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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.
112. How one soul shall rejoice in the gifts of another . 3 CHAP. God. VERSE 1. None can know God rightly without the spirit of God 46 1. A warning not to seek God only above the stars . 47 2. How Go d is a consuming fire 58 2. How men shall speak rightly of God .... 68 3. God is without beginning: His Word hath an eternal unsearchable beginning, and is rightly called a Person 2 3. The author telleth the reader, that he meaneth not two, but one God 16 5. We must lodge in heaven with God, or in hell with the devil 27 5. A direction how to find and see God .... 31 5. How we are not able to know any thing of God . . 51 5. How God is manifested in a creaturely form by the angelical world 60 5. The A. B. C. scholars reach the deep of God: Their speech is various 73 5. What is truly called lifting one's self above God . 76 5. Why we cannot see the kingdom of God . . .119 6. By what we may know that we are the children of God 3 6. We are gods in God: Also why a beast cannot speak . 4 6. How God is found of them that sought him not. . 24 6. How God is in us, and we without God, and how we enter into God 31 6. Nothing is from eternity, and in eternity, but God . 45 6. Why God became man. Without the New Birth all is lost 61 7. What are the right means to see the kingdom of God 4 7. God moveth himself no more but thrice ... 19 7. The first, second, and third moving of God . 20-22 8. God, and all heavenly properties, are but one body . 4
2Govern. Government. 18. The spirit of God, and not the old man, should govern: There is a twofold seeking in the soul: Also of the true life of the soul 48 4. What government there was before the time of the angelical world 56 4. The spirits are incomprehensible to us. The author will shew us the government of heaven further, and then the government of man 57 CHAP. Govern. Government. VERSE 13. A wonderful discourse concerning the rise and fall of a kingdom, government, dominion, or religion. 45-47 17. All in this world is but mere foppery: Also of the government of the potentates, and the government of such as fear God 20 Heart. 4. The eternal essence desireth a number or limit: The Heart of God is the end of nature. ... 10 4. What is necessary to the attaining of the Heart of God 47 4. The Principle of the Heart of God change th not . 49 5. Wherefore the Word is the Heart of God ... 36 5. Why the body must pass away, and the soul not; and why the Heart of God must become man . .139 6. The form of the Heart of God described by the similitude of a rainbow 68 7. If the Heart of God had not become man, the image of the Number Three, or the eternal Virgin, had not been known to the angels 24 9. How the Heart is in anxiety 91 Heathen. 6. A false Christian is without God, as well as a wicked heathen 20 11. God's will standeth open to all men: Also how a heathen may be saved 79 Heaven. Heavens.
34. Wherein the kingdom of heaven and the angelical world consists 62 5. Of the outward heaven 67 5. How we ought to be, that we may come into the kingdom of heaven 71 7. The strife about the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of hell 34 12. What there i s i n the kingdom of heaven ... 4 12. We stand between heaven and hell, and shall become either an angel or a devil 48 14. What men must do to see the kingdom of heaven . 11 18. In heaven there is nothing new 51 12. He biddeth the heavens rejoice: The praise of the Lord goeth over all mountains .... 11 CHAP. Hell. VERSE 2. The ground of hell, and of evil 8 2. The condition of hell, and of the damned, in the four forms . . 48-49 2. How hell is not limited, nor circumscribed by place . 50 2. God made no hell, or peculiar several place to torment the angels and men in 53 8. What is Lucifer's hell 45 14. God hath created no hell, nor devil: what is the devil's hell, and the property of it 41 Heresy. Heretic. 11. There is heresy in every opinion: Men must cleave to the living Word 80 3. How one calleth another a heretic in their devilish disputation 82 Hidden. 2. That which was hidden to the heathen, and is still hidden, shall be revealed 39 Holy Ghost. 3. How the Apostles received the Holy Ghost in love, but not in contention and scorn .... 89 4. Of the Holy Ghost, which is the spirit Mercurius in the divine nature, which is the sound that maketh the will manifest 72
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.
112. How one soul shall rejoice in the gifts of another . 3 CHAP. God. VERSE 1. None can know God rightly without the spirit of God 46 1. A warning not to seek God only above the stars . 47 2. How Go d is a consuming fire 58 2. How men shall speak rightly of God .... 68 3. God is without beginning: His Word hath an eternal unsearchable beginning, and is rightly called a Person 2 3. The author telleth the reader, that he meaneth not two, but one God 16 5. We must lodge in heaven with God, or in hell with the devil 27 5. A direction how to find and see God .... 31 5. How we are not able to know any thing of God . . 51 5. How God is manifested in a creaturely form by the angelical world 60 5. The A. B. C. scholars reach the deep of God: Their speech is various 73 5. What is truly called lifting one's self above God . 76 5. Why we cannot see the kingdom of God . . .119 6. By what we may know that we are the children of God 3 6. We are gods in God: Also why a beast cannot speak . 4 6. How God is found of them that sought him not. . 24 6. How God is in us, and we without God, and how we enter into God 31 6. Nothing is from eternity, and in eternity, but God . 45 6. Why God became man. Without the New Birth all is lost 61 7. What are the right means to see the kingdom of God 4 7. God moveth himself no more but thrice ... 19 7. The first, second, and third moving of God . 20-22 8. God, and all heavenly properties, are but one body . 4
2Govern. Government. 18. The spirit of God, and not the old man, should govern: There is a twofold seeking in the soul: Also of the true life of the soul 48 4. What government there was before the time of the angelical world 56 4. The spirits are incomprehensible to us. The author will shew us the government of heaven further, and then the government of man 57 CHAP. Govern. Government. VERSE 13. A wonderful discourse concerning the rise and fall of a kingdom, government, dominion, or religion. 45-47 17. All in this world is but mere foppery: Also of the government of the potentates, and the government of such as fear God 20 Heart. 4. The eternal essence desireth a number or limit: The Heart of God is the end of nature. ... 10 4. What is necessary to the attaining of the Heart of God 47 4. The Principle of the Heart of God change th not . 49 5. Wherefore the Word is the Heart of God ... 36 5. Why the body must pass away, and the soul not; and why the Heart of God must become man . .139 6. The form of the Heart of God described by the similitude of a rainbow 68 7. If the Heart of God had not become man, the image of the Number Three, or the eternal Virgin, had not been known to the angels 24 9. How the Heart is in anxiety 91 Heathen. 6. A false Christian is without God, as well as a wicked heathen 20 11. God's will standeth open to all men: Also how a heathen may be saved 79 Heaven. Heavens.
34. Wherein the kingdom of heaven and the angelical world consists 62 5. Of the outward heaven 67 5. How we ought to be, that we may come into the kingdom of heaven 71 7. The strife about the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of hell 34 12. What there i s i n the kingdom of heaven ... 4 12. We stand between heaven and hell, and shall become either an angel or a devil 48 14. What men must do to see the kingdom of heaven . 11 18. In heaven there is nothing new 51 12. He biddeth the heavens rejoice: The praise of the Lord goeth over all mountains .... 11 CHAP. Hell. VERSE 2. The ground of hell, and of evil 8 2. The condition of hell, and of the damned, in the four forms . . 48-49 2. How hell is not limited, nor circumscribed by place . 50 2. God made no hell, or peculiar several place to torment the angels and men in 53 8. What is Lucifer's hell 45 14. God hath created no hell, nor devil: what is the devil's hell, and the property of it 41 Heresy. Heretic. 11. There is heresy in every opinion: Men must cleave to the living Word 80 3. How one calleth another a heretic in their devilish disputation 82 Hidden. 2. That which was hidden to the heathen, and is still hidden, shall be revealed 39 Holy Ghost. 3. How the Apostles received the Holy Ghost in love, but not in contention and scorn .... 89 4. Of the Holy Ghost, which is the spirit Mercurius in the divine nature, which is the sound that maketh the will manifest 72
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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