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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.
1nature, out of the tenth number, which the creature cannot [do] : but if it be yielded up into the will of God, then God in the creature doth the wonder: for it is his delight to manifest himself in the weak; for the strong is stiff in his own will, and will not submit it unto God: He relieth upon his own wit and reason. Thus his will is out from God, and is able to do nothing; and then, if he speaketh from himself concerning God's being and will, he is an ignorant liar, he speaketh not from God's spirit and will, but from himself, from his own opinion, in which there is mere doubt; and from thence ariseth the contention about [matters of] faith [and religion], about divine knowledge, so that men seek God in their own willing and knowing: Men will think to find God in their own willing, and he is not therein; for he dwelleth merely and barely in that willing which yieldeth itself with all its reason and knowing wholly to him, and to that he giveth knowledge and power to understand his being. 33. Therefore lift up your heads and observe this: the will of God is not in any strife and contention, but man's will and the devil's; it is the will of the wrath of God; let not the flattering hypocrites seduce you, who enter in, boasting of the history, and say, We have the will of God by us, we are his ministers, look upon us, we are God's officers, and though we be wicked, yet we rightly bear the office, and [dispense the] will [of God] .
2O cursed generation of Cain and Judas, you are neither born nor known in God: Why then boast you of the will of God? How can you say that you bear the Great Mystery of God, whereas you are without God, in a strange will, and in yourself you carry not the Mysterium Magnum? But a poor sinner, who converteth, but is captivated by the devil, and is in strife against the devil, he that panteth, sigheth, and crieth after God, he runneth in sorrow and abstinence to the office of the Great Mystery, which Christ hath given to his disciples and children, who are in the will of God, and they have the true key to heaven and hell. 34. But you, sophister, bear not the office while you are without the will of God; but the poor repentant man bringeth the Mysterium Magnum, the Great Mystery, with him to you, and rendereth himself up to the apostolical power, which you have not; but -the church or congregation of Christ, which is in the will of God, [hath it] : and so one faith receiveth the other, and the church, or congregation of Christ, absolveth the repentant sinner, and not you, sophister, who have neither virtue nor power, nor knowledge of the kingdom of God, but are yourself the devil's captive; and you sit in the anger of God, and are only the proud whore of Babel, and swim aloft upon the office of the Great Mystery, and are incapable of it, unless you be in the will of God, and then you are Christ's apostle, and wear the garment of Aaron, and God openeth
3and shutteth by your mouth; but your natural will doth it not, that should always be dead, or else you are not capable of the office; also in your own will, you sit not in the office of Christ, upon Peter's chair, but upon the stool of pestilence, and are the Antichrist, as we have known you in the number seventy-two, which you bear: for you are in contention about the cup of Christ, and you have it not in your power, but the church or congregation of Christ, which is submitted to the will of God, hath it: The Ark of the Covenant is with them at Shilo, and not in your [contentious] schismatical sectarian Jerusalem, which you have made full of abominable blasphemies. 35. But what shall the spirit judge more concerning you, seeing you are an adulterous woman, and have lost your faith and fidelity? He hath given you time to repent, and you do not repent, but lie in whoredom day and night, and therefore he will spew you out in the wine-press, and Babel shall burn up itself. Thus Christ saith, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not ! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. And so he saith also to you now, you desolate Jerusalem in Babel. The time cometh that the children of Christ will go out from you, and it is already, and you shall perish in your whoredom. Behold, your merchants will stand afar off, and say, Behold!
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.
1nature, out of the tenth number, which the creature cannot [do] : but if it be yielded up into the will of God, then God in the creature doth the wonder: for it is his delight to manifest himself in the weak; for the strong is stiff in his own will, and will not submit it unto God: He relieth upon his own wit and reason. Thus his will is out from God, and is able to do nothing; and then, if he speaketh from himself concerning God's being and will, he is an ignorant liar, he speaketh not from God's spirit and will, but from himself, from his own opinion, in which there is mere doubt; and from thence ariseth the contention about [matters of] faith [and religion], about divine knowledge, so that men seek God in their own willing and knowing: Men will think to find God in their own willing, and he is not therein; for he dwelleth merely and barely in that willing which yieldeth itself with all its reason and knowing wholly to him, and to that he giveth knowledge and power to understand his being. 33. Therefore lift up your heads and observe this: the will of God is not in any strife and contention, but man's will and the devil's; it is the will of the wrath of God; let not the flattering hypocrites seduce you, who enter in, boasting of the history, and say, We have the will of God by us, we are his ministers, look upon us, we are God's officers, and though we be wicked, yet we rightly bear the office, and [dispense the] will [of God] .
2O cursed generation of Cain and Judas, you are neither born nor known in God: Why then boast you of the will of God? How can you say that you bear the Great Mystery of God, whereas you are without God, in a strange will, and in yourself you carry not the Mysterium Magnum? But a poor sinner, who converteth, but is captivated by the devil, and is in strife against the devil, he that panteth, sigheth, and crieth after God, he runneth in sorrow and abstinence to the office of the Great Mystery, which Christ hath given to his disciples and children, who are in the will of God, and they have the true key to heaven and hell. 34. But you, sophister, bear not the office while you are without the will of God; but the poor repentant man bringeth the Mysterium Magnum, the Great Mystery, with him to you, and rendereth himself up to the apostolical power, which you have not; but -the church or congregation of Christ, which is in the will of God, [hath it] : and so one faith receiveth the other, and the church, or congregation of Christ, absolveth the repentant sinner, and not you, sophister, who have neither virtue nor power, nor knowledge of the kingdom of God, but are yourself the devil's captive; and you sit in the anger of God, and are only the proud whore of Babel, and swim aloft upon the office of the Great Mystery, and are incapable of it, unless you be in the will of God, and then you are Christ's apostle, and wear the garment of Aaron, and God openeth
3and shutteth by your mouth; but your natural will doth it not, that should always be dead, or else you are not capable of the office; also in your own will, you sit not in the office of Christ, upon Peter's chair, but upon the stool of pestilence, and are the Antichrist, as we have known you in the number seventy-two, which you bear: for you are in contention about the cup of Christ, and you have it not in your power, but the church or congregation of Christ, which is submitted to the will of God, hath it: The Ark of the Covenant is with them at Shilo, and not in your [contentious] schismatical sectarian Jerusalem, which you have made full of abominable blasphemies. 35. But what shall the spirit judge more concerning you, seeing you are an adulterous woman, and have lost your faith and fidelity? He hath given you time to repent, and you do not repent, but lie in whoredom day and night, and therefore he will spew you out in the wine-press, and Babel shall burn up itself. Thus Christ saith, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not ! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. And so he saith also to you now, you desolate Jerusalem in Babel. The time cometh that the children of Christ will go out from you, and it is already, and you shall perish in your whoredom. Behold, your merchants will stand afar off, and say, Behold!
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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