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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.
1112. Nor is this my natural will, that I could do it by my own small ability; for if the spirit were withdrawn from me, then I could neither know nor understand my own writings; and I must on every side fight and struggle with the devil, and lie open to temptation and affliction as well as other men. 113. But in the following chapters you will soon see the devil and his kingdom laid naked; his pride and reproach shall suddenly be discovered.
2THE FOURTH CHAPTER Of the creation of the Holy Angels. An Instruction or open Gate of Heaven. 1. THE learned, and almost all writers, have very much encumbered and mightily troubled their heads, to search, contrive and conceive in nature (and have brought forth many and sundry opinions) concerning how and of what the holy angels were created: And on the other side, what was that horrible fall of the great prince Lucifer, or how he became so base a wicked and fierce wrathful devil, from whence that evil quality should spring, or what drove him to it. 2. And though this ground and great mystery hath remained hidden from the beginning of the world, and that human flesh and blood is not able to conceive or apprehend it, 3. Yet God, who created the world, will reveal himself now at the end; and all great mysteries will be manifested or revealed, to intimate that the great Day of Revelation and final Judgment is near, and daily to be expected. 4. On which will be restored again all that which hath been lost through Adam, and in which the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of the devil, in this world, shall be severed asunder. 5. But how all this will be done God will reveal in the highest plainness and simplicity, so that no man will be able to oppose him. 6. Therefore every one should lift up his eyes, for his redemption draweth near, and not seek after riotous living and vain show, supposing it to be the best life here; whereas in their
3arrogance they sit in the midst of hell, to wait upon Lucifer as his guard. 7. Which they themselves shall suddenly be sure to see, with great terror, anguish and eternal despair, as also to their shame and scorn: of which the devils are a terrible example, who were once the fairest and brightest angels in heaven, as I shall reveal, write and manifest here following. I will suffer God's impulse, I am not able to withstand it. Of the Divine Quality. 8. Since thou hast perceived, in the third chapter, the ground of the Ternary in the divine being, I shall here shew plainly the power and operation, as also the qualities or qualification, in the divine being; or from what the angels were properly and peculiarly created, or what their body and power are. 9. As I said before,* all the powers or virtues are in God the Father, and no man with his sense and thoughts can reach to apprehend it. But in the stars and the elements, as also by all the creatures in the whole creation of this world, a man may clearly know it. * Lit., " as I said before, all virtue is in God the Father, which [virtue] no man can, with his senses, reach to apprehend. But in the stars... this can be clearly known [or recognized]," or "one may clearly know [or recognize this]." In the original the two " its " do not appear to refer to the same antecedent. The first is a feminine, and refers to "virtue" (Kraft); the second a neuter, which grammatically must refer to the whole statement, "all virtue is in God the Father." St M., too, takes Kraft to imply a plural meaning, " powers "; and then, for Sparrow's " it,". " it," writes " them."
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.
1112. Nor is this my natural will, that I could do it by my own small ability; for if the spirit were withdrawn from me, then I could neither know nor understand my own writings; and I must on every side fight and struggle with the devil, and lie open to temptation and affliction as well as other men. 113. But in the following chapters you will soon see the devil and his kingdom laid naked; his pride and reproach shall suddenly be discovered.
2THE FOURTH CHAPTER Of the creation of the Holy Angels. An Instruction or open Gate of Heaven. 1. THE learned, and almost all writers, have very much encumbered and mightily troubled their heads, to search, contrive and conceive in nature (and have brought forth many and sundry opinions) concerning how and of what the holy angels were created: And on the other side, what was that horrible fall of the great prince Lucifer, or how he became so base a wicked and fierce wrathful devil, from whence that evil quality should spring, or what drove him to it. 2. And though this ground and great mystery hath remained hidden from the beginning of the world, and that human flesh and blood is not able to conceive or apprehend it, 3. Yet God, who created the world, will reveal himself now at the end; and all great mysteries will be manifested or revealed, to intimate that the great Day of Revelation and final Judgment is near, and daily to be expected. 4. On which will be restored again all that which hath been lost through Adam, and in which the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of the devil, in this world, shall be severed asunder. 5. But how all this will be done God will reveal in the highest plainness and simplicity, so that no man will be able to oppose him. 6. Therefore every one should lift up his eyes, for his redemption draweth near, and not seek after riotous living and vain show, supposing it to be the best life here; whereas in their
3arrogance they sit in the midst of hell, to wait upon Lucifer as his guard. 7. Which they themselves shall suddenly be sure to see, with great terror, anguish and eternal despair, as also to their shame and scorn: of which the devils are a terrible example, who were once the fairest and brightest angels in heaven, as I shall reveal, write and manifest here following. I will suffer God's impulse, I am not able to withstand it. Of the Divine Quality. 8. Since thou hast perceived, in the third chapter, the ground of the Ternary in the divine being, I shall here shew plainly the power and operation, as also the qualities or qualification, in the divine being; or from what the angels were properly and peculiarly created, or what their body and power are. 9. As I said before,* all the powers or virtues are in God the Father, and no man with his sense and thoughts can reach to apprehend it. But in the stars and the elements, as also by all the creatures in the whole creation of this world, a man may clearly know it. * Lit., " as I said before, all virtue is in God the Father, which [virtue] no man can, with his senses, reach to apprehend. But in the stars... this can be clearly known [or recognized]," or "one may clearly know [or recognize this]." In the original the two " its " do not appear to refer to the same antecedent. The first is a feminine, and refers to "virtue" (Kraft); the second a neuter, which grammatically must refer to the whole statement, "all virtue is in God the Father." St M., too, takes Kraft to imply a plural meaning, " powers "; and then, for Sparrow's " it,". " it," writes " them."
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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