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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.
1Answer. 38. As this lord commanded, so his subjects obeyed; when he elevated himself, and would be God, his angels, seeing it, followed their lord, doing as he did, all made a proffer to assault and storm the Deity. 39. For they were all in subjection under Lucifer, and he ruled in all his angels, for he was created out of the pith or kernel of that Salitter, out of which all his angels were created, and he was the heart and lord of all his angels. 40. Therefore they all did as he did, and all would sit in the primacy of the Deity, and would rule powerfully in the whole region, circuit or circumference, over and above the whole divine power: They were all of one will, and would not suffer the same to be taken from them. Now thou wilt ask: Question. Did not the whole, total or universal God know this, before the time of the creation of angels, that it would so come to pass? Answer. 41. No: For if God had known it before the time of the creation of angels, it had then been an eternal predestinate purposed will in God to have it so, and it had been no enmity against God, but God had indeed at the beginning created and made him a devil. 42. But God created and made him a king of light, and when he became disobedient, and would be above the whole or total God, then God spewed him out of his seat, and in the midst or centre of our time created another king out of the same Deity out of which lord Lucifer was
2created; (understand it aright, out of the Salitter, which was without, distinct from the body of king Lucifer), and set him on the royal throne of Lucifer, and gave him might, authority and power, as Lucifer had before his fall. 43. The same King is called JESUS CHRIST, who is the Son of God and of man. 44. This I will demonstrate clearly and at large in its proper place. [45. " Note, This is explained in the second " and third books: God knew this very well "according to his wrath, but not according to " his love, according to which God is called " God, into which no fierceness nor imagination " entereth, neither is there any searching in the " love concerning the hellish creature. 46. " This foregoing question is understood or " meant thus: as when I say, God knoweth not " the evil; also, God willeth not the evil, accord " ing to the tenure of the Scripture; then I " understand or mean that in his love (which " alone is the one only Good, and is alone called " God) there is no glimpse of evil revealed or " manifested; otherwise, if any evil were revealed " or manifested therein, then the love were not " meekness and humility alone. 47. "But in the outspeaking of his Word, " wherein the nature of the spiritual world " existeth, wherein perceptibility or sensibility is " understood to consist, and wherein God calleth " himself an angry, zealous or jealous God, and " a consuming fire, therein, indeed, God hath " known the evil * from eternity, and that in " case he should once move himself therein, " that the source or quality thereof would become " creaturely also, but therein is he not called
3" God, but a consuming fire. * " therein, indeed, God hath known the evil," etc., lit., " therein, indeed, God hath known from eternity that, should he once move himself in that source or quality, the same would become creaturely also; but therein [in that source] he is not called God," etc; 48. " I understand the abovesaid question " magically, taking notice how God's love and " wrath differ, and are distinguished, and how " the knowledge of evil, viz. of the devil and of " the fall, is discerned to differ from his well " spring or source, from whence the fall also took " its original. 49. " So also in God's love there is only the " fountain and knowledge of joyfulness, for every " science or root causeth or produceth its like. 50. " For if I should say, God's love had " willed the evil, or that there was a false " science [text: Scientz] or root in God's love and meekness, " then I should speak contrary to the Scripture: " For what God's love knoweth sensibly or "feelingly in itself, that it also willeth, and " nothing else. And what God's wrath knoweth " sensibly in itself, that he also knoweth, and " nothing else* * The last clause of this par. does not appear in Sparrow's translation, neither is it in the German edition of 1656, nor in Schiebler's edition. It is in the German editions of 1682, 1715 and 1730. 51. "From hence, in the creation, good and " evil are existed: I exhort the Reader to con " ceive our very deep sense aright, and not " mistake or go astray here, but to read our other " writings, where these things are sufficiently " explained."]
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.
1Answer. 38. As this lord commanded, so his subjects obeyed; when he elevated himself, and would be God, his angels, seeing it, followed their lord, doing as he did, all made a proffer to assault and storm the Deity. 39. For they were all in subjection under Lucifer, and he ruled in all his angels, for he was created out of the pith or kernel of that Salitter, out of which all his angels were created, and he was the heart and lord of all his angels. 40. Therefore they all did as he did, and all would sit in the primacy of the Deity, and would rule powerfully in the whole region, circuit or circumference, over and above the whole divine power: They were all of one will, and would not suffer the same to be taken from them. Now thou wilt ask: Question. Did not the whole, total or universal God know this, before the time of the creation of angels, that it would so come to pass? Answer. 41. No: For if God had known it before the time of the creation of angels, it had then been an eternal predestinate purposed will in God to have it so, and it had been no enmity against God, but God had indeed at the beginning created and made him a devil. 42. But God created and made him a king of light, and when he became disobedient, and would be above the whole or total God, then God spewed him out of his seat, and in the midst or centre of our time created another king out of the same Deity out of which lord Lucifer was
2created; (understand it aright, out of the Salitter, which was without, distinct from the body of king Lucifer), and set him on the royal throne of Lucifer, and gave him might, authority and power, as Lucifer had before his fall. 43. The same King is called JESUS CHRIST, who is the Son of God and of man. 44. This I will demonstrate clearly and at large in its proper place. [45. " Note, This is explained in the second " and third books: God knew this very well "according to his wrath, but not according to " his love, according to which God is called " God, into which no fierceness nor imagination " entereth, neither is there any searching in the " love concerning the hellish creature. 46. " This foregoing question is understood or " meant thus: as when I say, God knoweth not " the evil; also, God willeth not the evil, accord " ing to the tenure of the Scripture; then I " understand or mean that in his love (which " alone is the one only Good, and is alone called " God) there is no glimpse of evil revealed or " manifested; otherwise, if any evil were revealed " or manifested therein, then the love were not " meekness and humility alone. 47. "But in the outspeaking of his Word, " wherein the nature of the spiritual world " existeth, wherein perceptibility or sensibility is " understood to consist, and wherein God calleth " himself an angry, zealous or jealous God, and " a consuming fire, therein, indeed, God hath " known the evil * from eternity, and that in " case he should once move himself therein, " that the source or quality thereof would become " creaturely also, but therein is he not called
3" God, but a consuming fire. * " therein, indeed, God hath known the evil," etc., lit., " therein, indeed, God hath known from eternity that, should he once move himself in that source or quality, the same would become creaturely also; but therein [in that source] he is not called God," etc; 48. " I understand the abovesaid question " magically, taking notice how God's love and " wrath differ, and are distinguished, and how " the knowledge of evil, viz. of the devil and of " the fall, is discerned to differ from his well " spring or source, from whence the fall also took " its original. 49. " So also in God's love there is only the " fountain and knowledge of joyfulness, for every " science or root causeth or produceth its like. 50. " For if I should say, God's love had " willed the evil, or that there was a false " science [text: Scientz] or root in God's love and meekness, " then I should speak contrary to the Scripture: " For what God's love knoweth sensibly or "feelingly in itself, that it also willeth, and " nothing else. And what God's wrath knoweth " sensibly in itself, that he also knoweth, and " nothing else* * The last clause of this par. does not appear in Sparrow's translation, neither is it in the German edition of 1656, nor in Schiebler's edition. It is in the German editions of 1682, 1715 and 1730. 51. "From hence, in the creation, good and " evil are existed: I exhort the Reader to con " ceive our very deep sense aright, and not " mistake or go astray here, but to read our other " writings, where these things are sufficiently " explained."]
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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