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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.
1sitteth only in honour and voluptuousness. He hath raised wars among the people, so that people are at variance, and set up opinions, and have stirred up the anger of God, for they are gone away from God with their opinions, and so the anger of God hath ruled over them, and oftentimes destroyed them; for that which hath no good in it, God will never endure it in his country, but giveth it up to the anger, though indeed itself runneth headlong into it, and whetteth the sword, so that one people devoureth another: From the beginning of the world to this time, all contentions, disputations and wars, as also envy and malice, have risen from Antichrist, who will be honoured as a god in the form of an angel, and the devil dwelleth in him.
217. Which Antichrist is plainly to be discerned by Cain and Abel, in that Cain slew his brother for faith [and religion's] sake, for Abel had set his heart upon God, and had committed himself to God, which [whom] God loved, and accepted his sacrifice; and Cain had set his heart upon this world, and would be a lord upon earth, and his mouth gave God good words, but his heart stuck fast in an earthly conceit [and opinion] : He loved the spirit of the Mammon of this world, and the devil slipt into it, and so his sacrifice was not acceptable to God, but the smoke fell down to the earth, and the devil accepted his sacrifice, and so he slew his brother by the devil's instigation, and in his false conceit and opinion: He desired the glory, honour, and power of this world, and Abel desired the love and grace of God.
318. Thus, dear people, all over the earth, ye see that ye are all of one flesh, but that you have divided yourselves one from another, which the devil in the Antichrist hath brought to pass: Your fear of God hath many times been great, and ye have done great honour and reverence to men, even from a good meaning out of your love, as thankful people towards the government of the Holy Ghost: But because ye have given such honour to men as belongeth to God, (though God was contented, so long as they continued in the love of God in humility), therefore they are fallen off from what they were, into lust after temporal honour, and have fallen into a lust to domineer with cunning and deceit, over your goods and souls, and are become a snare unto you; for the Antichristian devil is slipt into them, and the spirit of God is departed from them, and they have no more spoken from the spirit of God, but from their pride and art: Strange languages must do the work, and must be the bringers forth of the Mysterium Magnum. 19. But behold, dear brethren, how very thievishly they have dealt with you, they have set themselves up over the earth, and have drawn to themselves all power, might, and honour, and ascribe all authority to themselves, and have blinded you with flattering hypocrisy, and have
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.
1sitteth only in honour and voluptuousness. He hath raised wars among the people, so that people are at variance, and set up opinions, and have stirred up the anger of God, for they are gone away from God with their opinions, and so the anger of God hath ruled over them, and oftentimes destroyed them; for that which hath no good in it, God will never endure it in his country, but giveth it up to the anger, though indeed itself runneth headlong into it, and whetteth the sword, so that one people devoureth another: From the beginning of the world to this time, all contentions, disputations and wars, as also envy and malice, have risen from Antichrist, who will be honoured as a god in the form of an angel, and the devil dwelleth in him.
217. Which Antichrist is plainly to be discerned by Cain and Abel, in that Cain slew his brother for faith [and religion's] sake, for Abel had set his heart upon God, and had committed himself to God, which [whom] God loved, and accepted his sacrifice; and Cain had set his heart upon this world, and would be a lord upon earth, and his mouth gave God good words, but his heart stuck fast in an earthly conceit [and opinion] : He loved the spirit of the Mammon of this world, and the devil slipt into it, and so his sacrifice was not acceptable to God, but the smoke fell down to the earth, and the devil accepted his sacrifice, and so he slew his brother by the devil's instigation, and in his false conceit and opinion: He desired the glory, honour, and power of this world, and Abel desired the love and grace of God.
318. Thus, dear people, all over the earth, ye see that ye are all of one flesh, but that you have divided yourselves one from another, which the devil in the Antichrist hath brought to pass: Your fear of God hath many times been great, and ye have done great honour and reverence to men, even from a good meaning out of your love, as thankful people towards the government of the Holy Ghost: But because ye have given such honour to men as belongeth to God, (though God was contented, so long as they continued in the love of God in humility), therefore they are fallen off from what they were, into lust after temporal honour, and have fallen into a lust to domineer with cunning and deceit, over your goods and souls, and are become a snare unto you; for the Antichristian devil is slipt into them, and the spirit of God is departed from them, and they have no more spoken from the spirit of God, but from their pride and art: Strange languages must do the work, and must be the bringers forth of the Mysterium Magnum. 19. But behold, dear brethren, how very thievishly they have dealt with you, they have set themselves up over the earth, and have drawn to themselves all power, might, and honour, and ascribe all authority to themselves, and have blinded you with flattering hypocrisy, and have
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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