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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.
1I. Pi nous considérons , maintenant , l'origine de la vie , en quel endroit du corps est le lieu cl la place où la vie est engendrée , nous trouvons réellement toute la base de l'homme, et il n'y a rien de si secret dans l'homme qui ne puisse être trouvé. Car nous devons dire que le cœur est la place où la noble vie est engendrée intérieurement, et que la vie engendre à son tour le cœur. 2. Selon que nous l'avons exposé , la vie prend ainsi dans l'angoisse , par V enjlammement de la luluière , son commencement , de l'éclat du soleil , dans l'esprit des étoiles et des élémens dans la grande angoisse , où la mort et la vie combattent. Car , c'est là que l'homme a passé du paradis dans une autre génération , ou dans l'esprit de ce monde , dans les qualités du soleil, des étoiles et des élémens ; là la vue paradisiaque s'éteignit , cette vue par laquelle l'homme voit par la vertu divine , sans le soleil et sans les étoiles 5 là l'ascension de la via ( 45o J CH. i4.
2est dans Pesprît saînt ;et l'éclat de Pespn'f par lequel il voit , est la lumière de Dieu. Cela s'éteignit : car l'esprit de l'ame vint dans le principe de ce monde. 3. Tu ne dois pas entendre que cela soit éteint eu lui ; non , mais l'ame d'Adam passa du principe de Dieu dans le principe de ce monde , et là , maintenant , chaque esprit d'ame doit par la propagation liumaine être ainsi engendré ( comme cela a été dit ) et cela ne peut pas être autrement. C'est pourquoi si nous voulons être propres pour le royaume des cieux , nous devons être engendrés de nouveau dans l'esprit de Dieu ; autrement , personne ne peut hériter du royaume du ciel , comme le Christ nous l'enseigne avec vérité : ce dont j'écrirai ciaprès, pour offrir une fontaine à celui qui a soif, et une lumière pour la noble voie dans la fleur du lys. 4. Ici 5 il nous faut savoir que notre vie que nous recevons dans le corps de la mère , consiste purement et simplement dans la puissance du soleil, des étoiles, et des élémens , de façon que , non-seulement ils figurent un enfant dans le sein de sa mère , et lui donnent la vie, mais qu'ils le mettent aussi au monde et le nourrissent pendant toute sa vie , le soignent, lui causent sa bonne et sa mauvaise fortune , et enfin la mort et la destruction 5 et si nos essences, d'où notre vie est engendrée, n'éloient pas plus élevées par leur très haut rang , gui vient d'Adam, nous serions tous semblables à des animaux. 5. Mais dans l'origine de la vie en Adam , nos eu. 14. ( iSi )
3essences sont beaucoup plus élevées que les bêtes, qui ne tirent seulement leurs essences que de l'esprit de ce monde , et doivent aussi avec l'esprit de ce monde,dans une substance corruplible,aller dans leur éternel Ether , tandis y qu'au contraire, les essences de l'homme sont venues de l'incommutablev et éternelle ame de Dieu , laquelle est indestructible dans l'éternité. 6. Car nous avons sur cela un principe certain , en ce que nous pouvons par notre discernement trouver et observer ce qu'il y a dans l'esprit de ce monde , ce qu'aucun animal ne peut faire. En effet, aucune créature ne peut porter sa conception plus haut que dans son principe , d'où ses essences sont sorties dans le commencement. Ainsi,nous,homme?, nous pouvons porter notre conception jusque dans le principe de Dieu , aussi bien que dans le règne de l'enfer angoisseux , là où notre ver d'ame s*originise dans le commencement en Adam , ce qu'aucune antre créature ne peut faire. 7. Mais elles pensent seulement comment elles se pourront remplir et nourrir pour que leur vie se soutienne, et aussi ne recevons-nous rien de plus de l'esprit des étoiles et des élémens. C'est pourquoi nos enfans sont dépouillés et nuds, avec une grande impuissance , et sans aucune intelligence. Or, si l'esprit de ce monde avoit une entière puissance sur les essences d'un enfant dans le sein de la mère , il pourroit aussi bien lui revêtir sou habit grossier , c'est-à-dire , lui donner une peau grossière. Il faut qu'il respecte ce point , et qu'il Itl ("• ( 25l ) CH. 14.
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.
1I. If we consider, now, the origin of the life, in what place of the body is the seat and the place where the life is begotten, we find really all the base of man, and there is nothing so secret in man that cannot be found. For we must say that the heart is the place where the noble life is begotten interiorly, and that the life begets in its turn the heart. 2. According as we have exposed it, the life takes thus in the anguish, by the inflaming of the light, its beginning, from the brightness of the sun, in the spirit of the stars and of the elements in the great anguish, where death and life combat. For, it is there that man passed from paradise into another generation, or into the spirit of this world, into the qualities of the sun, of the stars and of the elements; there the paradisiacal sight was extinguished, that sight by which man sees by the divine virtue, without the sun and without the stars 5 there the ascension of the life ( 45o J CH. i4.
2is in the holy spirit; and the brightness of the spirit by which it sees, is the light of God. That was extinguished: for the spirit of the soul came into the principle of this world. 3. Thou must not understand that this be extinguished in him; no, but the soul of Adam passed from the principle of God into the principle of this world, and there, now, each spirit of soul must by human propagation be thus begotten ( as this has been said ) and that cannot be otherwise. That is why if we will be proper for the kingdom of the heavens, we must be begotten anew in the spirit of God; otherwise, no one can inherit the kingdom of heaven, as the Christ teaches us with truth: whereof I shall write hereafter, to offer a fountain to him who thirsts, and a light for the noble way in the flower of the lily. 4. Here 5 we must know that our life which we receive in the body of the mother, consists purely and simply in the power of the sun, of the stars, and of the elements, so that, not only do they figure a child in the bosom of its mother, and give it the life, but they also put it into the world and nourish it during all its life, tend it, cause it its good and its bad fortune, and at last the death and the destruction 5 and if our essences, whence our life is begotten, were not more elevated by their very high rank, which comes from Adam, we should all be like to animals. 5. But in the origin of the life in Adam, our eu. 14. ( iSi )
3essences are much more elevated than the beasts, which draw only their essences from the spirit of this world, and must also with the spirit of this world, in a corruptible substance, go into their eternal Ether, whilst, on the contrary, the essences of man are come from the immutable and eternal soul of God, which is indestructible in eternity. 6. For we have upon that a certain principle, in that we can by our discernment find and observe what there is in the spirit of this world, which no animal can do. In effect, no creature can bear its conception higher than into its principle, whence its essences are gone forth in the beginning. Thus we, men, we can bear our conception even into the principle of God, as well as into the reign of the anguishing hell, there where our worm of soul originises itself in the beginning in Adam, which no other creature can do. 7. But they think only how they may fill and nourish themselves so that their life may sustain itself, and also we receive nothing more from the spirit of the stars and of the elements. That is why our children are stripped and naked, with a great impotence, and without any intelligence. Now, if the spirit of this world had an entire power over the essences of a child in the bosom of the mother, it could as well clothe it with its gross habit, that is to say, give it a gross skin. It must respect this point, and it must Itl ("• ( 25l ) CH. 14.
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.