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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.
1world shall pass again into the ether), God will awaken the fire in the centre, which is the eternal [fire], and will purge this floor: Understand, it is the soul's fire: and so then if the soul have been turned into the will of God, then the Holy Ghost, with the divine tincture, shall burn forth from the soul, and the tincture of the soul shall be taken into the Majesty of God; which the soul attracteth again into itself, and that will be its refreshing and quenching, and so it will be able to subsist in the fire: But that soul which is turned back into this world, and that the substance of this world cometh to be in the fire, then the soul will be without God, for in the abyss of this world is the hellish fire, and into that it must go, and there eat what it had cooked here: for every one's works follow him.
229. And then they will say to the wise virgins; O give us some of your oil: but the wise virgins will say; O no, lest we should want as well as you, and perish with you: Go to the merchants of this world, to the sophisters, and buy oil for yourselves. But before they shall bethink themselves how the oil is to be bought, and where it is to be had, the gates of heaven and hell shall be shut: and upon that followeth the eternity, and this being [of this created world] passeth away. Consider this, for there is no dallying with the spirit of this revelation: It concerneth body and soul: he that will see, let him see, but he that will not, yet he is warned. The Gates of the Great Misery and Lamentation, [shewing] How the Image in the Mother's Womb, while it is yet a Sulphur, [viz. an inanimate Lump or Mass], is destroyed: /infected or poisoned] so that many an Image, according to the spirit, is a Beast, also a Toad, and a Serpent; which afterwards appeareth plain enough by its Condition, Will, and Conversation; and if it should not be helped again by God in Christ, so that it is new-born again, it must remain so Eternally in its Figure.
330. Dear children in Christ, our purpose in revealing this, is not thereby to reproach mankind: It is the very truth, we have highly known it: Moreover, Christ, the mouth of truth itself, saith so, who calleth Herod a fox, and the Pharisees a generation of vipers and serpents: and the Scripture here and there calleth the tyrants, lions, bears, wolves, and cruel beasts; and the Revelation of John, also Daniel, and the other Prophets, have deciphered the potent rulers of this world, by evil, fierce, and cruel beasts; truly they have not meant thereby the image of God; for that were not right, that God should compare his image, which is angelical, to such abominable beasts: and yet he is the truth itself, and out of his mouth proceedeth no deceit or falsehood, nor any untruth: and seeing he hath called the rulers of this world so, therefore it is [spoken] concerning their governments; for they raise wars, murders, and all mischief in their dominions: and are those devouring wolves, lions, bears, foxes, vipers, and serpents; for they appear so in the presence of God: though outwardly they have the image of man, yet the spirit of their soul is such a beast: and upon that followeth God's Predestination [Election] : although God willeth that all men should be helped [or saved], yet he knoweth very well who are desirous and capable of any help.
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.
1world shall pass again into the ether), God will awaken the fire in the centre, which is the eternal [fire], and will purge this floor: Understand, it is the soul's fire: and so then if the soul have been turned into the will of God, then the Holy Ghost, with the divine tincture, shall burn forth from the soul, and the tincture of the soul shall be taken into the Majesty of God; which the soul attracteth again into itself, and that will be its refreshing and quenching, and so it will be able to subsist in the fire: But that soul which is turned back into this world, and that the substance of this world cometh to be in the fire, then the soul will be without God, for in the abyss of this world is the hellish fire, and into that it must go, and there eat what it had cooked here: for every one's works follow him.
229. And then they will say to the wise virgins; O give us some of your oil: but the wise virgins will say; O no, lest we should want as well as you, and perish with you: Go to the merchants of this world, to the sophisters, and buy oil for yourselves. But before they shall bethink themselves how the oil is to be bought, and where it is to be had, the gates of heaven and hell shall be shut: and upon that followeth the eternity, and this being [of this created world] passeth away. Consider this, for there is no dallying with the spirit of this revelation: It concerneth body and soul: he that will see, let him see, but he that will not, yet he is warned. The Gates of the Great Misery and Lamentation, [shewing] How the Image in the Mother's Womb, while it is yet a Sulphur, [viz. an inanimate Lump or Mass], is destroyed: /infected or poisoned] so that many an Image, according to the spirit, is a Beast, also a Toad, and a Serpent; which afterwards appeareth plain enough by its Condition, Will, and Conversation; and if it should not be helped again by God in Christ, so that it is new-born again, it must remain so Eternally in its Figure.
330. Dear children in Christ, our purpose in revealing this, is not thereby to reproach mankind: It is the very truth, we have highly known it: Moreover, Christ, the mouth of truth itself, saith so, who calleth Herod a fox, and the Pharisees a generation of vipers and serpents: and the Scripture here and there calleth the tyrants, lions, bears, wolves, and cruel beasts; and the Revelation of John, also Daniel, and the other Prophets, have deciphered the potent rulers of this world, by evil, fierce, and cruel beasts; truly they have not meant thereby the image of God; for that were not right, that God should compare his image, which is angelical, to such abominable beasts: and yet he is the truth itself, and out of his mouth proceedeth no deceit or falsehood, nor any untruth: and seeing he hath called the rulers of this world so, therefore it is [spoken] concerning their governments; for they raise wars, murders, and all mischief in their dominions: and are those devouring wolves, lions, bears, foxes, vipers, and serpents; for they appear so in the presence of God: though outwardly they have the image of man, yet the spirit of their soul is such a beast: and upon that followeth God's Predestination [Election] : although God willeth that all men should be helped [or saved], yet he knoweth very well who are desirous and capable of any help.
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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