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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.
182. Er-, there it bringeth a blossom and sprout out of the centre, and openeth the wonders of God; for it here goeth about with the centre, as it will, for it hath overcome: -Id-, that is, the sprout, which groweth out of the fierce wrath out of nature, and is now lovely, good, and useful in the kingdom of God: -se, there it continueth to be fruit upon God's table, free from the anger. 83. Uns, there it once again taketh the union of all souls with it, and layeth it open there, that it was a root in the kingdom of God before its creation, and hath now brought forth many, that is, it is a tree, and hath put forth many branches, and presenteth them there as in a tree. 84. Vom, that is the great wonder that God hath made of one two, and yet it remaineth but one: It sheweth this; for you see that the root in the earth is another thing than the stalk which groweth out of the root; so you must understand it also concerning the true holy soul; that groweth as a stalk out of the root, out of the centre of nature, and is another thing than the centre; and yet the centre generateth it, and it moveth in full omnipotence over the centre, and ruleth over it as God ruleth over nature; and yet there the name of the Number
2Three in the eternal nature ariseth: And as God is free from nature, and yet nature is of his essence or substance, and not separated from God, so is the soul also; it is free from nature, and is a lord of nature, for it is one spirit with God, and yet blossometh or sprouteth out of nature. Indeed God is not wholly to be likened to the soul; for God's eternal will is a cause and beginning of nature, but [the soul is to be likened] to the Majesty of God, whose brightness ariseth out of the sharpness of the eternal nature, and yet ariseth before nature, like the flash of the eternal liberty, from whence nature, in its sharp generating, receiveth the lustre, and elevateth it in the fire, to a triumphant high light: for which cause sake, the eternal liberty without nature longeth after nature, because it desireth to be manifested in wonders, and will have majesty in glory and power.
385. For, if there were no nature, there would be no glory, nor power, much less Majesty; also there would be no spirit, but only a stillness without substance [essence or being] : But thus in nature there appeareth power and virtue, might, glory, Majesty, Number Three [Trinity], and Being [essence or substance], and are the manifestation of the eternal Being. Now, since the soul, as a spirit, is discovered and taken out of this Being, it hath therefore two forms, one is nature, and the other is the divine blossom, or the sprout out of nature, which is above nature, and is a spirit in itself, as God is a spirit in himself, as you may see this by the fire: The fire is the nature, and the flame with the air [or vapour] which goeth forth out of the fire, is a spirit with all the power of the fire's nature, and yet is above the fire's nature, for the fire's nature cannot comprehend it [or rule it]; and so also the fire 's nature could not subsist, if the spirit of the air did not blow up the fire again. 86. Thus the fire generateth the spirit with the lustre, and longeth earnestly again after the spirit, and attracteth it continually into itself, and yet retaineth it not; for it is the life of 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.
182. Er-, there it bringeth a blossom and sprout out of the centre, and openeth the wonders of God; for it here goeth about with the centre, as it will, for it hath overcome: -Id-, that is, the sprout, which groweth out of the fierce wrath out of nature, and is now lovely, good, and useful in the kingdom of God: -se, there it continueth to be fruit upon God's table, free from the anger. 83. Uns, there it once again taketh the union of all souls with it, and layeth it open there, that it was a root in the kingdom of God before its creation, and hath now brought forth many, that is, it is a tree, and hath put forth many branches, and presenteth them there as in a tree. 84. Vom, that is the great wonder that God hath made of one two, and yet it remaineth but one: It sheweth this; for you see that the root in the earth is another thing than the stalk which groweth out of the root; so you must understand it also concerning the true holy soul; that groweth as a stalk out of the root, out of the centre of nature, and is another thing than the centre; and yet the centre generateth it, and it moveth in full omnipotence over the centre, and ruleth over it as God ruleth over nature; and yet there the name of the Number
2Three in the eternal nature ariseth: And as God is free from nature, and yet nature is of his essence or substance, and not separated from God, so is the soul also; it is free from nature, and is a lord of nature, for it is one spirit with God, and yet blossometh or sprouteth out of nature. Indeed God is not wholly to be likened to the soul; for God's eternal will is a cause and beginning of nature, but [the soul is to be likened] to the Majesty of God, whose brightness ariseth out of the sharpness of the eternal nature, and yet ariseth before nature, like the flash of the eternal liberty, from whence nature, in its sharp generating, receiveth the lustre, and elevateth it in the fire, to a triumphant high light: for which cause sake, the eternal liberty without nature longeth after nature, because it desireth to be manifested in wonders, and will have majesty in glory and power.
385. For, if there were no nature, there would be no glory, nor power, much less Majesty; also there would be no spirit, but only a stillness without substance [essence or being] : But thus in nature there appeareth power and virtue, might, glory, Majesty, Number Three [Trinity], and Being [essence or substance], and are the manifestation of the eternal Being. Now, since the soul, as a spirit, is discovered and taken out of this Being, it hath therefore two forms, one is nature, and the other is the divine blossom, or the sprout out of nature, which is above nature, and is a spirit in itself, as God is a spirit in himself, as you may see this by the fire: The fire is the nature, and the flame with the air [or vapour] which goeth forth out of the fire, is a spirit with all the power of the fire's nature, and yet is above the fire's nature, for the fire's nature cannot comprehend it [or rule it]; and so also the fire 's nature could not subsist, if the spirit of the air did not blow up the fire again. 86. Thus the fire generateth the spirit with the lustre, and longeth earnestly again after the spirit, and attracteth it continually into itself, and yet retaineth it not; for it is the life of 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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