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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.
17. So also the devil draweth it mightily down into the abyss, and would fain throw it into the eternal aching source [or torment] of hell; and if it resist, he striketh at it with the anguish of hell, that it should despair, and throw itself into the abyss; and there it hath no helper with it, nor about it, nor can it discover any to appear, till it raise itself upwards into the love and mercy of God, where then it must leave and forsake all whatsoever is in its house, and must wind quite through from it, as a spirit without substance; that is, it must go forth with its will from all its thoughts, and out from all its mind, into the mercy of God, into the first original mother [eternal nature], where it was only a seed before the creation of the world. 8. And when it cometh thither, it findeth that the same Word which created it, is become man; into which it casteth itself, and eateth of that humanity, as of a pure and new body, in which there is no source [or property] of enmity, but only a meek, pure, desirous love; and there its will is accepted [or received] of God, and the Holy Ghost entereth into its will, and bringeth to the poor captive soul heavenly refreshment and comfort, so that it feedeth on the flesh of the eternal Word of its original mother, and drinketh of the water of eternal life, wherein, before the world, it was only a seed.
29. There it findeth the place of its rest, and cooleth its flames therewith, and resteth in the bosom of its mother, for it entereth into the land of the living, and the Holy Ghost leadeth it out of prison, and it eateth at God's table, and sitteth among the children of love [God's love]. O how humble it is, that the Holy Ghost hath delivered it from the strife of battle ! and then God hath a true, obedient, and humble child of it. And thus it is with the souls which press forth out of this sea of misery into God, or which with the deliverance from the earthly life enter into God, and so are released from the driver [the devil] . 10. Since therefore it is certainly thus, and that we have found out the way, we will speak what we know, and testify the truth: For Christ saith; My Father will [or desires to] give the Holy Ghost to them that ask him for it: No son asketh the Father for an egg, and he qffereth him a scorpion instead of it: or for bread, and he giveth him a stone; or for fish, and he giveth him a serpent: Ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you, saith Christ. 11. When the heart and mind, and all the
3senses or thoughts; resolve into a will and purpose, that the soul will enter into the mercy of God, and repent of its misdeeds, and is resolved to seek after love and mercy, then it is said, Before they call, I have heard them; as may be seen by Daniel, when the angel said to him, When thou chastisedst thyself, and didst intend to pray for thine own sins, and the sins of the people, I brought thy prayer before God, and this command went forth. Read the history of Tobiah, what praying and fasting, and due preparation for the kingdom of God, are able to effect: briefly, the whole scripture is full of such examples. 12. Consider the prayer of Christ; how his human soul in God the Father called, and awakened the Verbum Domini in him, when he would do great wonders [or miracles] ; especially about Lazarus, whom he raised from the dead: then he sighed to his Father, and awakened the centre of nature, and the Word in the centre of nature on the cross of the Number Three: There the Holy Ghost, and the Word which the Holy Ghost then awakened, went forth in his soul: and then the soul of Christ thanked his Father who had heard him, and said in the power of the Word to dead Lazarus, Lazarus, come forth; and there they saw the power of the Word in the soul, that the dead must arise; which power the soul of Christ had opened and awakened with his knocking. 13. You must know that Lazarus was awakened from within; and we shall all at the last day
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.
17. So also the devil draweth it mightily down into the abyss, and would fain throw it into the eternal aching source [or torment] of hell; and if it resist, he striketh at it with the anguish of hell, that it should despair, and throw itself into the abyss; and there it hath no helper with it, nor about it, nor can it discover any to appear, till it raise itself upwards into the love and mercy of God, where then it must leave and forsake all whatsoever is in its house, and must wind quite through from it, as a spirit without substance; that is, it must go forth with its will from all its thoughts, and out from all its mind, into the mercy of God, into the first original mother [eternal nature], where it was only a seed before the creation of the world. 8. And when it cometh thither, it findeth that the same Word which created it, is become man; into which it casteth itself, and eateth of that humanity, as of a pure and new body, in which there is no source [or property] of enmity, but only a meek, pure, desirous love; and there its will is accepted [or received] of God, and the Holy Ghost entereth into its will, and bringeth to the poor captive soul heavenly refreshment and comfort, so that it feedeth on the flesh of the eternal Word of its original mother, and drinketh of the water of eternal life, wherein, before the world, it was only a seed.
29. There it findeth the place of its rest, and cooleth its flames therewith, and resteth in the bosom of its mother, for it entereth into the land of the living, and the Holy Ghost leadeth it out of prison, and it eateth at God's table, and sitteth among the children of love [God's love]. O how humble it is, that the Holy Ghost hath delivered it from the strife of battle ! and then God hath a true, obedient, and humble child of it. And thus it is with the souls which press forth out of this sea of misery into God, or which with the deliverance from the earthly life enter into God, and so are released from the driver [the devil] . 10. Since therefore it is certainly thus, and that we have found out the way, we will speak what we know, and testify the truth: For Christ saith; My Father will [or desires to] give the Holy Ghost to them that ask him for it: No son asketh the Father for an egg, and he qffereth him a scorpion instead of it: or for bread, and he giveth him a stone; or for fish, and he giveth him a serpent: Ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you, saith Christ. 11. When the heart and mind, and all the
3senses or thoughts; resolve into a will and purpose, that the soul will enter into the mercy of God, and repent of its misdeeds, and is resolved to seek after love and mercy, then it is said, Before they call, I have heard them; as may be seen by Daniel, when the angel said to him, When thou chastisedst thyself, and didst intend to pray for thine own sins, and the sins of the people, I brought thy prayer before God, and this command went forth. Read the history of Tobiah, what praying and fasting, and due preparation for the kingdom of God, are able to effect: briefly, the whole scripture is full of such examples. 12. Consider the prayer of Christ; how his human soul in God the Father called, and awakened the Verbum Domini in him, when he would do great wonders [or miracles] ; especially about Lazarus, whom he raised from the dead: then he sighed to his Father, and awakened the centre of nature, and the Word in the centre of nature on the cross of the Number Three: There the Holy Ghost, and the Word which the Holy Ghost then awakened, went forth in his soul: and then the soul of Christ thanked his Father who had heard him, and said in the power of the Word to dead Lazarus, Lazarus, come forth; and there they saw the power of the Word in the soul, that the dead must arise; which power the soul of Christ had opened and awakened with his knocking. 13. You must know that Lazarus was awakened from within; and we shall all at the last day
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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