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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.
1tincture of the fire, and also the spirit of the tincture of the water, viz. of Venus: He loved himself, and through himself [he loved] God: he could generate virgin-like (out of his will), out of his essences, without pain, without tearing or dividing [his body] such a man as himself was; for he had all three centres in him: and as the centre of the eternal nature was not torn nor divided, when the spirit of God conceived his soul upon the cross, and brought it into the wisdom; also as the spirit of this world was not torn nor divided, when the spirit of God breathed into him the spirit of this world, as an outward life, so he also was not torn or divided: for he had a body that could go through trees and stones: If he had instantly gone on in the will of God, then had he brought HIM [viz. God], with him into the great wonders.
221. The noble Philosopher's Stone was as easy to be found by him as any other stone, and then he might have adorned the outward life with gold, silver, and precious stones, jewels and pearls, all to his own joy, and to [the manifestation of] God's deeds of wonder: He had not needed bestial clothing; for he went naked, yet clothed with the heavenly tincture: He had no such members as he might be ashamed of, as his Fall demonstrateth. This was his Fall: His soul imagined after the outward fire of the out-birth, after the spirit of this world, and turned himself away from God, and desired to live in his own property [or self], and to be lord; his will turned itself out from God's will, and was disobedient to God, and desired the earthly fruit, out of the earthly essences, and caused God to suffer the tree of temptation to grow, that he might try what his image would do; and he forbad him that tree.
322. But his lust was instantly gone after the earthly essences, good and evil, which the devil did eagerly help forward, (as he doeth still), till Adam was overcome, and went forth from the will of God, and suffered himself to be wholly captivated by the spirit of this world; and then all was done with him: The heavenly image became earthly: The soul became captivated in the fire of God's anger: It had the heavenly tincture no more, and could not eat of the Verbum Domini any more; it had turned itself away into the spirit of this world, and was gone out from God's will into the lust of this world; and so also, at the instant of the Fall, the spirit of this world made the body wholly earthly: The paradise, with all heavenly knowledge, retired into itself [and so departed from Adam], and the dear virgin of wisdom remained standing in grief, till the Word of the Lord came again, and looked upon her [the noble Sophia] again with the promise of the seed of the woman, and then she passed into the light of life, and now warneth men of their ungodly ways; concerning which we have mentioned at large in our former writing, and also concerning his wife; therefore we here forbear to write any further of it, and only further shew you our propagation as to body and soul.
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.
1tincture of the fire, and also the spirit of the tincture of the water, viz. of Venus: He loved himself, and through himself [he loved] God: he could generate virgin-like (out of his will), out of his essences, without pain, without tearing or dividing [his body] such a man as himself was; for he had all three centres in him: and as the centre of the eternal nature was not torn nor divided, when the spirit of God conceived his soul upon the cross, and brought it into the wisdom; also as the spirit of this world was not torn nor divided, when the spirit of God breathed into him the spirit of this world, as an outward life, so he also was not torn or divided: for he had a body that could go through trees and stones: If he had instantly gone on in the will of God, then had he brought HIM [viz. God], with him into the great wonders.
221. The noble Philosopher's Stone was as easy to be found by him as any other stone, and then he might have adorned the outward life with gold, silver, and precious stones, jewels and pearls, all to his own joy, and to [the manifestation of] God's deeds of wonder: He had not needed bestial clothing; for he went naked, yet clothed with the heavenly tincture: He had no such members as he might be ashamed of, as his Fall demonstrateth. This was his Fall: His soul imagined after the outward fire of the out-birth, after the spirit of this world, and turned himself away from God, and desired to live in his own property [or self], and to be lord; his will turned itself out from God's will, and was disobedient to God, and desired the earthly fruit, out of the earthly essences, and caused God to suffer the tree of temptation to grow, that he might try what his image would do; and he forbad him that tree.
322. But his lust was instantly gone after the earthly essences, good and evil, which the devil did eagerly help forward, (as he doeth still), till Adam was overcome, and went forth from the will of God, and suffered himself to be wholly captivated by the spirit of this world; and then all was done with him: The heavenly image became earthly: The soul became captivated in the fire of God's anger: It had the heavenly tincture no more, and could not eat of the Verbum Domini any more; it had turned itself away into the spirit of this world, and was gone out from God's will into the lust of this world; and so also, at the instant of the Fall, the spirit of this world made the body wholly earthly: The paradise, with all heavenly knowledge, retired into itself [and so departed from Adam], and the dear virgin of wisdom remained standing in grief, till the Word of the Lord came again, and looked upon her [the noble Sophia] again with the promise of the seed of the woman, and then she passed into the light of life, and now warneth men of their ungodly ways; concerning which we have mentioned at large in our former writing, and also concerning his wife; therefore we here forbear to write any further of it, and only further shew you our propagation as to body and soul.
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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