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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.
130. If God should once open himself, the whole world would be mere sun; for the deep receiveth the splendour of the sun; or else if there were no such thing in the deep as the sun is, the deep could not receive the light; but thus it desireth its like: And thus it is also in heaven: The Son is every where in the Father, and is become man: The total holy Number Three without end and substance, hath manifested itself in an image in substance, and that is Christ, and we are his members: We are God's, if we continue in him; he is our fountain, our light, and we are his stars: He giveth us his body and virtue, and his splendour for [our] light. 31. Thus he feedeth us here upon earth in the Supper, and when we desire it, with the virtue of his body, and with the spirit which proceedeth from that virtue, (for that is the spirit and life of the virtue or power), then we receive the total holy Number Three [or Trinity]: The substantiality hath sulphur, understand the body of Christ, that is the Father, and the sulphur hath the virtue or power; and in the virtue is the light of life as another person, and out of the virtue in the light goeth forth the smell and spirit of the virtue, and is not comprisable or detainable by the virtue, and yet it goeth forth from the virtue, and is the Holy Ghost.
232. Understand us rightly, thus: We receive not in the Supper another creature, with a new soul; No, but we receive on to our soul, the body of Christ, which filleth heaven, and is already [before-hand] the eternal Creature: The soul eateth Christ's flesh, and drinketh his blood, which filleth heaven; and out of that which the soul receiveth and eateth, there groweth a body to the soul, and in that body it is in the hand of God, and can at the end of the world go with that body through the fire of the anger of God, without feeling [of it ] ; and as the fire cannot lay hold on Christ in the Number Three, so not of us either; for the fire receiveth the meekness [or allay] from God's meekness and ours, and becometh in us changed into a rising up of the desire of love, so that our fire and burning in us is a mere love-desire; for it cometh to be a brightness of the Majesty, and thus we are in God, and the children of God, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah. [Concerning the Baptism.] 33. And after such a manner is it with the baptism of children, the soul consisting in two things, viz. in fire and water, for the blood hath two forms, viz. sulphur and water: Sulphur giveth tincture and life, for it giveth light, which is the burning out from the sulphur, and that is life. The Phur is fire, and the Sul is light, and out of
3the light goeth the meekness, which draweth the Phur to it again, and quencheth its fierceness therewith, and that attracting maketh the meekness substantial, which is water; and Mercury maketh therein the great life, viz. a life in the water, and the heavenly Luna breedeth it, that it turneth to a liquor and to blood, wherein is the centre of nature with seven forms. 34. Now observe, When the seed to the child is sown, then the tincture of the fire, viz. the man's tincture, is sown into the tincture of Venus, out of which proceedeth a Twofold Life, viz. a fire-life of the soul, and in Venus a water-life of the spirit, [or a water-spirit life], which spring up together, and become a man. And thus now both tinctures in Adam are corrupted. 35. The tincture of the soul was captivated by the eternal anger of God, wherein the devil sat, and the tincture of the spirit was captivated by the Spiritus Majoris Mundi [of the macrocosmos], the spirit of the great world, the spirit of this world, and they had both remained captivated by the devil, if the Verbum Domini, the Word of the Lord, which at length became flesh, had not interposed in the midst [as a mediator] . 36. Therefore hath God, through Christ, instituted Two Testaments, one [testament] (for little children) in the Holy Ghost, who performeth the
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.
130. If God should once open himself, the whole world would be mere sun; for the deep receiveth the splendour of the sun; or else if there were no such thing in the deep as the sun is, the deep could not receive the light; but thus it desireth its like: And thus it is also in heaven: The Son is every where in the Father, and is become man: The total holy Number Three without end and substance, hath manifested itself in an image in substance, and that is Christ, and we are his members: We are God's, if we continue in him; he is our fountain, our light, and we are his stars: He giveth us his body and virtue, and his splendour for [our] light. 31. Thus he feedeth us here upon earth in the Supper, and when we desire it, with the virtue of his body, and with the spirit which proceedeth from that virtue, (for that is the spirit and life of the virtue or power), then we receive the total holy Number Three [or Trinity]: The substantiality hath sulphur, understand the body of Christ, that is the Father, and the sulphur hath the virtue or power; and in the virtue is the light of life as another person, and out of the virtue in the light goeth forth the smell and spirit of the virtue, and is not comprisable or detainable by the virtue, and yet it goeth forth from the virtue, and is the Holy Ghost.
232. Understand us rightly, thus: We receive not in the Supper another creature, with a new soul; No, but we receive on to our soul, the body of Christ, which filleth heaven, and is already [before-hand] the eternal Creature: The soul eateth Christ's flesh, and drinketh his blood, which filleth heaven; and out of that which the soul receiveth and eateth, there groweth a body to the soul, and in that body it is in the hand of God, and can at the end of the world go with that body through the fire of the anger of God, without feeling [of it ] ; and as the fire cannot lay hold on Christ in the Number Three, so not of us either; for the fire receiveth the meekness [or allay] from God's meekness and ours, and becometh in us changed into a rising up of the desire of love, so that our fire and burning in us is a mere love-desire; for it cometh to be a brightness of the Majesty, and thus we are in God, and the children of God, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah. [Concerning the Baptism.] 33. And after such a manner is it with the baptism of children, the soul consisting in two things, viz. in fire and water, for the blood hath two forms, viz. sulphur and water: Sulphur giveth tincture and life, for it giveth light, which is the burning out from the sulphur, and that is life. The Phur is fire, and the Sul is light, and out of
3the light goeth the meekness, which draweth the Phur to it again, and quencheth its fierceness therewith, and that attracting maketh the meekness substantial, which is water; and Mercury maketh therein the great life, viz. a life in the water, and the heavenly Luna breedeth it, that it turneth to a liquor and to blood, wherein is the centre of nature with seven forms. 34. Now observe, When the seed to the child is sown, then the tincture of the fire, viz. the man's tincture, is sown into the tincture of Venus, out of which proceedeth a Twofold Life, viz. a fire-life of the soul, and in Venus a water-life of the spirit, [or a water-spirit life], which spring up together, and become a man. And thus now both tinctures in Adam are corrupted. 35. The tincture of the soul was captivated by the eternal anger of God, wherein the devil sat, and the tincture of the spirit was captivated by the Spiritus Majoris Mundi [of the macrocosmos], the spirit of the great world, the spirit of this world, and they had both remained captivated by the devil, if the Verbum Domini, the Word of the Lord, which at length became flesh, had not interposed in the midst [as a mediator] . 36. Therefore hath God, through Christ, instituted Two Testaments, one [testament] (for little children) in the Holy Ghost, who performeth the
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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