans la mort , et de nouveaujpar la mort^dans l'éternelle vie;de même aus.si nous devons entrer dans la mort du Christ, et passer de la mort dans la vie de Jésus-Christ , et vivre dans Dieu son père. Alors notre vie, ainsi que notre chair, ne sont plus terrestres , mais saintes dans la vertu de Dieu , et nous vivons vraiment dans le ternaire saint, dans le saint-trinaire de la divinité. Car nous portons la chair sainte du saint -élément (devant Dieu ), que notre cher frère et sauveur ou Itnmanuel a apportée dans noire chair; il nous a conduits en lui et par lui^de la mort, dans Dieu son père , et ainsi la Irinité sainte de la divinité est subslanliellemenl agissante en nous. i3. Or, de même que l'élernelle parole danî I2 (390) pèi e ai devenue vrai homme ; que l'ëtei nelle lû* mière brille eu lui, et s'est abaissée dans Thuma* nilé ^ qu'elle s'est revêtue de l'image dans ce même corps que nous portons ici , c'est-à-dire, de cette image que nous avons perdue en Adam , et pro» Venant de l'élément sans tache qui est devant Dieu , dans la miséricorde de Dieu , comme cela est clairement démontré dans notre second livre j dans toutes ses circonstances ; de même aussi nous devons attirer en nous du pur élément y et du corps de Jésus-Christ , cette même image , et vivre dans la substance corporelle dans laquelle il vit intérieurement, dans cette même source , et dans cette même vertu.
314. Je ne dis pas par là que nous devions nous infiltrer dans sa créature ; mais dans sa source : car dans sa source la largeur et la profondeur de SSL vie sont incommensurables. De même que Dieu son père est incommensurable ; de même aussi la vie du Christ : car l'élément pur , dans la source de Dieu le père , dans sa miséricorde , est le corps du Christ. De même que notre corps terrestre est dans les quatre élémens ; de même le nouvel homme est dans un élément pur, dont ce monde, avec les quatre élémens , est engendré ; la source du pur élément est la source du ciel et du paradis , ainsi que de notre corps dans la nouvelle régénération. i5. Enfin l'élément est dans l'universel principe de Dieu , par-tout et en tout lieu 5 et, en outre, incommensurable et infini ; or, dans cette immensité, est le corps du Christ et ses qualités, et, dans lui , le (391 ) Irinaîre de la divinité, de façon qu'ainsi le père demeure dans le fils , c'est-à-dire , dans le corps de Jésus-Christ , et le fils dans le père , comme un seul Dieu 5 et l'esprit saint procède du père dans le fils 5 et nous est donné pour qu'il nous réengendre en une nouvelle vie en Dieu , dans la vie de JésusChrist ; et l'homme terrestre , dans sa forme et dans sa source , n'est que comme suspendu à nous pendant cette vie , si , par noire base affective^ nous sommes réengendrés en Dieu.
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.
19. That is why Saint-Paul says: O he to whom you yield yourselves slave in obedience ( whether the sin for the death, or the obedience to God for the justice) you are the slave of it, We have this same source; we live in his reign; and this same reign, by its boiling, carries us away. As then, all in this life is in seed and in vegetation, the harvest shall follow also one day, seeing that then one reign shall be separated from the other. 10. For, in the soul of man there are three principles which must, all three, open themselves in this life; but, when the body is destroyed, then man lives only in one 5 he has lost the key; he can no more open another one; and he must remain eternally in this same source, which he has kindled here. 11. In effect, we know that Adam, by his passage from the paradise into this world, has led us into the death, and that the hell grows from the death in the anger of God. Thus our soul is susceptible of going into the kingdom of the hell, and it is in the anger of God, where the maw of the hell is always open before us, and always ready to devour us. We have a pact with the death, and we deliver ourselves to it in the sting of the anger, in the first principle.
212. Not only do we know that, but we know also that God has regenerated us in the life of Jesus-Christ, his son, that we might be a new living creature, and that we might live in him; now as he entered into the death, and anew by the death into the eternal life; likewise also we must enter into the death of the Christ, and pass from the death into the life of Jesus-Christ, and live in God his father. Then our life, as well as our flesh, are no more terrestrial, but holy in the virtue of God, and we live truly in the holy ternary, in the holy-trinary of the divinity. For we bear the holy flesh of the holy-element (before God), which our dear brother and saviour or Immanuel has brought into our flesh; he has led us in him and by him from the death, into God his father, and thus the holy trinity of the divinity is substantially operating in us. i3. Now, as the eternal word in the I2 (390) father is become true man; that the eternal light shines in him, and has abased itself into the humanity; that it has clothed itself with the image in this same body that we bear here, that is to say, with this image that we have lost in Adam, and proceeding from the element without stain which is before God, in the mercy of God, as that is clearly demonstrated in our second book; in all its circumstances; likewise also we must attract into us of the pure element and of the body of Jesus-Christ, this same image, and live in the corporeal substance in which he lives interiorly, in this same source, and in this same virtue.
314. I do not say by that that we must infiltrate ourselves into his creature; but into his source: for in his source the breadth and the depth of his life are incommensurable. As God his father is incommensurable; likewise also the life of the Christ: for the pure element, in the source of God the father, in his mercy, is the body of the Christ. As our terrestrial body is in the four elements; likewise the new man is in a pure element, of which this world, with the four elements, is begotten; the source of the pure element is the source of the heaven and of the paradise, as well as of our body in the new regeneration. i5. Finally the element is in the universal principle of God, everywhere and in every place 5 and, moreover, incommensurable and infinite; now, in this immensity, is the body of the Christ and its qualities, and, in him, the (391 ) trinary of the divinity, so that thus the father dwells in the son, that is to say, in the body of Jesus-Christ, and the son in the father, as one only God 5 and the holy spirit proceeds from the father into the son 5 and is given to us that he may rebeget us into a new life in God, in the life of JesusChrist; and the terrestrial man, in his form and in his source, is but as suspended to us during this life, if, by our affective base, we are rebegotten in God.
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.