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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.
1eternal nature there is an anguishing source [or property]; for the band of life stands in the fire; but when that fire is inspired and captivated by the divine love, then the life in itself goeth forwards forth into another source [or property] ; for another Principle is broken open for it, wherein it liveth; and that life is in God; even as God dwelleth in himself, and yet is really all himself, all is come from his nature: yet you must understand not as from the eternal nature, only the souls and the angelical spirits [are so] ; but from his created [creaturely] will, which hath a beginning, viz. from the external; and therefore every thing of this [outward] world is transitory. And herein we find the great and terrible Fall of our soul in our first parents, that it is entered into the spirit of this world, into a strange lodging, and hath forsaken the divine light, wherein it was an angel and child of God; therefore it must go forth again out of the spirit of the stars and elements, and [pass] in a new birth, into the life of God.
217. But because that was not possible for the soul to do, therefore the life of God came to us, out of love and grace, into the flesh, and took our human soul again in it into the divine life in the power of the light,' that we might here be able to press into the same life to God in a new birth. For, as we went wholly with the soul of Adam out from the life of God (for the children of Adam have inherited [all] from their parents' soul, being sprung wholly [from them] as from a tree), so also
3hath the life of God in Christ regenerated us again, so that we can enter again, in the life of Christ, into the life of God. And thus now our soul standeth in the band of the eternal original, infected with the spirit of this world, and captivated by the wrath of the original, in the life of the eternal fire, viz. in the eternal nature; therefore we must, every one of us by ourselves, press with our soul in the life of Christ, to God, into the New Regeneration in the life and spirit of Christ: and here no hypocrisy, appearing holiness, or any meritorious works, will avail any thing, for the poor soul can no other way be helped, except it enter into itself (in a new created will) with steadfast earnest purpose and resolution, into the life of Christ; and then it will be received, with very great glory [honour] by God and his children, in the second Principle; and the noble precious treasure (viz. the light of the eternal life) will be given to it, which enlighteneth the source [or property] of the soul in the first Principle, wherein it standeth substantially with its essences for ever, and turneth the anguish into love, and the rising and burning own property into an humble lovely mirth in meek joy.
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.
1eternal nature there is an anguishing source [or property]; for the band of life stands in the fire; but when that fire is inspired and captivated by the divine love, then the life in itself goeth forwards forth into another source [or property] ; for another Principle is broken open for it, wherein it liveth; and that life is in God; even as God dwelleth in himself, and yet is really all himself, all is come from his nature: yet you must understand not as from the eternal nature, only the souls and the angelical spirits [are so] ; but from his created [creaturely] will, which hath a beginning, viz. from the external; and therefore every thing of this [outward] world is transitory. And herein we find the great and terrible Fall of our soul in our first parents, that it is entered into the spirit of this world, into a strange lodging, and hath forsaken the divine light, wherein it was an angel and child of God; therefore it must go forth again out of the spirit of the stars and elements, and [pass] in a new birth, into the life of God.
217. But because that was not possible for the soul to do, therefore the life of God came to us, out of love and grace, into the flesh, and took our human soul again in it into the divine life in the power of the light,' that we might here be able to press into the same life to God in a new birth. For, as we went wholly with the soul of Adam out from the life of God (for the children of Adam have inherited [all] from their parents' soul, being sprung wholly [from them] as from a tree), so also
3hath the life of God in Christ regenerated us again, so that we can enter again, in the life of Christ, into the life of God. And thus now our soul standeth in the band of the eternal original, infected with the spirit of this world, and captivated by the wrath of the original, in the life of the eternal fire, viz. in the eternal nature; therefore we must, every one of us by ourselves, press with our soul in the life of Christ, to God, into the New Regeneration in the life and spirit of Christ: and here no hypocrisy, appearing holiness, or any meritorious works, will avail any thing, for the poor soul can no other way be helped, except it enter into itself (in a new created will) with steadfast earnest purpose and resolution, into the life of Christ; and then it will be received, with very great glory [honour] by God and his children, in the second Principle; and the noble precious treasure (viz. the light of the eternal life) will be given to it, which enlighteneth the source [or property] of the soul in the first Principle, wherein it standeth substantially with its essences for ever, and turneth the anguish into love, and the rising and burning own property into an humble lovely mirth in meek joy.
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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