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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.
11. WHEN we thus shew you the way of the light, the spirit is pleased, not to speak barely as in a history, but to set forth the light in its deepest depth, in its wellspring or fountain that you may look as through an opened seal, Ternarium Sanctum, into the holy Ternary [or the eternal essentiality] . 2. For seeing the hidden Mystery of the kingdom of God shall be revealed in the seventh seal, the Lamb himself shall be Shepherd over the sheep, therefore it must not be sealed up: for we have known the voice of the trumpet of the seventh seal in Ternario Sancto, in the holy Ternary, therefore we may well speak of our native country, to which our labour [or journey] tendeth. 3. None should suppose us to be ignorant, in that we write so very deeply; for if we did not see and know it, we must be silent: it is a common saying, What the heart is full of, that the mouth speaketh. This [which we have written] was not sought by this hand: But it is written, / am found of them that sought me not, neither did they enquire after me. 4. 1 was as simple concerning the hidden Mysteries, as the meanest of all; but my virgin of the wonders of God taught me, so that I must write of his wonders: though indeed my purpose is to write this for a Memorandum for myself, and yet I shall speak as for many, which is known to God.
25. And now being to speak of the seventh form of nature, we see that the corporeity especially subsisteth therein, for a spirit is void [or crude] without a body: whereas there is no understanding without a body: and, moreover, the spirit itself doth not subsist without a body. For a form in the spirit is a hunger, and a longing desire, of one form after another. 6. For all things stand in the will, and are driven on in the will; for if I have [or conceive] no will to go, my body standeth still; therefore my will carries me; and if I have no desire towards a place, then there is also no will in me; but if I desire anything, then that is the will of the essences. 7. And yet the essences desire nothing but preservation and sustenance of the body, for the body is food: and the whole essence of all essences is a continual hunger and satiating [or fulfilling], and a regeneration, or propagation, from its fulness: as may be seen, that each form of the spirit desireth the other in its hunger, and when that is attained, another, or second form, ariseth out of it; and yet the first doth not vanish, but the other, or second, formeth itself in the first, into another source or property: and yet both keep one in the other, each in its own property: as we have written concerning nature, in six forms, how one
3proceedeth from the other, and how one causeth the other, that it be generated, and yet each keepeth its property in the other; and there now they stand in six forms one in another. 8. And so there is no place of rest, but there is a constant desire of all the six forms, as a hunger out of which the will is continually generated: and yet there is nothing wherein rest can be, but the still eternity: and yet also this cannot be apprehended or found in the wheel of the fiery essences: and therefore the hungry nature seeketh in its mother ( viz. in the desire of the sourness), and the sourness catcheth hold of the desire of the essences, and holdeth it fast: and thus all essences of the hunger are held in the sour mother for she is their only rest, which they fill again with that which is in them, that is, with themselves. 9. And herein consisteth the dominion of a spirit: for nature doth consist not only in seven forms, but there may (out of every desire) again a will be generated, wherein the essences subsist again, but alterably, according to the desire of that will, where there is no number found, as you may see in the creation of the world. 10. But seeing the eternal essence doth desire a certain bound or limit, further and more than which, or to go higher, or to be other, it desireth not, therefore the heart generateth itself, which is the end of nature; and the heart is the fulfilling of the eternal [being, essence, or substance] .
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.
11. WHEN we thus shew you the way of the light, the spirit is pleased, not to speak barely as in a history, but to set forth the light in its deepest depth, in its wellspring or fountain that you may look as through an opened seal, Ternarium Sanctum, into the holy Ternary [or the eternal essentiality] . 2. For seeing the hidden Mystery of the kingdom of God shall be revealed in the seventh seal, the Lamb himself shall be Shepherd over the sheep, therefore it must not be sealed up: for we have known the voice of the trumpet of the seventh seal in Ternario Sancto, in the holy Ternary, therefore we may well speak of our native country, to which our labour [or journey] tendeth. 3. None should suppose us to be ignorant, in that we write so very deeply; for if we did not see and know it, we must be silent: it is a common saying, What the heart is full of, that the mouth speaketh. This [which we have written] was not sought by this hand: But it is written, / am found of them that sought me not, neither did they enquire after me. 4. 1 was as simple concerning the hidden Mysteries, as the meanest of all; but my virgin of the wonders of God taught me, so that I must write of his wonders: though indeed my purpose is to write this for a Memorandum for myself, and yet I shall speak as for many, which is known to God.
25. And now being to speak of the seventh form of nature, we see that the corporeity especially subsisteth therein, for a spirit is void [or crude] without a body: whereas there is no understanding without a body: and, moreover, the spirit itself doth not subsist without a body. For a form in the spirit is a hunger, and a longing desire, of one form after another. 6. For all things stand in the will, and are driven on in the will; for if I have [or conceive] no will to go, my body standeth still; therefore my will carries me; and if I have no desire towards a place, then there is also no will in me; but if I desire anything, then that is the will of the essences. 7. And yet the essences desire nothing but preservation and sustenance of the body, for the body is food: and the whole essence of all essences is a continual hunger and satiating [or fulfilling], and a regeneration, or propagation, from its fulness: as may be seen, that each form of the spirit desireth the other in its hunger, and when that is attained, another, or second form, ariseth out of it; and yet the first doth not vanish, but the other, or second, formeth itself in the first, into another source or property: and yet both keep one in the other, each in its own property: as we have written concerning nature, in six forms, how one
3proceedeth from the other, and how one causeth the other, that it be generated, and yet each keepeth its property in the other; and there now they stand in six forms one in another. 8. And so there is no place of rest, but there is a constant desire of all the six forms, as a hunger out of which the will is continually generated: and yet there is nothing wherein rest can be, but the still eternity: and yet also this cannot be apprehended or found in the wheel of the fiery essences: and therefore the hungry nature seeketh in its mother ( viz. in the desire of the sourness), and the sourness catcheth hold of the desire of the essences, and holdeth it fast: and thus all essences of the hunger are held in the sour mother for she is their only rest, which they fill again with that which is in them, that is, with themselves. 9. And herein consisteth the dominion of a spirit: for nature doth consist not only in seven forms, but there may (out of every desire) again a will be generated, wherein the essences subsist again, but alterably, according to the desire of that will, where there is no number found, as you may see in the creation of the world. 10. But seeing the eternal essence doth desire a certain bound or limit, further and more than which, or to go higher, or to be other, it desireth not, therefore the heart generateth itself, which is the end of nature; and the heart is the fulfilling of the eternal [being, essence, or substance] .
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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