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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.
19. Now since we speak of the Holy Trinity, as of one only God, in one only essence; therefore we say, that the Holy Spirit goeth forth from the Father and the Son. And seeing God is every where, and himself filleth all things in the whole deep, therefore the mind asketh, Whither doth the spirit go forth, seeing it is in the mouth of God, and also remaineth only in God, as a spirit in a body? 10. Here see Apocalypse the fourth, there appeareth before the throne of the Ancient [of Days] a glassy sea, wherein standeth the seats of the twenty-four elders, with the Lamb, which was slain and liveth eternally: and the Ancient [of Days] sitting upon the throne, hath the book with seven seals, which the Lamb that was slain took out of his hand, and broke open the seals. 11. There you see the seventh spirit of the divine nature, which is the joy of the Majesty of God, wherein the Trinity manifesteth itself; and you see the true angelical world: For the sea is the water-spirit, which in the original of nature, is the fierce sourness, but it getteth a shriek [or aspect] from the light of God, where this form departeth: and the crack or shriek, in the darkness, turneth to be a sinking down into death; where yet the captivated shriek in the light (which is now called joy) is also a sinking down, and is turned into meekness, wherein the light shineth: And it is like unto a glassy sea.
212. But it is the corporeity [body or substance]of the divine nature; and herein the seven spirits of God, viz. the seven burning torches, are revealed, which the angel in the Revelation biddeth to be written; but the seven thunders in the dark matrix in the fierce nature, he biddeth to be sealed, and not written: for they would be opened one after another, and pour forth their wonders, which none should know, till they are past; till the seventh seal in Ternario sancto is opened, and then shall the hidden Mystery of the kingdom of God be finished, when the seventh angel soundeth his trumpet. 13. And here we give you to understand what Moses saith; God created the heaven out of the midst of the waters. Behold, thou seeking mind ! this glassy sea (which is the water-spirit in the presence of God) is the matrix, out of which the word Fiat created the element of water: for the element of water in this world is an out-birth out of the matrix of the heaven.
314. For they use to say, God dwelleth in heaven, and it is true; and that heaven is the comprehension of God, wherein God hath manifested himself through the creatures, viz. the angels and the souls of men: for in this seventh form (viz. in the glassy sea) the nature of the Father standeth revealed in great holiness, not in the fire; but the word is the fire of this source [or property], and the Holy Spirit here goeth forth through the Word, in the angelical world, and formeth everything that groweth and liveth; for he is the spirit of life, in this source [or property]. 15. Behold, thou seeking mind ! I shew it to you yet more deeply and clearly; thus nature is
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.
19. Now since we speak of the Holy Trinity, as of one only God, in one only essence; therefore we say, that the Holy Spirit goeth forth from the Father and the Son. And seeing God is every where, and himself filleth all things in the whole deep, therefore the mind asketh, Whither doth the spirit go forth, seeing it is in the mouth of God, and also remaineth only in God, as a spirit in a body? 10. Here see Apocalypse the fourth, there appeareth before the throne of the Ancient [of Days] a glassy sea, wherein standeth the seats of the twenty-four elders, with the Lamb, which was slain and liveth eternally: and the Ancient [of Days] sitting upon the throne, hath the book with seven seals, which the Lamb that was slain took out of his hand, and broke open the seals. 11. There you see the seventh spirit of the divine nature, which is the joy of the Majesty of God, wherein the Trinity manifesteth itself; and you see the true angelical world: For the sea is the water-spirit, which in the original of nature, is the fierce sourness, but it getteth a shriek [or aspect] from the light of God, where this form departeth: and the crack or shriek, in the darkness, turneth to be a sinking down into death; where yet the captivated shriek in the light (which is now called joy) is also a sinking down, and is turned into meekness, wherein the light shineth: And it is like unto a glassy sea.
212. But it is the corporeity [body or substance]of the divine nature; and herein the seven spirits of God, viz. the seven burning torches, are revealed, which the angel in the Revelation biddeth to be written; but the seven thunders in the dark matrix in the fierce nature, he biddeth to be sealed, and not written: for they would be opened one after another, and pour forth their wonders, which none should know, till they are past; till the seventh seal in Ternario sancto is opened, and then shall the hidden Mystery of the kingdom of God be finished, when the seventh angel soundeth his trumpet. 13. And here we give you to understand what Moses saith; God created the heaven out of the midst of the waters. Behold, thou seeking mind ! this glassy sea (which is the water-spirit in the presence of God) is the matrix, out of which the word Fiat created the element of water: for the element of water in this world is an out-birth out of the matrix of the heaven.
314. For they use to say, God dwelleth in heaven, and it is true; and that heaven is the comprehension of God, wherein God hath manifested himself through the creatures, viz. the angels and the souls of men: for in this seventh form (viz. in the glassy sea) the nature of the Father standeth revealed in great holiness, not in the fire; but the word is the fire of this source [or property], and the Holy Spirit here goeth forth through the Word, in the angelical world, and formeth everything that groweth and liveth; for he is the spirit of life, in this source [or property]. 15. Behold, thou seeking mind ! I shew it to you yet more deeply and clearly; thus nature is
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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