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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.
1169. IV. The birds or fowls, fishes and beasts, signify and denote the several forms or shapes of figures in heaven. 170. Thou art to know this, for the spirit in the flash testifieth the same, that in heaven there arise all manner of figures or shapes like the beasts, fowls, birds and fishes of this world, but in a heavenly form or manner, clarity or brightness and kind, as also all manner of trees, plants and flowers. 171. But as they rise, so they go away again, for they are not incorporated or compacted together, as the angels are: for these figures are so formed in the birth of the rising qualities, in the spirit of nature or naturespirit. 172. If a figure be imaged in a spirit, so that it subsisteth; and if another spirit wrestleth with this, and gets the better, then it comes to be divided, and indeed changed or altered, all according to the kind of the qualities; and this is in God as a holy sport, play or scene. 173. Therefore also the creatures, as beasts, fowls or birds, fishes and worms in this world, are not created to an eternal being, but to a transitory one, as the figures in heaven also pass away. 174. This I set down here only for a manuduction or introduction: You will find it described more at large concerning the creation of this world.
2THE THIRTEENTH CHAPTER Of the terrible, doleful, and lamentable, miserable Fall of the Kingdom of Lucifer. 1. IT WOULD have all proud, covetous, envious and wrathful men invited to look into this glass, and there they will see the original of their pride, covetousness, envy and wrath, also the issue and final requital or wages thereof. 2. The learned have produced many and various monsters concerning the beginning of sin, and original of the devil, and scuffled one with another about it; every one of them thought he had the axe by the handle, yet it continued hidden from them all till this very time. 3. But since it will henceforth be fully revealed, as in a clear lookingglass, therefore it may well be supposed or expected that the great day of the revelation of God is now near at hand, wherein the fierceness and the kindled fire will be separated from the light. 4. Therefore let none make himself stark blind, for the time of the restitution of whatsoever man hath lost is now near at hand: the day dawneth, or the morningredness breaketh forth; it is high time to awake from sleep. Question. Now it may be asked, What is ths source or fountain of the first sin of Lucifer's kingdom? Answer. 5. Here we must again take in hand the highest depth of the Deity, and see out of what king Lucifer became a creature, or what was the
3first source or fountain of evil or malice in him. 6. The devil and his crew continually excuse themselves, and so do all wicked men who are begotten in corruption, saying, God doth them wrong in thrusting them out or rejecting them. 7. Nay, this present world doth dare to say that God hath decreed or concluded it so in his predestinate purpose and council that some men should be saved, and some should be damned; and they say, to that end also God hath rejected prince Lucifer, that he should be a spectacle of God's wrath. 8. As if hell, or malice and evil, had been from eternity, and that it was in God's predestinate purpose that creatures should and must be therein; and so they pull and hale and bestir themselves to prove it by Scripture, though indeed they have neither the knowledge of the true God, nor the understanding of the Scriptures, though also some erroneous things are brewed from the Scriptures. 9. Christ saith, The devil was a Murderer [John viii. 44] and liar from the beginning, and did not stand in the truth. But seeing these justifiers and disputers assist the devil so steadfastly, and pervert God's truth, and change it into lies, in that they make of God a thirsty and fierce wrathful devil, and such a one as hath created and still willeth evil, so all of them, together with the devil, are jointly murderers and liars. 10. For as the devil is the founder and father of hell and damnation, and hath himself built and prepared for himself the hellish quality to be his royal seat, so also such writers and scribblers are the masterbuilders of lies and damnation, who help to confirm and establish
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.
1169. IV. The birds or fowls, fishes and beasts, signify and denote the several forms or shapes of figures in heaven. 170. Thou art to know this, for the spirit in the flash testifieth the same, that in heaven there arise all manner of figures or shapes like the beasts, fowls, birds and fishes of this world, but in a heavenly form or manner, clarity or brightness and kind, as also all manner of trees, plants and flowers. 171. But as they rise, so they go away again, for they are not incorporated or compacted together, as the angels are: for these figures are so formed in the birth of the rising qualities, in the spirit of nature or naturespirit. 172. If a figure be imaged in a spirit, so that it subsisteth; and if another spirit wrestleth with this, and gets the better, then it comes to be divided, and indeed changed or altered, all according to the kind of the qualities; and this is in God as a holy sport, play or scene. 173. Therefore also the creatures, as beasts, fowls or birds, fishes and worms in this world, are not created to an eternal being, but to a transitory one, as the figures in heaven also pass away. 174. This I set down here only for a manuduction or introduction: You will find it described more at large concerning the creation of this world.
2THE THIRTEENTH CHAPTER Of the terrible, doleful, and lamentable, miserable Fall of the Kingdom of Lucifer. 1. IT WOULD have all proud, covetous, envious and wrathful men invited to look into this glass, and there they will see the original of their pride, covetousness, envy and wrath, also the issue and final requital or wages thereof. 2. The learned have produced many and various monsters concerning the beginning of sin, and original of the devil, and scuffled one with another about it; every one of them thought he had the axe by the handle, yet it continued hidden from them all till this very time. 3. But since it will henceforth be fully revealed, as in a clear lookingglass, therefore it may well be supposed or expected that the great day of the revelation of God is now near at hand, wherein the fierceness and the kindled fire will be separated from the light. 4. Therefore let none make himself stark blind, for the time of the restitution of whatsoever man hath lost is now near at hand: the day dawneth, or the morningredness breaketh forth; it is high time to awake from sleep. Question. Now it may be asked, What is ths source or fountain of the first sin of Lucifer's kingdom? Answer. 5. Here we must again take in hand the highest depth of the Deity, and see out of what king Lucifer became a creature, or what was the
3first source or fountain of evil or malice in him. 6. The devil and his crew continually excuse themselves, and so do all wicked men who are begotten in corruption, saying, God doth them wrong in thrusting them out or rejecting them. 7. Nay, this present world doth dare to say that God hath decreed or concluded it so in his predestinate purpose and council that some men should be saved, and some should be damned; and they say, to that end also God hath rejected prince Lucifer, that he should be a spectacle of God's wrath. 8. As if hell, or malice and evil, had been from eternity, and that it was in God's predestinate purpose that creatures should and must be therein; and so they pull and hale and bestir themselves to prove it by Scripture, though indeed they have neither the knowledge of the true God, nor the understanding of the Scriptures, though also some erroneous things are brewed from the Scriptures. 9. Christ saith, The devil was a Murderer [John viii. 44] and liar from the beginning, and did not stand in the truth. But seeing these justifiers and disputers assist the devil so steadfastly, and pervert God's truth, and change it into lies, in that they make of God a thirsty and fierce wrathful devil, and such a one as hath created and still willeth evil, so all of them, together with the devil, are jointly murderers and liars. 10. For as the devil is the founder and father of hell and damnation, and hath himself built and prepared for himself the hellish quality to be his royal seat, so also such writers and scribblers are the masterbuilders of lies and damnation, who help to confirm and establish
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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