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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.
1beasts: We will speak of the driver or oppressor, who held us so long captive; and we will speak how we were freed from him: Let us be unanimous, that our mother be not grieved and offended with us. 11. Rejoice ye heavens with us, and let the earth be glad, for the praise of the LORD goeth over all mountains and hills: He openeth the doors for us, that we may go to our mother: Let us rejoice and be glad, for we were born blind, and now we are come to see: Open the gates of the LORD, ye servants of God, that the virgins with their music may go in; for that is the dance wherein we shall rejoice and be glad with the virgin, saith the spirit of the LORD of LORDS. 12. O beloved children of men, even all that have proceeded and been generated from Adam, in every island and country, wheresoever ye dwell, by what name soever ye are called: Mark, The God of heaven and earth, who hath created us all and begotten us out of one body, who giveth us life and breath, who preserveth our body and soul: He calls us all into one love: Ye have gone astray a long while, for ye have followed human inventions and opinions, and the devil hath deceived you, so that ye hate, persecute, and murder one another, and are utter enemies one against another. Open your eyes, and see: Have we not all one and the same breath, and are generated from one and the same soul? We have all of us one God, whom we
2honour and worship; that very one God hath created us all: Moreover, we have one and the same heaven, which is God's, and God dwelleth therein: We shall all meet together at the Last Day who have trusted in God, why therefore do we so long dispute about God and his will? 13. If we lift up our hearts into him, and yield ourselves to him in obedience, then we are all in his will: None can thrust us out of it. We all stand in this life, in a field, and are growing: The stars and the elements are the field wherein we grow: God hath sown us therein: Adam is the first grain that God himself did sow, and out of that grain we all grow, we are all from one seed, we are are all brothers and sisters, [of one body] 14. But the devil hath sown weeds amongst us; he hath sown no man, (for that he cannot do in eternity), but he hath blinded us, and hath sown pride, envy, anger, covetousness, and evil will [or malice'] into our mind, therewith to destroy us, for he grudged us the prerogative to be children of God in the place he was in: He is fallen away from God, through anger, pride, and envy, and hath turned himself away from God, and therefore he will deceive us, that his own kingdom may be great. 15. O dear children, trust him not; for where God soweth his good seed, the devil followeth and soweth weeds amongst it. This you see in the
3doctrine of Moses, and the Prophets, also in Christ's doctrine: They all preached the way of God in one and the same love, and directed us unto the living God, and that we should go out from our evil fleshly lusts, (from lying and falsehood, from unclcanliness, from covetousness, from murder and theft), and enter into a pure chaste humble life in the fear of God, and wholly put our trust in him as his children, and acknowledge him for our Father, and then he will give us rain and blessing to our body and soul, and will after this life take us to himself into his kingdom, where we shall all be eternally freed from our afflictions. This, and no other, is the doctrine of Moses, of the Prophets, and of Christ, that we should love one another, as one [and the same] life, and God in us. 16. But observe what the Antichristian devil hath sown into it: He hath sown pride and selfhonour, with state and pomp into it: He hath set himself in the chair of Moses, and of the Prophets, as also upon the authority of Christ, and hath led us astray, so that we have made a rent and division [or sect] amongst us: He hath erected a Predestination, and of the spirit of God, which hath often shewn itself forth in man with wonders and mighty works, hath gone about to make an envious malice, as if he loved one people, and hated another, as if he chose one generation, and not another; whereby he (who is called the devil's Christ and Satan )
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.
1beasts: We will speak of the driver or oppressor, who held us so long captive; and we will speak how we were freed from him: Let us be unanimous, that our mother be not grieved and offended with us. 11. Rejoice ye heavens with us, and let the earth be glad, for the praise of the LORD goeth over all mountains and hills: He openeth the doors for us, that we may go to our mother: Let us rejoice and be glad, for we were born blind, and now we are come to see: Open the gates of the LORD, ye servants of God, that the virgins with their music may go in; for that is the dance wherein we shall rejoice and be glad with the virgin, saith the spirit of the LORD of LORDS. 12. O beloved children of men, even all that have proceeded and been generated from Adam, in every island and country, wheresoever ye dwell, by what name soever ye are called: Mark, The God of heaven and earth, who hath created us all and begotten us out of one body, who giveth us life and breath, who preserveth our body and soul: He calls us all into one love: Ye have gone astray a long while, for ye have followed human inventions and opinions, and the devil hath deceived you, so that ye hate, persecute, and murder one another, and are utter enemies one against another. Open your eyes, and see: Have we not all one and the same breath, and are generated from one and the same soul? We have all of us one God, whom we
2honour and worship; that very one God hath created us all: Moreover, we have one and the same heaven, which is God's, and God dwelleth therein: We shall all meet together at the Last Day who have trusted in God, why therefore do we so long dispute about God and his will? 13. If we lift up our hearts into him, and yield ourselves to him in obedience, then we are all in his will: None can thrust us out of it. We all stand in this life, in a field, and are growing: The stars and the elements are the field wherein we grow: God hath sown us therein: Adam is the first grain that God himself did sow, and out of that grain we all grow, we are all from one seed, we are are all brothers and sisters, [of one body] 14. But the devil hath sown weeds amongst us; he hath sown no man, (for that he cannot do in eternity), but he hath blinded us, and hath sown pride, envy, anger, covetousness, and evil will [or malice'] into our mind, therewith to destroy us, for he grudged us the prerogative to be children of God in the place he was in: He is fallen away from God, through anger, pride, and envy, and hath turned himself away from God, and therefore he will deceive us, that his own kingdom may be great. 15. O dear children, trust him not; for where God soweth his good seed, the devil followeth and soweth weeds amongst it. This you see in the
3doctrine of Moses, and the Prophets, also in Christ's doctrine: They all preached the way of God in one and the same love, and directed us unto the living God, and that we should go out from our evil fleshly lusts, (from lying and falsehood, from unclcanliness, from covetousness, from murder and theft), and enter into a pure chaste humble life in the fear of God, and wholly put our trust in him as his children, and acknowledge him for our Father, and then he will give us rain and blessing to our body and soul, and will after this life take us to himself into his kingdom, where we shall all be eternally freed from our afflictions. This, and no other, is the doctrine of Moses, of the Prophets, and of Christ, that we should love one another, as one [and the same] life, and God in us. 16. But observe what the Antichristian devil hath sown into it: He hath sown pride and selfhonour, with state and pomp into it: He hath set himself in the chair of Moses, and of the Prophets, as also upon the authority of Christ, and hath led us astray, so that we have made a rent and division [or sect] amongst us: He hath erected a Predestination, and of the spirit of God, which hath often shewn itself forth in man with wonders and mighty works, hath gone about to make an envious malice, as if he loved one people, and hated another, as if he chose one generation, and not another; whereby he (who is called the devil's Christ and Satan )
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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