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.
15. C'est pourquoi tout ce qu'elle fait, s'opère dans l'amour de Dieu , puisqu'elle vit dans la lumière de Dieu, Le démon ne peut la voir. Car , le second principe ( dans lequel elle vit , et dans lequel est Dieu et le royaume céleste , aussi bien que l'ange et le paradis ] lui est fermé , et il ue peut pas y atteindre. 6. Dans cette contemplation tu trouveras ce que j'entends par un principe. Car , un principe n'est autre chose qu'une nouvelle génération , une nouvelle vie. En outre , il n'y a pas plus d'un principe dans lequel il y ait une éternelle vie 5 c'est l'éternelle divinité , et elle ne seroit pas manifestée , si Dieu u'avoit fait naître en lui-même des créatures telles que les anges et l'homme qui comprissent l'éternelle indissoluble alliance^ et qui fussent comms la génération de l'éternelle lumière en Dieu.
27. Aîosî on entend pat- là , comment l'essence divine dans le principe divin , a travaillé dans la racine du premier principe , qui est la génératrice dans Téternel engendrement dans le limbus , c'est-à-dire , l'originel esprit d'eau , par laquelle opération , à la fin, la terre et les pierres ont existé. Car ,- dans la second principe ou dans la sainte génération , il n'y a rien qui ne soit esprit , lumière , vie , et éternelle sagesse , ou la. sophie , laquelle a travaillé dans l'éternelle génératrice muette et incompréhensible , savoir , dans sa propriété avant l'origine de la lumière. De-là est venu l'éternel cahos , qui ( dana relèvement de Lucifer , lorsque la lumière de Dieu s'éloigna de lui, et que s'alluma la colère de la source de feu ) , devint matière dure, c'est-à-dire , les pierres et la terre, d'où résulta la conglomération de la terre, et l'expulsion de Lucifer de dessus son trône ; et de-Ià s'en suivit la création du troisième principe, et il fut enfermé dans ce troisième principe comme un prisonnier , attendant désormais le jugement de Dieu. Je laisse à penser si ce ne doit pas être pour lui une honle , un opprobre, et un tourment d'ctre ainsi prisonnier entre le paradis et le monde , et de ne comprendre ni l'un ni l'autre. 8. Or, si nous voulons maintenant parler du troisième principe , c'est-à-dire , du commencement et de la naissance de ce monde > nous considérerons la racine de la génératrice, puisque chaque principe est la génération de l'autre , mais non pas d'une autre essence. Le premier principe , dans l'alliance indissoluble , est muet en soi, et n'a aucune vraie vie, L ^ f 65 > csr. ^
3puisque Ta rource de la vraie vie est engendrée par le bouillonnant esprit de Dieu , qui s^originise dan^ le premier principe de toute iî'ternité , et fait son expansion de tonte éternité dans le second principe , ou dans la génération du cœur , ou du fils de Dieu* Or, nous trouvons que dans ce premier principe , s'est ouverte la matrice de la générairicc , qui est originellement l'amertume , mais qui dans la lumière «st la douce mère de l'esprit d'eau.;Ainsi on trouve et on a clairement devant les jeux , comment l'esprit de Dieu a opéré alors dans la matrice , de façon que, d'une matrice incompréhensible qui n'est qu'u» esprit , est provenue une eau compréhensible et visible. 9. Secondement , tu vois clairement la diversité par les étoiles , et le ciel igné 5 comment il j a une éternelle distinction dans l'éternelle matrice , car^ tu vois comment les astres , et le ciel igné ainsi que l'aquatique , l'aérien , et le terrestre sont engendrés d'une seule mère 5 puisqu'ils inqualifient tes uns dans les antres , et que la génération de ces essences est l'une dans l'autre , et est le vase el le réceptacle l'une de l'autre , et cependant elles n'ont pas toutes la même inqualification. Ainsi , tu reconnois ici la distinction , comment l'éternelle matrice a en soi une diversité , ainsi que cela est exposé ci - dessus dans le troisième chapitre, au sujet de l'éternelle génération des quatre angoisses, là où, entre l'a&tringence et l'amertume , le feu s'engendre 5 et dans Téclair de feu , la lumière 5 et cependaj^t cbac^ue j^ource conserve son àioiU 10. Comprends-le ainsi. Lorsque l*esprlt de DîeU
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.
15. It is why all that it does operates in the love of God, since it lives in the light of God. The demon cannot see it. For, the second principle ( wherein it lives, and wherein is God and the celestial kingdom, as well as the angel and paradise ) is closed to him, and he cannot reach thither. 6. In that contemplation thou wilt find what I understand by a principle. For, a principle is nothing else than a new generation, a new life. Moreover, there is not more than one principle wherein there is an eternal life 5 it is the eternal divinity, and it would not be manifested, if God had not made to be born in himself creatures such as the angels and man who should comprehend the eternal indissoluble alliance, and who should be like the generation of the eternal light in God.
27. Thus one understands thereby how the divine essence in the divine principle laboured in the root of the first principle, which is the generatrix in the eternal begetting in the limbus, that is to say, the original spirit of water, by which operation, at the end, the earth and the stones existed. For, in the second principle or in the holy generation, there is nothing which is not spirit, light, life, and eternal wisdom, or sophia, which laboured in the eternal mute and incomprehensible generatrix, to wit, in its property before the origin of the light. Thence came the eternal chaos, which ( in the raising of Lucifer, when the light of God removed from him, and when the anger of the source of fire kindled itself ) became hard matter, that is to say, the stones and the earth, whence resulted the conglomeration of the earth, and the expulsion of Lucifer from off his throne; and thence followed the creation of the third principle, and he was shut up in that third principle as a prisoner, awaiting henceforth the judgement of God. I leave it to be thought whether that must not be for him a shame, an opprobrium, and a torment to be thus prisoner between paradise and the world, and to comprehend neither the one nor the other. 8. Now, if we will now speak of the third principle, that is to say, of the beginning and of the birth of this world, we shall consider the root of the generatrix, since each principle is the generation of the other, but not of another essence. The first principle, in the indissoluble alliance, is mute in itself, and has no true life, L ^ f 65 > csr. ^
3since the source of the true life is begotten by the boiling spirit of God, which originises itself in the first principle from all eternity, and makes its expansion from all eternity in the second principle, or in the generation of the heart, or of the son of God. Now, we find that in that first principle the matrix of the generatrix opened itself, which is originally the bitterness, but which in the light is the sweet mother of the spirit of water. Thus one finds and one has clearly before the eyes how the spirit of God then operated in the matrix, so that, of an incomprehensible matrix which is but a spirit, proceeded a comprehensible and visible water. 9. Secondly, thou seest clearly the diversity by the stars, and the igneous heaven 5 how there is an eternal distinction in the eternal matrix; for thou seest how the stars, and the igneous heaven as well as the aquatic, the aerial, and the terrestrial are begotten of one single mother 5 since they inqualify the ones in the others, and since the generation of those essences is the one in the other, and is the vessel and the receptacle one of the other, and nevertheless they have not all the same inqualification. Thus, thou recognisest here the distinction, how the eternal matrix has in itself a diversity, as that is set forth above in the third chapter, on the subject of the eternal generation of the four anguishes, there where, between the astringency and the bitterness, the fire begets itself 5 and in the flash of fire, the light 5 and nevertheless each source preserves its right. 10. Comprehend it thus. When the spirit of 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.