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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.
1the bare letter of the history, do not make laws according to your own conceits and opinions so blindly, by which you persecute [vex and prosecute] one another; in this you are blinder than the heathen. 45. Search after the heart, and after the spirit of the Scriptures, that it might be born in you, and that you might open the centre of the love of God; and so you might know God, and rightly speak of him. For from the history none should take upon him to be a master, or call himself a knower of the essence of God, but from the Holy Ghost, which appeareth in another Principle (in the centre of man's life) unto those that seek it in true earnestness, as we are commanded by Christ to knock and seek for it of his Father (viz. in the centre of the life) with true earnest desirous humility, and we shall find it. 46. For none can know or rightly seek or find God his Lord without the Holy Ghost, which springeth forth from the heart of the humble seeker, and enlighteneth the mind, so that the senses [inward senses or thoughts] are enlightened, and the desire is turned to God; that person only findeth the dear Virgin, the Wisdom of God, which leadeth in the right way, and bringeth to the fresh waters of eternal life, and quickeneth the soul, and so the New Body groweth on the soul in Christ; of which we will, hereafter following, write according to its high and precious worth.
247. We advise the seeking Eeader, that loveth God, to consider concerning God; and that he do not collect in his mind and thoughts, and seek for the pure Deity only aloft above the stars, dwelling there only in heaven, thinking that he doth rule and govern only by his spirit and power in this world, as the sun standeth aloft in the deep, and worketh by his beams all over the whole world: no. 48. The pure Deity is in all places and all corners, and present every where all over: the birth of the holy Trinity in one essence is every where: and the angelical world reacheth to every part, wherever you can think, even in the midst of the earth, stones, and rocks: as also hell and the kingdom of God's wrath is every where all over. 49. For the severe kingdom in the anger of the darkness is in the centre, and keepeth its source and dominion in the darkness; and the Deity goeth forth (in the centre) in itself, and maketh a habitation [of joy] in itself, but unsearchably or incomprehensibly to the darkness, because it openeth another Principle: for the eternal Word is the eternal will, and a cause of the eternal nature; and the eternal nature is
3the eternal Father, wherein all things are created by the Word, you must understand, in the eternal nature. And if the eternal will did not create in itself [another or] a second mill, to go forth, (as a shining light flameth forth from a candle and departeth not away from the candle) the Father would be alone, and be only an austere darkness: also this world (viz. the Third Principle) could not have been created.
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.
1the bare letter of the history, do not make laws according to your own conceits and opinions so blindly, by which you persecute [vex and prosecute] one another; in this you are blinder than the heathen. 45. Search after the heart, and after the spirit of the Scriptures, that it might be born in you, and that you might open the centre of the love of God; and so you might know God, and rightly speak of him. For from the history none should take upon him to be a master, or call himself a knower of the essence of God, but from the Holy Ghost, which appeareth in another Principle (in the centre of man's life) unto those that seek it in true earnestness, as we are commanded by Christ to knock and seek for it of his Father (viz. in the centre of the life) with true earnest desirous humility, and we shall find it. 46. For none can know or rightly seek or find God his Lord without the Holy Ghost, which springeth forth from the heart of the humble seeker, and enlighteneth the mind, so that the senses [inward senses or thoughts] are enlightened, and the desire is turned to God; that person only findeth the dear Virgin, the Wisdom of God, which leadeth in the right way, and bringeth to the fresh waters of eternal life, and quickeneth the soul, and so the New Body groweth on the soul in Christ; of which we will, hereafter following, write according to its high and precious worth.
247. We advise the seeking Eeader, that loveth God, to consider concerning God; and that he do not collect in his mind and thoughts, and seek for the pure Deity only aloft above the stars, dwelling there only in heaven, thinking that he doth rule and govern only by his spirit and power in this world, as the sun standeth aloft in the deep, and worketh by his beams all over the whole world: no. 48. The pure Deity is in all places and all corners, and present every where all over: the birth of the holy Trinity in one essence is every where: and the angelical world reacheth to every part, wherever you can think, even in the midst of the earth, stones, and rocks: as also hell and the kingdom of God's wrath is every where all over. 49. For the severe kingdom in the anger of the darkness is in the centre, and keepeth its source and dominion in the darkness; and the Deity goeth forth (in the centre) in itself, and maketh a habitation [of joy] in itself, but unsearchably or incomprehensibly to the darkness, because it openeth another Principle: for the eternal Word is the eternal will, and a cause of the eternal nature; and the eternal nature is
3the eternal Father, wherein all things are created by the Word, you must understand, in the eternal nature. And if the eternal will did not create in itself [another or] a second mill, to go forth, (as a shining light flameth forth from a candle and departeth not away from the candle) the Father would be alone, and be only an austere darkness: also this world (viz. the Third Principle) could not have been created.
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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