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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.
1sound forth, and sing of God's deeds of wonder, but best of all in the mother tongue, which every one understandeth, and can lift up his heart and soul therein, and so the whole church or congregation of Christ, as one body, exulteth in God, and singeth of the wonders of God, which doth stir up attention and consideration, which in a strange, or foreign language, is but hypocrisy and ostentation, whereby pride will vaunt itself, for it always appeareth very willingly in a seeming divine posture in hypocrisy: for the devil is such an idol, for he mocketh God, his Creator, therewith, and so painteth forth the Antichrist before the face of God, that God should see what a potent lord and prince he is, who can shine as the Majesty of God shineth, and so he maketh such a glistering in mockery to God, and bringeth the souls of men into the glistering [hypocritical show of holiness]. 48. O thou proud and covetous Antichrist, what hast thou done that thou hast thus brought thyself and many thousand souls away from God to
2thy own glistering pomp? How wilt thou be able to subsist, when the bright countenance of God appeareth ? Where will thy poor soul turn away, in thy glistering hypocrisy, when the day of Judgment shall come? Seeing all must pass through the fire, where will your own appearing holiness remain? Will it not remain in the fire? For no soul can reach God, unless it be turned into the will of God, and be regenerated in God, else there is no subsisting in the fire. 49. For the soul must be tried through the fire, and must not be turned in any whither, but into great humility, unto the love and mercy of God, in the humility of Jesus Christ; it must bring Christ's body, and stand in the wisdom of God, that must be its body, else it will not be acknowledged for God's child: for it must be as pure as it was when it was created upon the cross: It must be regenerated upon the cross of Christ, and enter with Christ in the flesh and blood of Christ, through the death of Christ, through the anger of God, into the ninth number, as into the tincture of the eternal divine fire; and there it standeth as a creature before the tenth number, as before the holy Number Three, and humbleth itself before the Number Three, and the Majesty of the Number Three embraceth it as a dear child: So the humility is the food and strength of the Majesty, out of which the brightness goeth forth from eternity to eternity.
350. Where wilt thou, hypocrite, remain with thy glistering lustre, which is generated out of covetousness and pride? O ye children of God, Go out from this whore ! She standeth on the devil's stage, and is carried in a show of triumph, to God's disgrace and contempt. The Great Open Gate of the Antichrist 51 Hearken and see, thou poor soul, we will shew thee the very Antichrist who domineereth over the whole world, whom God hath made known to us that thou mightest see him: for thou hast hitherto accounted him a god; but now his shame must come to light: for he is so secret that none know him, unless they be born of God, so that they apprehend God's essence and will, otherwise he remaineth hidden in every man; for there is none but hath him, and carrieth him in his heart; yea, if one be a child of God, and yet hath not the deep knowledge of God, he hangeth still to him [depends on him] : for the devil hath insinuated himself in the form of an angel into him: Therefore mark what here followeth, for it is the number of the Seventh Seal, and declareth the eternal day.
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.
1sound forth, and sing of God's deeds of wonder, but best of all in the mother tongue, which every one understandeth, and can lift up his heart and soul therein, and so the whole church or congregation of Christ, as one body, exulteth in God, and singeth of the wonders of God, which doth stir up attention and consideration, which in a strange, or foreign language, is but hypocrisy and ostentation, whereby pride will vaunt itself, for it always appeareth very willingly in a seeming divine posture in hypocrisy: for the devil is such an idol, for he mocketh God, his Creator, therewith, and so painteth forth the Antichrist before the face of God, that God should see what a potent lord and prince he is, who can shine as the Majesty of God shineth, and so he maketh such a glistering in mockery to God, and bringeth the souls of men into the glistering [hypocritical show of holiness]. 48. O thou proud and covetous Antichrist, what hast thou done that thou hast thus brought thyself and many thousand souls away from God to
2thy own glistering pomp? How wilt thou be able to subsist, when the bright countenance of God appeareth ? Where will thy poor soul turn away, in thy glistering hypocrisy, when the day of Judgment shall come? Seeing all must pass through the fire, where will your own appearing holiness remain? Will it not remain in the fire? For no soul can reach God, unless it be turned into the will of God, and be regenerated in God, else there is no subsisting in the fire. 49. For the soul must be tried through the fire, and must not be turned in any whither, but into great humility, unto the love and mercy of God, in the humility of Jesus Christ; it must bring Christ's body, and stand in the wisdom of God, that must be its body, else it will not be acknowledged for God's child: for it must be as pure as it was when it was created upon the cross: It must be regenerated upon the cross of Christ, and enter with Christ in the flesh and blood of Christ, through the death of Christ, through the anger of God, into the ninth number, as into the tincture of the eternal divine fire; and there it standeth as a creature before the tenth number, as before the holy Number Three, and humbleth itself before the Number Three, and the Majesty of the Number Three embraceth it as a dear child: So the humility is the food and strength of the Majesty, out of which the brightness goeth forth from eternity to eternity.
350. Where wilt thou, hypocrite, remain with thy glistering lustre, which is generated out of covetousness and pride? O ye children of God, Go out from this whore ! She standeth on the devil's stage, and is carried in a show of triumph, to God's disgrace and contempt. The Great Open Gate of the Antichrist 51 Hearken and see, thou poor soul, we will shew thee the very Antichrist who domineereth over the whole world, whom God hath made known to us that thou mightest see him: for thou hast hitherto accounted him a god; but now his shame must come to light: for he is so secret that none know him, unless they be born of God, so that they apprehend God's essence and will, otherwise he remaineth hidden in every man; for there is none but hath him, and carrieth him in his heart; yea, if one be a child of God, and yet hath not the deep knowledge of God, he hangeth still to him [depends on him] : for the devil hath insinuated himself in the form of an angel into him: Therefore mark what here followeth, for it is the number of the Seventh Seal, and declareth the eternal day.
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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