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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.
186. Neither trouble yourself with taking care where the best place is for him to open it in, [whether in a cloister, a college, a wilderness; in this or that office, ministry, or opinion] for, as the sun riseth in the east, and shineth to the west, so Christ shineth in every corner and chink of his Incarnation, or being man, even to eternity: seek not after one place more than after another, he is every where; for where the carcase is, thither the eagles gather together: Christ is every where, and his children can come to him every where, and when we enter into Christ, then we are with our carcase, and satiate ourselves with his flesh, and drink of his blood; for he said, My flesh is the true food, and my blood is the true drink, they that eat of my flesh and drink of my blood continue in Me, and I in them. Also, [he saith], Father, I will that those whom thou hast given me, may be where I am; they were thine, and thou hast given them unto me, and I give them the eternal life; and I will raise them up at the Last Day: if you continue in me, then my words continue in you.
287. Now therefore, when you see that the world contendeth about the kingdom of Christ, then know that they have lost the keys, the Mysterium Magnum, and are not in Christ, for there is no contention in Christ, but love and humility, and a desire to walk before his neighbour in righteousness; wheresoever we are, there we are in Christ: Whensoever we meet together, we should all bring his will with us into the congregation, viz. the desire of Christ; and when we desire him, we receive him, and become one body in him: He feedeth us with his body and blood: When we use his testaments, with the Last Supper, then he feedeth us with his flesh, and giveth us his blood to drink, he baptizeth us with the baptism, to be one body in him: Why then are we so long a- searching? for as the sunshine filleth the whole world, so doth the body and blood of Christ also: His substance is the eternity, where there is no space nor place: He is shut up in nothing, for he is in the Father, and the Father is in him, and the Holy Ghost goeth forth from the Father and the Son: Now, every being [or all whatsoever is brought into a being] is created out of the Father, and the Father is in all [things], and upholdeth and preserveth all [things], he giveth to all things life and being: And the Son is in the Father, and giveth to all things virtue and light: He is our light; without him we know not God: How can we then speak rightly of him? If we will speak rightly of him, we must speak from his spirit, for that testifieth of God; but if we speak from art
3and history, we speak from ourselves, and not from God, and so we are thieves and murderers, and not shepherds of Christ: A thief cometh but to rob and steal, and so the disputers come but in their own name only, in that they desire to have great respect, and many rich friends; and such cry out, Here is Christ! and there are heretics ! 88. Dear children of Christ, stop your ears from these blaspheming wolves, for they scandalize not only one another, but the congregation of Christ, which is every where, in all countries where there are repenting men, who turn from their sins unto God: They are in Christ, though they be Turks: There is no respect of persons or of names and opinions with God: he seeketh the abyss [or bottom] of the heart. 89. Antichrist is the cause of the Turks falling into peculiar opinions of their own; for there was no end in controversies and disputations, which was a stumbling-block of ofFence to the Asians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Moors, Grecians, and Africans: The Indians lead a more divine life, in their plain simplicity, than Antichrist; though indeed not all of them; yet nevertheless there are many customs among them that are more pious than the pride of the whore. 90. The whore hindereth the kingdom of Christ, so that all people are scandalized and stumble at it, and say, How can those be God's people, who are
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.
186. Neither trouble yourself with taking care where the best place is for him to open it in, [whether in a cloister, a college, a wilderness; in this or that office, ministry, or opinion] for, as the sun riseth in the east, and shineth to the west, so Christ shineth in every corner and chink of his Incarnation, or being man, even to eternity: seek not after one place more than after another, he is every where; for where the carcase is, thither the eagles gather together: Christ is every where, and his children can come to him every where, and when we enter into Christ, then we are with our carcase, and satiate ourselves with his flesh, and drink of his blood; for he said, My flesh is the true food, and my blood is the true drink, they that eat of my flesh and drink of my blood continue in Me, and I in them. Also, [he saith], Father, I will that those whom thou hast given me, may be where I am; they were thine, and thou hast given them unto me, and I give them the eternal life; and I will raise them up at the Last Day: if you continue in me, then my words continue in you.
287. Now therefore, when you see that the world contendeth about the kingdom of Christ, then know that they have lost the keys, the Mysterium Magnum, and are not in Christ, for there is no contention in Christ, but love and humility, and a desire to walk before his neighbour in righteousness; wheresoever we are, there we are in Christ: Whensoever we meet together, we should all bring his will with us into the congregation, viz. the desire of Christ; and when we desire him, we receive him, and become one body in him: He feedeth us with his body and blood: When we use his testaments, with the Last Supper, then he feedeth us with his flesh, and giveth us his blood to drink, he baptizeth us with the baptism, to be one body in him: Why then are we so long a- searching? for as the sunshine filleth the whole world, so doth the body and blood of Christ also: His substance is the eternity, where there is no space nor place: He is shut up in nothing, for he is in the Father, and the Father is in him, and the Holy Ghost goeth forth from the Father and the Son: Now, every being [or all whatsoever is brought into a being] is created out of the Father, and the Father is in all [things], and upholdeth and preserveth all [things], he giveth to all things life and being: And the Son is in the Father, and giveth to all things virtue and light: He is our light; without him we know not God: How can we then speak rightly of him? If we will speak rightly of him, we must speak from his spirit, for that testifieth of God; but if we speak from art
3and history, we speak from ourselves, and not from God, and so we are thieves and murderers, and not shepherds of Christ: A thief cometh but to rob and steal, and so the disputers come but in their own name only, in that they desire to have great respect, and many rich friends; and such cry out, Here is Christ! and there are heretics ! 88. Dear children of Christ, stop your ears from these blaspheming wolves, for they scandalize not only one another, but the congregation of Christ, which is every where, in all countries where there are repenting men, who turn from their sins unto God: They are in Christ, though they be Turks: There is no respect of persons or of names and opinions with God: he seeketh the abyss [or bottom] of the heart. 89. Antichrist is the cause of the Turks falling into peculiar opinions of their own; for there was no end in controversies and disputations, which was a stumbling-block of ofFence to the Asians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Moors, Grecians, and Africans: The Indians lead a more divine life, in their plain simplicity, than Antichrist; though indeed not all of them; yet nevertheless there are many customs among them that are more pious than the pride of the whore. 90. The whore hindereth the kingdom of Christ, so that all people are scandalized and stumble at it, and say, How can those be God's people, who are
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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