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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.
1flash of the might of the fire: and yet there is no flying out, but it causeth such a will [of flying out, or flying away], and that is a spirit, and it is the band of nature, which God the Father generateth in his will, wherewith he manifesteth himself in the eternal stillness: whereas otherwise there would be nothing: and herein is God the Father (with his might and fiery sharpness) an angry zealous jealous God, and a consuming fire. 91. Let this be shewn you, O ye philosophers, which (from the counsel of God) is opened to you in the seventh seal, in Ternario Sancto.[Holy Ternary] 92. Thus the fountain of love is a clasping and keeping in of the fierce wrathfulness, yea, an overcoming of the fierce might: for the meekness taketh away the property of the fierce sour hard might of the fire; and the light of the meekness holdeth the darkness captive, and dwelleth in the darkness [without being comprehended by the darkness]. 93. And thus the fierce might willeth nothing else but the fierceness, and the shutting in of death; for the fierce sourness is the shutter up in death: and the meekness presseth forth as a sprout, and groweth out of death, and overcometh it: and maketh the eternal life, and turneth enmity into love. 94. Let this be a light unto you, O ye theologists [or divines] : and consider better, the writings of the saints, and behold the wonders of God with other eyes. Consider what God is, in love and
2anger: and observe how two Principles stand open, where each is desiring; desist from the natural wisdom of this world, and consider the eternal nature, and so you shall find God and the kingdom of heaven. Your laws will not do it: if you would know God, another manner of earnestness [or zeal] must be used [than to make conclusions in counsels and synods] ; you must go out from Babel disputations], that you may attain the centre of the Son of God: and so you shall be bom [or generated] in meekness and in love; and then you may feed the sheep of Christ: otherwise you are thieves and murderers, and step into the centre of the fierce wrath, where you do nothing else but devour the sheep of Christ, with your blowing up of hellish fire. O how falsely do you deal against love: how will you appear, when the sun riseth, and when you shall stand in the light; it shall hereafter be set before your eyes. THE THIRD CHAPTER
31. AND now if we will dive into the blessed birth of love, and search how it is generated, and where it hath its original, we must search the centre inwardly, and set the sixth form of nature before us, viz. Mercury, wherein the sound [sound or noise] is generated: and so we shall find (in the generating of the love), the tune, sound and song, as also the five senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling; wherein the life is understood; as also pain and torment, joy and love; desire to good, and desire to evil; though in itself in nature nothing is to be rejected [or is in vain], both must be, else God would not be manifested, and all would be as a still nothing: and the whole Being is together in the eternal God; none hath made or generated any thing for him: he alone, in his eternal will (which is himself) maketh the genetrix [womb of nature] ; he only is the eternal beginning, and comprised the centre to the genetrix, which maketh the eternal mother of the genetrix of the essence of all essences. 2. For God hath no beginning, and there is nothing sooner than he [or before him], but his Word hath an unsearchable [groundless] beginning in him, and an eternal unsearchable end: which yet is not called end rightly, but Person, viz. the Heart of the Father: for it is generated in the eternal centre, not as a form of the centre (which belongeth to the centre) but as a sprout of another centre out of the first eternal [centre] .
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.
1flash of the might of the fire: and yet there is no flying out, but it causeth such a will [of flying out, or flying away], and that is a spirit, and it is the band of nature, which God the Father generateth in his will, wherewith he manifesteth himself in the eternal stillness: whereas otherwise there would be nothing: and herein is God the Father (with his might and fiery sharpness) an angry zealous jealous God, and a consuming fire. 91. Let this be shewn you, O ye philosophers, which (from the counsel of God) is opened to you in the seventh seal, in Ternario Sancto.[Holy Ternary] 92. Thus the fountain of love is a clasping and keeping in of the fierce wrathfulness, yea, an overcoming of the fierce might: for the meekness taketh away the property of the fierce sour hard might of the fire; and the light of the meekness holdeth the darkness captive, and dwelleth in the darkness [without being comprehended by the darkness]. 93. And thus the fierce might willeth nothing else but the fierceness, and the shutting in of death; for the fierce sourness is the shutter up in death: and the meekness presseth forth as a sprout, and groweth out of death, and overcometh it: and maketh the eternal life, and turneth enmity into love. 94. Let this be a light unto you, O ye theologists [or divines] : and consider better, the writings of the saints, and behold the wonders of God with other eyes. Consider what God is, in love and
2anger: and observe how two Principles stand open, where each is desiring; desist from the natural wisdom of this world, and consider the eternal nature, and so you shall find God and the kingdom of heaven. Your laws will not do it: if you would know God, another manner of earnestness [or zeal] must be used [than to make conclusions in counsels and synods] ; you must go out from Babel disputations], that you may attain the centre of the Son of God: and so you shall be bom [or generated] in meekness and in love; and then you may feed the sheep of Christ: otherwise you are thieves and murderers, and step into the centre of the fierce wrath, where you do nothing else but devour the sheep of Christ, with your blowing up of hellish fire. O how falsely do you deal against love: how will you appear, when the sun riseth, and when you shall stand in the light; it shall hereafter be set before your eyes. THE THIRD CHAPTER
31. AND now if we will dive into the blessed birth of love, and search how it is generated, and where it hath its original, we must search the centre inwardly, and set the sixth form of nature before us, viz. Mercury, wherein the sound [sound or noise] is generated: and so we shall find (in the generating of the love), the tune, sound and song, as also the five senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling; wherein the life is understood; as also pain and torment, joy and love; desire to good, and desire to evil; though in itself in nature nothing is to be rejected [or is in vain], both must be, else God would not be manifested, and all would be as a still nothing: and the whole Being is together in the eternal God; none hath made or generated any thing for him: he alone, in his eternal will (which is himself) maketh the genetrix [womb of nature] ; he only is the eternal beginning, and comprised the centre to the genetrix, which maketh the eternal mother of the genetrix of the essence of all essences. 2. For God hath no beginning, and there is nothing sooner than he [or before him], but his Word hath an unsearchable [groundless] beginning in him, and an eternal unsearchable end: which yet is not called end rightly, but Person, viz. the Heart of the Father: for it is generated in the eternal centre, not as a form of the centre (which belongeth to the centre) but as a sprout of another centre out of the first eternal [centre] .
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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