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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.
124. And although the own [invented] works of holiness (viz. the elder son, who hath always been busy at home in the Antichristian house) murmur and grumble at it, (and boasteth of his obedience, labour, and toil, which he had taken in hypocrisy), the Father regardeth not that; the new son pleaseth him better than he that had continued in the house: He thought that he alone was heir, that the kingdom of heaven belonged to him: he had merited it, and hath not gone out of the house; to him belongeth the keys of the treasure; the other is but a swineherd: All this doth not divert the Father, but he is merry with his servants the angels and holy souls, and letteth him that was angry (who would not rejoice with his brother) go down into the wrathful pit of the devil; and he is merry with his children. But seeing the hypocrite is angry, and despiseth the supper of the Father, therefore he doth not taste of the heavenly joy. 25. Hearken, you Roman Pope, and you Roman Emperor, Why are you angry with us poor lost sons in Germany who go into our first true Father? Would he not fain have us? Are you not our brother? Wherefore then do you grumble? Are you Pope in the house? Then have a care that you be the Father's obedient son, and rejoice with the lost son, when he goeth out from Antichrist, to the Father: If you will not do so you must eternally be angry, and shall have no joy with us [once] lost, but [now] again living children, to eternity.
226. O you Antichristian wolf, Why are you angry, when the Father receiveth a swineherd for a dear child, and giveth him the seal-ring, the Mysterium Magnum? Do you think you do right in it? Though indeed you are born of an academy [or from an university], and the swineherds [are born] in the field among the swine, as you account them; yet in them the greatest wonders are awakened [or manifested] above your hypocritical reason: look to it, rule well in the house of your academy; we heard a watchman say, Leave off; The City Babel is fallen: see that you be not taken in Babel: for it burneth in the fire: the Turba Magna will spew it out; there is no other remedy or counsel, but for all to go together with the swineherd to the Father, and pray to him for grace; else you will be fain to try, by woeful experience, what this pen hath written, and out of what spirit it flowed, and was revealed. 27. When Christ drave the devil out of the lunatic that was possessed, his disciples said to him, Master, why could we not drive him out? Then said Christ, This kind doth not go out but by fasting and prayer.
328. Dear children, brethren and sisters, be advised, for the kind love of God the Father in his heart (which for our sakes is become man), hath lifted up himself in the crown of the spirit of this world, and calleth us: It grieveth his mercy that we are fallen home to the wrath of the Turba Magna; he now sendeth you many messengers, and calleth you in their voice, and he will send more unto you: Why do you despise them and kill them? Try them whether their spirit be born of God or no; or whether they seek their own way of their belly in Antichrist: Surely it is time to awake from sleep: No jesting matter will follow: you should not dare to jest so with the keys of the Holy Ghost, and make conclusions of faith, according to your own opinions, tenets and conceits: Faith will not be begotten by conclusions and canons, but is awakened by true sincerity, by being obedient children of Christ. 29. Saint Paul did not say to his disciple, Dispute of the Mysteries of God; but he said, Awaken or stir up the gifts that are in thee:
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.
124. And although the own [invented] works of holiness (viz. the elder son, who hath always been busy at home in the Antichristian house) murmur and grumble at it, (and boasteth of his obedience, labour, and toil, which he had taken in hypocrisy), the Father regardeth not that; the new son pleaseth him better than he that had continued in the house: He thought that he alone was heir, that the kingdom of heaven belonged to him: he had merited it, and hath not gone out of the house; to him belongeth the keys of the treasure; the other is but a swineherd: All this doth not divert the Father, but he is merry with his servants the angels and holy souls, and letteth him that was angry (who would not rejoice with his brother) go down into the wrathful pit of the devil; and he is merry with his children. But seeing the hypocrite is angry, and despiseth the supper of the Father, therefore he doth not taste of the heavenly joy. 25. Hearken, you Roman Pope, and you Roman Emperor, Why are you angry with us poor lost sons in Germany who go into our first true Father? Would he not fain have us? Are you not our brother? Wherefore then do you grumble? Are you Pope in the house? Then have a care that you be the Father's obedient son, and rejoice with the lost son, when he goeth out from Antichrist, to the Father: If you will not do so you must eternally be angry, and shall have no joy with us [once] lost, but [now] again living children, to eternity.
226. O you Antichristian wolf, Why are you angry, when the Father receiveth a swineherd for a dear child, and giveth him the seal-ring, the Mysterium Magnum? Do you think you do right in it? Though indeed you are born of an academy [or from an university], and the swineherds [are born] in the field among the swine, as you account them; yet in them the greatest wonders are awakened [or manifested] above your hypocritical reason: look to it, rule well in the house of your academy; we heard a watchman say, Leave off; The City Babel is fallen: see that you be not taken in Babel: for it burneth in the fire: the Turba Magna will spew it out; there is no other remedy or counsel, but for all to go together with the swineherd to the Father, and pray to him for grace; else you will be fain to try, by woeful experience, what this pen hath written, and out of what spirit it flowed, and was revealed. 27. When Christ drave the devil out of the lunatic that was possessed, his disciples said to him, Master, why could we not drive him out? Then said Christ, This kind doth not go out but by fasting and prayer.
328. Dear children, brethren and sisters, be advised, for the kind love of God the Father in his heart (which for our sakes is become man), hath lifted up himself in the crown of the spirit of this world, and calleth us: It grieveth his mercy that we are fallen home to the wrath of the Turba Magna; he now sendeth you many messengers, and calleth you in their voice, and he will send more unto you: Why do you despise them and kill them? Try them whether their spirit be born of God or no; or whether they seek their own way of their belly in Antichrist: Surely it is time to awake from sleep: No jesting matter will follow: you should not dare to jest so with the keys of the Holy Ghost, and make conclusions of faith, according to your own opinions, tenets and conceits: Faith will not be begotten by conclusions and canons, but is awakened by true sincerity, by being obedient children of Christ. 29. Saint Paul did not say to his disciple, Dispute of the Mysteries of God; but he said, Awaken or stir up the gifts that are in thee:
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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