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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.
1* "hard knocking" (Pochen). See Ch. 10, par. 119. Question. Hearken, Lucifer, Where lieth the fault now, that thou art become a devil? Is God in fault, as thou lyingly sayest? Answer. 58. O no, thou thyself art faulty, the qualifying or fountain spirits in thy body, which thou thyself art, have generated thee such a little son: Thou canst not say that God hath kindled the Salitter out of which he made thee, but thy qualifying or fountain spirits have done it; whereas thou wert clearly before a prince and a king of God. 59. Therefore, when thou sayest God created thee thus, or that he hath without sufficient cause spewed thee up out of thy place, then art thou a liar and murderer; for the whole heavenly host or army beareth witness against thee, that thou hast thyself erected and prepared this fierce quality for thyself. 60. If it be not so, then go before the face of God, and justify thyself. But thou seest it plain enough without that; and besides, thou darest not look on that matter: Wouldst not thou fain have a friendly kiss of the Son of God, that thou mightest once be eased or refreshed? If thou art in the right, then do but once look upon HIM: Perhaps thou mayest be made sound or whole again. 61. But stay a little, another sitteth on thy throne, he is kissed, and he is an obedient son to his Father, and doth as the Father doth. 62. Stay yet a little while, and the hellish fire will kiss thee; in the meanwhile make much of
2this Latin, till more groweth out of it; thou wilt suddenly lose thy crown. Now one might ask, What then, in Lucifer, is properly that Enmity against God, for which he was thrust and driven out of his Place? 63. Here I will shew you exactly the pith, kernel and heart of Lucifer, and then you will see what a devil is, or how he is become a devil. Therefore take heed, and do not invite or entertain him as a guest, for he is the archsworn enemy of God, and of all angels and men, and that in his eternity. 64. Now if thou understandest and apprehendest this aright, then thou wilt not make of God a devil, as some do, who say, God hath created the evil, and that his will is that some men should be lost; which men, that say so, help to increase the devil's lies, and bring upon themselves the severe judgment, by their perverting God's truths, and so turning them into lies. Now observe: 65. The whole Deity hath in its innermost or beginning birth, in the pith or kernel, a very tart, terrible sharpness, in which the astringent quality is a very horrible, tart, hard, dark and cold attraction or drawing together, like winter, when there is a fierce, bitter, cold frost, when water is frozen into ice, and besides it is very intolerable. 66. Then think or suppose, if in such a hard winter, when it is so cold, the sun should be taken away, what kind of hard frost, and how very rough, fierce and hard darkness would it be, wherein no life could subsist. 67. After such a manner and kind is the
3astringent quality in the innermost kernel or pith in itself, and to itself alone, without the other qualities in God; for the austereness or severity maketh the attraction or drawing together, and fixation or glutinousness of the body, and the hardness drieth it up, so that it subsisteth as a creature. 68. And the bitter quality is a tearing, penetrating and cutting bitter quality or source: for it divideth and driveth forth from the hard and astringent quality, and maketh the mobility. 69. Between these two qualities is heat generated from its hard and fierce bitter rubbing, tearing and raging, which riseth up in the bitter and hard quality, as a fierce wrathful kindling, and presseth quite through, as a hard fiery noise. 70. From whence existeth the hard tone, and in that rising up or climbing, it is environed and fixed in the astringent quality, so that it becometh a body which subsisteth. 71. Now if there were no other quality in this body, which could quench the fierceness of these four qualities, then there would be a perpetual enmity therein. For the bitter would be against the astringent, in that it stormeth or teareth so vehemently therein, and breaketh open the astringent. 72. Then the astringent also would be against the bitter, in that it attracteth, draweth together and holdeth fast the bitter captive, that it could not have its own course. 73. The heat would be against both, in that with its fierce, wrathful kindling and rising up it maketh all hot, burning and raging, and is fully or totally against the cold.
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.
1* "hard knocking" (Pochen). See Ch. 10, par. 119. Question. Hearken, Lucifer, Where lieth the fault now, that thou art become a devil? Is God in fault, as thou lyingly sayest? Answer. 58. O no, thou thyself art faulty, the qualifying or fountain spirits in thy body, which thou thyself art, have generated thee such a little son: Thou canst not say that God hath kindled the Salitter out of which he made thee, but thy qualifying or fountain spirits have done it; whereas thou wert clearly before a prince and a king of God. 59. Therefore, when thou sayest God created thee thus, or that he hath without sufficient cause spewed thee up out of thy place, then art thou a liar and murderer; for the whole heavenly host or army beareth witness against thee, that thou hast thyself erected and prepared this fierce quality for thyself. 60. If it be not so, then go before the face of God, and justify thyself. But thou seest it plain enough without that; and besides, thou darest not look on that matter: Wouldst not thou fain have a friendly kiss of the Son of God, that thou mightest once be eased or refreshed? If thou art in the right, then do but once look upon HIM: Perhaps thou mayest be made sound or whole again. 61. But stay a little, another sitteth on thy throne, he is kissed, and he is an obedient son to his Father, and doth as the Father doth. 62. Stay yet a little while, and the hellish fire will kiss thee; in the meanwhile make much of
2this Latin, till more groweth out of it; thou wilt suddenly lose thy crown. Now one might ask, What then, in Lucifer, is properly that Enmity against God, for which he was thrust and driven out of his Place? 63. Here I will shew you exactly the pith, kernel and heart of Lucifer, and then you will see what a devil is, or how he is become a devil. Therefore take heed, and do not invite or entertain him as a guest, for he is the archsworn enemy of God, and of all angels and men, and that in his eternity. 64. Now if thou understandest and apprehendest this aright, then thou wilt not make of God a devil, as some do, who say, God hath created the evil, and that his will is that some men should be lost; which men, that say so, help to increase the devil's lies, and bring upon themselves the severe judgment, by their perverting God's truths, and so turning them into lies. Now observe: 65. The whole Deity hath in its innermost or beginning birth, in the pith or kernel, a very tart, terrible sharpness, in which the astringent quality is a very horrible, tart, hard, dark and cold attraction or drawing together, like winter, when there is a fierce, bitter, cold frost, when water is frozen into ice, and besides it is very intolerable. 66. Then think or suppose, if in such a hard winter, when it is so cold, the sun should be taken away, what kind of hard frost, and how very rough, fierce and hard darkness would it be, wherein no life could subsist. 67. After such a manner and kind is the
3astringent quality in the innermost kernel or pith in itself, and to itself alone, without the other qualities in God; for the austereness or severity maketh the attraction or drawing together, and fixation or glutinousness of the body, and the hardness drieth it up, so that it subsisteth as a creature. 68. And the bitter quality is a tearing, penetrating and cutting bitter quality or source: for it divideth and driveth forth from the hard and astringent quality, and maketh the mobility. 69. Between these two qualities is heat generated from its hard and fierce bitter rubbing, tearing and raging, which riseth up in the bitter and hard quality, as a fierce wrathful kindling, and presseth quite through, as a hard fiery noise. 70. From whence existeth the hard tone, and in that rising up or climbing, it is environed and fixed in the astringent quality, so that it becometh a body which subsisteth. 71. Now if there were no other quality in this body, which could quench the fierceness of these four qualities, then there would be a perpetual enmity therein. For the bitter would be against the astringent, in that it stormeth or teareth so vehemently therein, and breaketh open the astringent. 72. Then the astringent also would be against the bitter, in that it attracteth, draweth together and holdeth fast the bitter captive, that it could not have its own course. 73. The heat would be against both, in that with its fierce, wrathful kindling and rising up it maketh all hot, burning and raging, and is fully or totally against the cold.
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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