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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.
123. We have formerly mentioned, how the provocation between both kinds, masculine and feminine, to copulate, existeth; viz. out of two governments [or dominions] of one [only] substance [being or essence]: for when Adam could not subsist, then God let a sleep fall upon him, and took the one dominion, viz. the tincture of the spirit, from him, and left him [the other, viz.] the tincture of the soul, and framed a woman out of him: But that she might have a soul also, God took a rib from his body, with his flesh and blood, and comprised the soul therein, but without power of further propagation, [of itself], for her soul remained in Venus, being desirous of the man's soul, even as the lower dominion of the three planets under the sun, which make spirit and flesh, desire the three uppermost for their life, as is before mentioned: so also is the dominion in the man and the woman: for the man hath the tincture of the fire wherein the soul consisteth, in his seed; and the woman hath in her the tincture of the spirit of this world, viz. of Venus, naturally so called, in her seed and matrix. If it were not for the scoffers, I could exactly demonstrate it in the members of their copulation: You would indeed wonder rightly why each is as it is: It shall be set down in a paper by itself, for there is nothing without cause. Nature hath its own mouth, if it desireth to have any thing, it maketh itself a mouth fit for it, and giveth a form to that
2thing which it desireth, that it may fit the mouth, according as nature liketh best. Observe this. 24. Now, when the seed is sown, then not only the sower soweth, but the ground also affordeth its essences [or virtue] to it: The man soweth soul, and the woman soweth spirit, and both of them afford body, and not the one without the other: The tincture of the fire hath indeed a body, but it became very small in this corruption: and therefore the nature of the water (in Venus) must give a soft spirit to it; for the man and the woman are one body, and St Paul saith, If the man have an unbelieving woman [to his wife], and the woman have an unbelieving man [to her husband], let not the one forsake the other: for the man knoweth not whether he shall save the woman, or the woman the man. Even as Adam saved his [wife] Eve, who first ate the bit [of the forbidden fruit], for she was a part of the life, out of his flesh and blood: and the same spirit and the same soul which Adam had, and which Eve got from Adam, is now also in us, in both kinds [or sexes]. 25. Therefore ground your judgment thus: When the man soweth his seed, he soweth flesh and blood, and the noble tincture of the soul; and the woman receiveth that into her matrix, and instantly affordeth to the man's seed her tincture of Venus, wherein standeth the elementary spirit, and that assumeth Saturn, and bringeth it round on the wheel about to Sol, and there the natural life, with
3the life of the soul, is disclosed; for Saturn giveth it to the Moon, which breedeth it, and in a circuit of all the stars, maketh essences therein: and then the essences exist, and wind themselves about to Mars, which striketh up the fire; and there count the signs in the heavens, how many hours each of them hath, and double that with two kingdoms, and then you have the ground of the incarnation [or becoming man], and what is done every hour with the sulphur, [viz. with the substance which cometh to be man], for man hath yielded himself over to the spirit of this world, and is fallen home to it: and so now that spirit maketh an earthly elementary child, according to the stars and their dominion. 26. If God had not become man [or been incarnate], we had remained beasts, according to the body, and according to the soul, devils: and if we go not forth out of the house of our sins, we are such. 2 7. And therefore God hath made his covenant with us in Christ, that we should be new born again in Christ: for he hath given up his life into death for us, and hath brought our soul again quite through the eternal fire, and turned it about, that so we may see into the tenth number again. 28. Christ saith [through the Apostle Paul], All shall be tried by the Jire: let every one have a care that his works burn not, for so he shall suffer loss. And know this, that at the end, (when this
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.
123. We have formerly mentioned, how the provocation between both kinds, masculine and feminine, to copulate, existeth; viz. out of two governments [or dominions] of one [only] substance [being or essence]: for when Adam could not subsist, then God let a sleep fall upon him, and took the one dominion, viz. the tincture of the spirit, from him, and left him [the other, viz.] the tincture of the soul, and framed a woman out of him: But that she might have a soul also, God took a rib from his body, with his flesh and blood, and comprised the soul therein, but without power of further propagation, [of itself], for her soul remained in Venus, being desirous of the man's soul, even as the lower dominion of the three planets under the sun, which make spirit and flesh, desire the three uppermost for their life, as is before mentioned: so also is the dominion in the man and the woman: for the man hath the tincture of the fire wherein the soul consisteth, in his seed; and the woman hath in her the tincture of the spirit of this world, viz. of Venus, naturally so called, in her seed and matrix. If it were not for the scoffers, I could exactly demonstrate it in the members of their copulation: You would indeed wonder rightly why each is as it is: It shall be set down in a paper by itself, for there is nothing without cause. Nature hath its own mouth, if it desireth to have any thing, it maketh itself a mouth fit for it, and giveth a form to that
2thing which it desireth, that it may fit the mouth, according as nature liketh best. Observe this. 24. Now, when the seed is sown, then not only the sower soweth, but the ground also affordeth its essences [or virtue] to it: The man soweth soul, and the woman soweth spirit, and both of them afford body, and not the one without the other: The tincture of the fire hath indeed a body, but it became very small in this corruption: and therefore the nature of the water (in Venus) must give a soft spirit to it; for the man and the woman are one body, and St Paul saith, If the man have an unbelieving woman [to his wife], and the woman have an unbelieving man [to her husband], let not the one forsake the other: for the man knoweth not whether he shall save the woman, or the woman the man. Even as Adam saved his [wife] Eve, who first ate the bit [of the forbidden fruit], for she was a part of the life, out of his flesh and blood: and the same spirit and the same soul which Adam had, and which Eve got from Adam, is now also in us, in both kinds [or sexes]. 25. Therefore ground your judgment thus: When the man soweth his seed, he soweth flesh and blood, and the noble tincture of the soul; and the woman receiveth that into her matrix, and instantly affordeth to the man's seed her tincture of Venus, wherein standeth the elementary spirit, and that assumeth Saturn, and bringeth it round on the wheel about to Sol, and there the natural life, with
3the life of the soul, is disclosed; for Saturn giveth it to the Moon, which breedeth it, and in a circuit of all the stars, maketh essences therein: and then the essences exist, and wind themselves about to Mars, which striketh up the fire; and there count the signs in the heavens, how many hours each of them hath, and double that with two kingdoms, and then you have the ground of the incarnation [or becoming man], and what is done every hour with the sulphur, [viz. with the substance which cometh to be man], for man hath yielded himself over to the spirit of this world, and is fallen home to it: and so now that spirit maketh an earthly elementary child, according to the stars and their dominion. 26. If God had not become man [or been incarnate], we had remained beasts, according to the body, and according to the soul, devils: and if we go not forth out of the house of our sins, we are such. 2 7. And therefore God hath made his covenant with us in Christ, that we should be new born again in Christ: for he hath given up his life into death for us, and hath brought our soul again quite through the eternal fire, and turned it about, that so we may see into the tenth number again. 28. Christ saith [through the Apostle Paul], All shall be tried by the Jire: let every one have a care that his works burn not, for so he shall suffer loss. And know this, that at the end, (when this
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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