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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.
1Sanctus [the holy Ternary or Trinity]: for I mean the Number Three [or Trinity] in the substantiality, ( viz. in the angelical world) where the Three Persons have revealed themselves. 40. Now therefore we say very rightly, that the Son is the Word of the Father, which the Father speaketh. But now the deep mind asketh, Whither doth he speak it? [Or, into what doth he speak it forth?] Behold! the Word is the Heart, and soundeth in the essences [or working powers] of the Father; and the Heart speaketh it in the mouth of the Father, and in the mouth the Holy Spirit of the Father comprehendeth it, in his centre, and so goeth with it forth, from the Father and the Son, into the Substantiality, where it standeth with the glance of the Majesty, as a virgin of the wisdom of God, in Ternario Sancto [in the Holy Ternary] . 41. This which is spoken forth is an image of the holy Number Three, and a virgin, but without substance, yet a similitude of God. In this virgin, the Holy Ghost openeth the great wonders of God the Father, which are in his hidden seals. 42. Moreover the Holy Ghost manifesteth the opened seals of the Heart of God in the glance of the Majesty, which stand in the light, and are called the seven spirits of God.
243. Thus the image of the wisdom of God standeth in substance among the seven burning spirits, which burn in the light of God, (for they are the divine nature): and it hath the seven stars (of the hidden seals, which stand in the anger of the Father in his centre) in its hand: for the Heart of God is the might of the Number Three, as the Apocalypse sheweth you in the first chapter. The highly precious Gate for Man to Consider of. 44. This wisdom of God is an eternal virgin, not a woman, but the chastity and purity without blemish, and is an image of God: She is a representation of the Number Three, which generateth nothing; but in her stand the great wonders, which the Holy Ghost discovereth, and the Word of the Father createth, through the sour matrix, viz. the Fiat; and she is the wonderful wisdom without number; in her hath the Holy Ghost discovered the image of angels, as also the image of man, which the Verbum Fiat [the Word which gives being] hath created.
345. She is the great secret mystery in the counsel of God, and goeth into the first Principle, viz. into the anger of the Father, and openeth the wonders in the hidden seals or forms of nature in the wrath, and is comprehended by nothing; for she is an image without substance of generating: the Holy Ghost hath, through her, discovered the Third Principle, which the word Fiat hath made corporeal, out of both the matrixes, (out of both the mothers), of the substantiality: and he hath discovered a limit to that substance in the centre of the seven forms, where they shall go into their ether with the corporeal substance: and yet both the mothers [or matrixes] shall stand in the substantiality, (before the virgin of the wisdom, before the Number Three [or holy Trinity]) in the eternal figure, to God's glory, and his works of wonder. 46. Therefore consider, O ye philosophers, how God created this world in Six Days: for each day's work is a creation [or creature] of a spirit in Ternario sancto: and the Seventh Day is the rest of the Sabbath of God, in the seventh spirit of God, wherein the virgin of the wisdom of God standeth; and therein is no more any working of anxiety, but the eternal perfection of rest. 47. For the six spirits must shed forth their operations of what is in their seals; and are not known before, till they have poured forth the virtue [or power] of their vials in the Principle of this world, which men and [the other] creatures bring
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.
1Sanctus [the holy Ternary or Trinity]: for I mean the Number Three [or Trinity] in the substantiality, ( viz. in the angelical world) where the Three Persons have revealed themselves. 40. Now therefore we say very rightly, that the Son is the Word of the Father, which the Father speaketh. But now the deep mind asketh, Whither doth he speak it? [Or, into what doth he speak it forth?] Behold! the Word is the Heart, and soundeth in the essences [or working powers] of the Father; and the Heart speaketh it in the mouth of the Father, and in the mouth the Holy Spirit of the Father comprehendeth it, in his centre, and so goeth with it forth, from the Father and the Son, into the Substantiality, where it standeth with the glance of the Majesty, as a virgin of the wisdom of God, in Ternario Sancto [in the Holy Ternary] . 41. This which is spoken forth is an image of the holy Number Three, and a virgin, but without substance, yet a similitude of God. In this virgin, the Holy Ghost openeth the great wonders of God the Father, which are in his hidden seals. 42. Moreover the Holy Ghost manifesteth the opened seals of the Heart of God in the glance of the Majesty, which stand in the light, and are called the seven spirits of God.
243. Thus the image of the wisdom of God standeth in substance among the seven burning spirits, which burn in the light of God, (for they are the divine nature): and it hath the seven stars (of the hidden seals, which stand in the anger of the Father in his centre) in its hand: for the Heart of God is the might of the Number Three, as the Apocalypse sheweth you in the first chapter. The highly precious Gate for Man to Consider of. 44. This wisdom of God is an eternal virgin, not a woman, but the chastity and purity without blemish, and is an image of God: She is a representation of the Number Three, which generateth nothing; but in her stand the great wonders, which the Holy Ghost discovereth, and the Word of the Father createth, through the sour matrix, viz. the Fiat; and she is the wonderful wisdom without number; in her hath the Holy Ghost discovered the image of angels, as also the image of man, which the Verbum Fiat [the Word which gives being] hath created.
345. She is the great secret mystery in the counsel of God, and goeth into the first Principle, viz. into the anger of the Father, and openeth the wonders in the hidden seals or forms of nature in the wrath, and is comprehended by nothing; for she is an image without substance of generating: the Holy Ghost hath, through her, discovered the Third Principle, which the word Fiat hath made corporeal, out of both the matrixes, (out of both the mothers), of the substantiality: and he hath discovered a limit to that substance in the centre of the seven forms, where they shall go into their ether with the corporeal substance: and yet both the mothers [or matrixes] shall stand in the substantiality, (before the virgin of the wisdom, before the Number Three [or holy Trinity]) in the eternal figure, to God's glory, and his works of wonder. 46. Therefore consider, O ye philosophers, how God created this world in Six Days: for each day's work is a creation [or creature] of a spirit in Ternario sancto: and the Seventh Day is the rest of the Sabbath of God, in the seventh spirit of God, wherein the virgin of the wisdom of God standeth; and therein is no more any working of anxiety, but the eternal perfection of rest. 47. For the six spirits must shed forth their operations of what is in their seals; and are not known before, till they have poured forth the virtue [or power] of their vials in the Principle of this world, which men and [the other] creatures bring
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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