Fetching
One moment.
Fetching
One moment.
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.
1You have it not. You have nothing else but the power of the dragon, your antichristian idol: if you desire to have divine power, you must be (in the life of Christ) in God; and so you receive divine power, to work in those who lift up their heart to Christ in God; there you have the keys of the kingdom of heaven in the angelical world. 67. Your laws, councils, decrees, canons, and your singular articles or opinions, are but mere deceit: the spirit of Christ in God will not be bound to any laws. Whatsoever you teach concerning your own power in heaven, which you appropriate and usurp to yourselves (without the New Birth in Christ), is all false, and lies; and the power thereof belongeth to the dragon [or your own power consisteth in the tyranny of rulers] . 68. None have any power in God, except he be born of God in Christ Jesus; and such an one can open the seven seals to the inclined heart, (which inclineth itself to God in Christ Jesus), by his voice and word (which soundeth from God), and can sound the trumpet into the desiring mind. 69. Therefore behold yourself in the Revelation, in that representation or image of your riding upon the dragon. How bravely ride you on earth, as the dragon, the old devil, doth in the seven
2seals, (which would always ride over the Heart of God in the might of the fire, and yet remaineth sealed up in the seven seals, in the dark abyss of the eternity in the original of nature, in the wrathful matrix); and so you ride also. 70. And though the seals in the soul of man are broken in the death of Christ, yet the anger of God, with the spirit of this world, hath sealed you up, and driveth you on, that it may accomplish all its wonders in you. 71. Behold, you proud whore upon the beast ! What have you sought after, since the times of the Apostles, who walked in the life of Christ, (and not according to the lust of the fierce spirit in the original of nature, as you do)? Behold your brave kingdom that you have erected in the world, in which you go about to compel men to turn away from God, and to reverence and worship your laws ! 72. Christ worshipped his Father; his soul pressed, in verbum Domini, into the Word of the Lord, in the seven golden candlesticks, which are the burning love-spirit of the Heart of God, in the Father, in the still eternity; there, in the source of the Father, Christ wrought great wonders: for he opened the seals of the hidden Mystery, and did drive the unclean spirits out of the wrathful source of the souls, and sounded with his Word in the centre of the poor captive souls, so that they
3stirred all seals, and in the life of Christ pressed into God: and there the devil could not dwell, for he is a spirit of darkness, as we will hereafter shew him to be. 73. But you take and usurp the kingdom and power of Christ, with fair hypocrisy and deceit: Where are your wonders, while you make divine laws, only for your worldly honour and deceit, only that you might rule over silver and gold, and the souls of men? 74. O you Babylonish whore ! you are she of whom the prophets have spoken, who have prophesied (in the hidden seals) of the wonders, which were hidden in the eternal nature; in you the wonders are brought to light: But you spoil the Tree of Life, therefore you must go into the lake which burneth with brimstone: and therefore the spirit saith in the Revelation; Go out of her, my people, that you be not partakers of her source [plagues or torment] . 75. Now since you are grown forth of yourself, in the fierce might of the anger of God, and are a devourer, and have set up the wonders of God, in pride, for the honour of your beast; therefore the seals in you are sealed up, till the time that the anger hath shewn its might upon you, and that you devour yourself. 76. For you have despised the angel's sounding of the trumpet, and persecuted those that were sent from God: You esteem your belly God, and glory most of all, and love flattery.
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.
1You have it not. You have nothing else but the power of the dragon, your antichristian idol: if you desire to have divine power, you must be (in the life of Christ) in God; and so you receive divine power, to work in those who lift up their heart to Christ in God; there you have the keys of the kingdom of heaven in the angelical world. 67. Your laws, councils, decrees, canons, and your singular articles or opinions, are but mere deceit: the spirit of Christ in God will not be bound to any laws. Whatsoever you teach concerning your own power in heaven, which you appropriate and usurp to yourselves (without the New Birth in Christ), is all false, and lies; and the power thereof belongeth to the dragon [or your own power consisteth in the tyranny of rulers] . 68. None have any power in God, except he be born of God in Christ Jesus; and such an one can open the seven seals to the inclined heart, (which inclineth itself to God in Christ Jesus), by his voice and word (which soundeth from God), and can sound the trumpet into the desiring mind. 69. Therefore behold yourself in the Revelation, in that representation or image of your riding upon the dragon. How bravely ride you on earth, as the dragon, the old devil, doth in the seven
2seals, (which would always ride over the Heart of God in the might of the fire, and yet remaineth sealed up in the seven seals, in the dark abyss of the eternity in the original of nature, in the wrathful matrix); and so you ride also. 70. And though the seals in the soul of man are broken in the death of Christ, yet the anger of God, with the spirit of this world, hath sealed you up, and driveth you on, that it may accomplish all its wonders in you. 71. Behold, you proud whore upon the beast ! What have you sought after, since the times of the Apostles, who walked in the life of Christ, (and not according to the lust of the fierce spirit in the original of nature, as you do)? Behold your brave kingdom that you have erected in the world, in which you go about to compel men to turn away from God, and to reverence and worship your laws ! 72. Christ worshipped his Father; his soul pressed, in verbum Domini, into the Word of the Lord, in the seven golden candlesticks, which are the burning love-spirit of the Heart of God, in the Father, in the still eternity; there, in the source of the Father, Christ wrought great wonders: for he opened the seals of the hidden Mystery, and did drive the unclean spirits out of the wrathful source of the souls, and sounded with his Word in the centre of the poor captive souls, so that they
3stirred all seals, and in the life of Christ pressed into God: and there the devil could not dwell, for he is a spirit of darkness, as we will hereafter shew him to be. 73. But you take and usurp the kingdom and power of Christ, with fair hypocrisy and deceit: Where are your wonders, while you make divine laws, only for your worldly honour and deceit, only that you might rule over silver and gold, and the souls of men? 74. O you Babylonish whore ! you are she of whom the prophets have spoken, who have prophesied (in the hidden seals) of the wonders, which were hidden in the eternal nature; in you the wonders are brought to light: But you spoil the Tree of Life, therefore you must go into the lake which burneth with brimstone: and therefore the spirit saith in the Revelation; Go out of her, my people, that you be not partakers of her source [plagues or torment] . 75. Now since you are grown forth of yourself, in the fierce might of the anger of God, and are a devourer, and have set up the wonders of God, in pride, for the honour of your beast; therefore the seals in you are sealed up, till the time that the anger hath shewn its might upon you, and that you devour yourself. 76. For you have despised the angel's sounding of the trumpet, and persecuted those that were sent from God: You esteem your belly God, and glory most of all, and love flattery.
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.
No commentary for this page.