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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.
1God is.* * "therefore consider rationally and seriously," etc. Sparrow has added "seriously," presumably because the German vernünftig expresses not so much the idea of thinking according to the rational faculty, as thinking " in reasonableness," i.e. in a patient, open and temperate attitude of mind. 48. Thou seest in this world nothing but the deep, and therein the stars, and the birth or geniture of the elements: Now wilt thou say, God is not there? Pray then, what was there in that place before the time of the world? Wilt thou say, There was nothing? Then thou speakest without reason, for thou must needs say that God was there, or else nothing would have come to be there. 49. Now if God was there then, who hath thrust him out from thence or vanquished him, that he should be there no more? But if God is there, then he is indeed in his heaven, and, moreover, in his Trinity. 50. But the devil hath kindled the bath or lake of wrath, whence the earth and the stones, also the elements, are become so fluctuating, as also cold, bitter, and hot. And so he hath destroyed the outermost birth or geniture. 51. Whereupon now this treatise, and my whole purpose therein, is to describe how the outermost birth is come to be living and revived again, and how it regenerateth itself again. From thence [the wrath bath] also in the creatures the bestial flesh is come to be; but sin in the flesh is the wrath of God. Another question, which is chiefly treated of in this book, is this, viz. Where then shall the wrath of God come to be?
2Answer. 52. Here the spirit answereth, that at the end of the time of this corrupted birth or geniture, after the resurrection from the dead, this place or space where the earth now is will be left to the devil for a propriety or possession and house of wrath, yet not through and in all the three births or genitures, but only in the outermost, in which he now standeth: But the innermost will hold him captive in its might and strength, and use him for a footstool, or as the dust under its foot, which innermost birth he will never be able either to comprehend or to touch. 53. For it hath not this understanding or meaning, that the wrathfire should be extinguished, and be no more; for then the devils also must become holy angels again, and live in the holy heaven; but that not being so, a hole, burrow or dungeon in this world must remain to be their habitation. 54. If man's eyes were but opened, he would see God everywhere in his heaven; for heaven standeth in the innermost birth or geniture everywhere. 55. Moreover, when Stephen saw the heaven opened, and the Lord JESUS at the right hand of God, there his spirit did not first swing itself up aloft into the upper heaven, but it penetrated or pressed into the innermost birth or geniture, wherein heaven is everywhere. 56. Neither must thou think that the Deity is such a kind of being as is only in the upper heaven, nor that the soul, when it departeth from the body, goeth up aloft into the upper heaven many hundred thousand miles off. 57. It needeth not do that, but it is set or put
3into the innermost birth, and there it is with God, and in God, and with all the holy angels, and can now be above, and now beneath; it is not hindered by anything. 58. For in the innermost birth the upper and nether Deity is one body, and is an open gate: The holy angels converse and walk up and down in the innermost birth of this world by and with our King JESUS CHRIST, as well as in the uppermost world aloft in their quarters, courts or region. 59. And where then would or should the soul of man rather be, than with its King and Redeemer JESUS CHRIST? For near and afar off in God is one thing, one comprehensibility, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, everywhere all over. 60. The gate of the Deity in the upper heaven is no other, also no brighter, than it is in this world: And where can there be greater joy than in that place, where every hour and moment there cometh to Christ beautiful, loving, dear, newborn children and angels, who are pressed or penetrated through death into life? 61. Doubtless they will have to tell of many fights: and where can there be greater joy, than where, in the midst or centre of death, life is generated continually? 62. Doth not every soul bring along with it a new triumph? and so there is nothing else but an exceeding friendly welcoming and salutation there. 63. Consider, when the souls of children come to their parents, who in the body did generate them, whether heaven can choose but be there?
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.
1God is.* * "therefore consider rationally and seriously," etc. Sparrow has added "seriously," presumably because the German vernünftig expresses not so much the idea of thinking according to the rational faculty, as thinking " in reasonableness," i.e. in a patient, open and temperate attitude of mind. 48. Thou seest in this world nothing but the deep, and therein the stars, and the birth or geniture of the elements: Now wilt thou say, God is not there? Pray then, what was there in that place before the time of the world? Wilt thou say, There was nothing? Then thou speakest without reason, for thou must needs say that God was there, or else nothing would have come to be there. 49. Now if God was there then, who hath thrust him out from thence or vanquished him, that he should be there no more? But if God is there, then he is indeed in his heaven, and, moreover, in his Trinity. 50. But the devil hath kindled the bath or lake of wrath, whence the earth and the stones, also the elements, are become so fluctuating, as also cold, bitter, and hot. And so he hath destroyed the outermost birth or geniture. 51. Whereupon now this treatise, and my whole purpose therein, is to describe how the outermost birth is come to be living and revived again, and how it regenerateth itself again. From thence [the wrath bath] also in the creatures the bestial flesh is come to be; but sin in the flesh is the wrath of God. Another question, which is chiefly treated of in this book, is this, viz. Where then shall the wrath of God come to be?
2Answer. 52. Here the spirit answereth, that at the end of the time of this corrupted birth or geniture, after the resurrection from the dead, this place or space where the earth now is will be left to the devil for a propriety or possession and house of wrath, yet not through and in all the three births or genitures, but only in the outermost, in which he now standeth: But the innermost will hold him captive in its might and strength, and use him for a footstool, or as the dust under its foot, which innermost birth he will never be able either to comprehend or to touch. 53. For it hath not this understanding or meaning, that the wrathfire should be extinguished, and be no more; for then the devils also must become holy angels again, and live in the holy heaven; but that not being so, a hole, burrow or dungeon in this world must remain to be their habitation. 54. If man's eyes were but opened, he would see God everywhere in his heaven; for heaven standeth in the innermost birth or geniture everywhere. 55. Moreover, when Stephen saw the heaven opened, and the Lord JESUS at the right hand of God, there his spirit did not first swing itself up aloft into the upper heaven, but it penetrated or pressed into the innermost birth or geniture, wherein heaven is everywhere. 56. Neither must thou think that the Deity is such a kind of being as is only in the upper heaven, nor that the soul, when it departeth from the body, goeth up aloft into the upper heaven many hundred thousand miles off. 57. It needeth not do that, but it is set or put
3into the innermost birth, and there it is with God, and in God, and with all the holy angels, and can now be above, and now beneath; it is not hindered by anything. 58. For in the innermost birth the upper and nether Deity is one body, and is an open gate: The holy angels converse and walk up and down in the innermost birth of this world by and with our King JESUS CHRIST, as well as in the uppermost world aloft in their quarters, courts or region. 59. And where then would or should the soul of man rather be, than with its King and Redeemer JESUS CHRIST? For near and afar off in God is one thing, one comprehensibility, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, everywhere all over. 60. The gate of the Deity in the upper heaven is no other, also no brighter, than it is in this world: And where can there be greater joy than in that place, where every hour and moment there cometh to Christ beautiful, loving, dear, newborn children and angels, who are pressed or penetrated through death into life? 61. Doubtless they will have to tell of many fights: and where can there be greater joy, than where, in the midst or centre of death, life is generated continually? 62. Doth not every soul bring along with it a new triumph? and so there is nothing else but an exceeding friendly welcoming and salutation there. 63. Consider, when the souls of children come to their parents, who in the body did generate them, whether heaven can choose but be there?
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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