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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.
1remedy or help. Pray learn divine wisdom; and learn to know what God is; and do not imagine or set any image of any thing before you, thinking God to be an image any way but in Christ: We live and are in God, we are of his [essence or] substance [or being] : We have heaven and hell in ourselves. What we make of ourselves, that we are: If we make of ourselves an angel in the light and love of God in Christ, we are so; but if we make of ourselves a fierce, angry, false and wicked, haughty, flying devil, which flieth aloft above all love and meekness, in mere covetousness, greedy hunger and thirst, then also we are so; for after this life, it is otherwise with us there than here; what the soul here embraceth, that it hath there; and so, though the outward breaketh in death, yet the will retaineth that embraced thing in its source [or property,] and that is its sustenance; but how that will subsist before the paradisical source and dominion of God, and before his angels, you yourself may consider. We would have it faithfully set before you [for a warning], as it is given to us [for that purpose] . THE FIFTEENTH CHAPTER Of the mixed World, and its wickedness, as it now standeth, and as it exerciseth its Dominion at present. A Glass wherein Every one may see himself; and may try what Spirit's Child he is; out of the Seal of the Wonders.
21. CHRIST saith, Matth. 23. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! How often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and you would not: O Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, etc. Also, We have piped unto you, and you have not danced, etc. What should I do more to this stiff-necked people, who will not suffer my spirit to reprove them? Also, Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; the poison of adders is under their lips; they speak mere deceit, and their hearts are never at unity. O how fain would I eat of the best grapes; but I am as a vine-dresser that gleaneth: I had planted me a vineyard, but it bringeth forth nothing but sour grapes: I am become strange to my mother's children: They which eat at my table, tread me underfoot. 2. Thus the mother then complained of the wicked children of men; but what shall she now do in these present times? She standeth yet in great sorrow and lamentation, and hath turned away her countenance from those wicked children, and will not have any of them that are in that garment: [ Of filthy wickedness] She crieth, and none heareth: She standeth in great mourning and lamentation over the wickedness of those false unruly and perverse children: Every one runneth after the covetous whore, who is full of blasphemies, and abominations; both the shepherd [pastor] and the sheep [people] do so: It is a most
3lamentable time, and if it should not be shortened, no man should be saved. 3. It is a time which all the prophets have prophesied of, and thou supposest it to be a golden time; but consider thyself, thou blind man, whither art thou gone? Dost thou suppose that this wickedness and falsehood which thou practisest is the ordinance of God? Wait but a while, and you will soon see. It is the time of the last seal, wherein the anger of God hath poured forth its vials, so that the wonders of hell come to light [that they may be known]. Let this be told you, we have known it in Ternario Sancto; [or understood it in the angelical world, in the heavenly substantiality] . 4. For the mother hath rejected it, and will have none of those abominations any more: She is big with child, and bringeth forth a son in her old age, which shorteneth the days of wickedness. Let this be told you; whosoever persevereth and goeth on in wickedness, shall have great shame thereof.
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.
1remedy or help. Pray learn divine wisdom; and learn to know what God is; and do not imagine or set any image of any thing before you, thinking God to be an image any way but in Christ: We live and are in God, we are of his [essence or] substance [or being] : We have heaven and hell in ourselves. What we make of ourselves, that we are: If we make of ourselves an angel in the light and love of God in Christ, we are so; but if we make of ourselves a fierce, angry, false and wicked, haughty, flying devil, which flieth aloft above all love and meekness, in mere covetousness, greedy hunger and thirst, then also we are so; for after this life, it is otherwise with us there than here; what the soul here embraceth, that it hath there; and so, though the outward breaketh in death, yet the will retaineth that embraced thing in its source [or property,] and that is its sustenance; but how that will subsist before the paradisical source and dominion of God, and before his angels, you yourself may consider. We would have it faithfully set before you [for a warning], as it is given to us [for that purpose] . THE FIFTEENTH CHAPTER Of the mixed World, and its wickedness, as it now standeth, and as it exerciseth its Dominion at present. A Glass wherein Every one may see himself; and may try what Spirit's Child he is; out of the Seal of the Wonders.
21. CHRIST saith, Matth. 23. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! How often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and you would not: O Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, etc. Also, We have piped unto you, and you have not danced, etc. What should I do more to this stiff-necked people, who will not suffer my spirit to reprove them? Also, Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; the poison of adders is under their lips; they speak mere deceit, and their hearts are never at unity. O how fain would I eat of the best grapes; but I am as a vine-dresser that gleaneth: I had planted me a vineyard, but it bringeth forth nothing but sour grapes: I am become strange to my mother's children: They which eat at my table, tread me underfoot. 2. Thus the mother then complained of the wicked children of men; but what shall she now do in these present times? She standeth yet in great sorrow and lamentation, and hath turned away her countenance from those wicked children, and will not have any of them that are in that garment: [ Of filthy wickedness] She crieth, and none heareth: She standeth in great mourning and lamentation over the wickedness of those false unruly and perverse children: Every one runneth after the covetous whore, who is full of blasphemies, and abominations; both the shepherd [pastor] and the sheep [people] do so: It is a most
3lamentable time, and if it should not be shortened, no man should be saved. 3. It is a time which all the prophets have prophesied of, and thou supposest it to be a golden time; but consider thyself, thou blind man, whither art thou gone? Dost thou suppose that this wickedness and falsehood which thou practisest is the ordinance of God? Wait but a while, and you will soon see. It is the time of the last seal, wherein the anger of God hath poured forth its vials, so that the wonders of hell come to light [that they may be known]. Let this be told you, we have known it in Ternario Sancto; [or understood it in the angelical world, in the heavenly substantiality] . 4. For the mother hath rejected it, and will have none of those abominations any more: She is big with child, and bringeth forth a son in her old age, which shorteneth the days of wickedness. Let this be told you; whosoever persevereth and goeth on in wickedness, shall have great shame thereof.
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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