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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.
13. Therefore he is the Son of the First; and is rightly the flame of love, and the glance of the Father in the eternal will, and the second mother [or matrix] of the genetrix, viz. the angelical world out of himself, is a Principle, which is called the Mercy of God: out of which centre goeth forth the virgin of the eternal wisdom of God, by which God hath created this world, viz. the third Principle (with all creatures and things) out of the first [Principle] . 4. And we would have the Reader faithfully warned, that he should not seek our meaning in the wisdom of this world; but in the light of the eternal nature, whither we would have him directed also, (viz. into the new Regeneration in the life of Christ) else we are but dumb to him, and not to be understood: and without that [New Birth] he should leave these writings uncensured; or else he eateth the food of the first centre; and his scorn will gnaw him in the centre of his own life. 5. We will readily vouchsafe him the light; and for that end this hand hath set down the deep Mysteries, not for any advantage that can be expected, but for the lillies [children of wisdom] sake, and for the sake of the angelical world.
26. Here mark exactly: you will see that which you have not seen since the heavy fall of Adam: and thereby consider what it signifieth, and what appeareth with it; and tread not in the footsteps of the proud Pharisees, who crucified Christ, and remained blind in the day-light, or else the same will happen unto you. 7. And look not upon the hand of this pen, it can do nothing; but upon the centre [ground or foundation], out of which the light shineth; it shineth not only out of this hand, but in the whole world, as an opened seal in the eternal centre: every one may apprehend it, it is not only without him, but in him: and there is no more to be said, but to fly open, and spring with Jesus Christ, and put forth a flower out of this world into the angelical world: of which we will here speak, and shew you the eternal Being. 3. We have shewed you above, the birth of the four forms of the eternal nature, and thereby have signified how they are generated out of the eternal unchangeable will of the liberty of God: where we have declared to you also how the eternal liberty without nature is a still light habitation, yet without glance [or lustre] ; also how the eternal light of liberty is sharpened in the sour hard fierceness, so that it appeareth as a flash of fire, where then it dissipateth the darkness, and taketh away the power of the fierceness, and so getteth a consuming glance, or fiery splendour, by reason of the terrible
3sharpness; where then the sour matrix becometh an anxious genetrix: and being feeble (by the flash taking away its power), it becometh essential: and the flash catcheth hold of its essential form in the anguish (that is, the brimstone- spirit) which is the body of the flash, out of which it burneth and shineth. 9. And then [we have shewn also] how the wheel of the essences, with the flash of the sour overcoming, is upheld: and how the centre is like that of a cross-wheel [wheel with four spokes across], and how all standeth in the founding of the essences, like a sprout: where then the wheel driveth only upwards: and therefore it is that the source of the fire flieth upwards, for all the forms of nature fly after the fire; and the fire flieth from them; for it willeth to be free, being it is originally proceeded out of the eternal liberty, but yet it cannot [be free], because nature withholdeth it by the sharpness which subsisteth in nature. 10. And then also we have shewn you, how the crack of the fire killeth the fierce property of the sour matrix, whereby it is overcome, and falleth back; from whence cometh weight in nature, and matter of every thing. And then, how the flash in the overcoming twinhleth [or loseth its strength] where then (in the meekness) it is so terrified, that it loseth its fiery property, and becometh clear or bright, which is the shining of its light, where the glance taketh its original. And
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.
13. Therefore he is the Son of the First; and is rightly the flame of love, and the glance of the Father in the eternal will, and the second mother [or matrix] of the genetrix, viz. the angelical world out of himself, is a Principle, which is called the Mercy of God: out of which centre goeth forth the virgin of the eternal wisdom of God, by which God hath created this world, viz. the third Principle (with all creatures and things) out of the first [Principle] . 4. And we would have the Reader faithfully warned, that he should not seek our meaning in the wisdom of this world; but in the light of the eternal nature, whither we would have him directed also, (viz. into the new Regeneration in the life of Christ) else we are but dumb to him, and not to be understood: and without that [New Birth] he should leave these writings uncensured; or else he eateth the food of the first centre; and his scorn will gnaw him in the centre of his own life. 5. We will readily vouchsafe him the light; and for that end this hand hath set down the deep Mysteries, not for any advantage that can be expected, but for the lillies [children of wisdom] sake, and for the sake of the angelical world.
26. Here mark exactly: you will see that which you have not seen since the heavy fall of Adam: and thereby consider what it signifieth, and what appeareth with it; and tread not in the footsteps of the proud Pharisees, who crucified Christ, and remained blind in the day-light, or else the same will happen unto you. 7. And look not upon the hand of this pen, it can do nothing; but upon the centre [ground or foundation], out of which the light shineth; it shineth not only out of this hand, but in the whole world, as an opened seal in the eternal centre: every one may apprehend it, it is not only without him, but in him: and there is no more to be said, but to fly open, and spring with Jesus Christ, and put forth a flower out of this world into the angelical world: of which we will here speak, and shew you the eternal Being. 3. We have shewed you above, the birth of the four forms of the eternal nature, and thereby have signified how they are generated out of the eternal unchangeable will of the liberty of God: where we have declared to you also how the eternal liberty without nature is a still light habitation, yet without glance [or lustre] ; also how the eternal light of liberty is sharpened in the sour hard fierceness, so that it appeareth as a flash of fire, where then it dissipateth the darkness, and taketh away the power of the fierceness, and so getteth a consuming glance, or fiery splendour, by reason of the terrible
3sharpness; where then the sour matrix becometh an anxious genetrix: and being feeble (by the flash taking away its power), it becometh essential: and the flash catcheth hold of its essential form in the anguish (that is, the brimstone- spirit) which is the body of the flash, out of which it burneth and shineth. 9. And then [we have shewn also] how the wheel of the essences, with the flash of the sour overcoming, is upheld: and how the centre is like that of a cross-wheel [wheel with four spokes across], and how all standeth in the founding of the essences, like a sprout: where then the wheel driveth only upwards: and therefore it is that the source of the fire flieth upwards, for all the forms of nature fly after the fire; and the fire flieth from them; for it willeth to be free, being it is originally proceeded out of the eternal liberty, but yet it cannot [be free], because nature withholdeth it by the sharpness which subsisteth in nature. 10. And then also we have shewn you, how the crack of the fire killeth the fierce property of the sour matrix, whereby it is overcome, and falleth back; from whence cometh weight in nature, and matter of every thing. And then, how the flash in the overcoming twinhleth [or loseth its strength] where then (in the meekness) it is so terrified, that it loseth its fiery property, and becometh clear or bright, which is the shining of its light, where the glance taketh its original. And
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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