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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.
1shall be free again) that it shall get a body again out of the property [and source] of its own mother, where then all its works in its mother shall appear before it. 130. For the Last Day is only to awaken again that which slept, and to break the death which is in the four elements: For the veil must be done away, and all that which is generated out of the eternal must spring up again and live. 131. But that which is generated out of the death, viz. out of the four elements, as the beasts, and every living thing of the four elements, attain no body any more; and if the spirit of it be with the four elements also, and the figure only remaineth of the elementary substance, viz. of the four out-births. 132. But that which is out of the eternal (out of the centre of the eternal life) is and remaineth for ever: even all words and works which are generated out of the eternal, remain in the substance of the figure: but they cannot remain for ever in the spirit and power, for a word of a spirit [breath] doth not proceed from the eternity, but hath its beginning in the outward Principle. 133. And therefore every spirit will have joy and sorrow in its works and words in eternity, all according as it is in its place and source, or property.
2For, when the spirit shall consider with itself its source [or condition ], and why it is in the place where it is, then the source or property of its words and works ascend in it; and giveth it joy or sorrow, according to the condition or source and place that it is in, every one in [that which is] its own duly. 134. But you must know, that the sins, evil works and words of the new Regenerate in Christ, sprout out from the death of Christ (into which the children of Christ are again entered/rom their sins), and shall receive another source [or property] : and in the beholding and considering of them, the spirit shall make a hymn of thanks to the praise of God's works of wonder; as Isaiah saith, Though your sins were red as blood (if you turn), they shall be as wool, white as snow. And yet you must know, that in the life to come they shall appear in the figure, but in another source [or property] . Mark this, ye children of God, for much is herein contained. 135. From this ground we know, that Adam in his innocency before his sleep, (which signifieth death, when he had imagined into the spirit of the four elements), was in this world in paradise; and yet it might well be said, not in this world; he was indeed in this world upon the face of the earth, but in a paradisical source [or property] in the dominion of the [one pure ] element, and not in the four elements.
3136. But when he entered into the four elements, he entered into death, and his body became like a beast; and the earth was cursed from the Lord, so that it bare no more paradisical fruit: For Adam was driven out, into the outward Principle: and there he must eat earthly fruit, and open [or manifest] the wonders of the outward Principle, and so he instantly became earthly. 137. For his body was from the earth, and created out of the earth, but it was not earth, [any more than gold is earth, though it groweth in the earth, and proceedeth from the earth], for it was Ex Matrix, ex Massa; [from the matrix, out of a mass] ; understand, out of the substantiality out of which the earth was originally generated and created. The pure element is also in the earth, as also paradise: and it is only the source [or property] that maketh the alteration, wherein the light of God is detained. 138. Adam would be as God in all the three principles; and the serpent also persuaded Eve to it, that if she would eat of the fruit of the earth, she should know good and evil: indeed evil enough; care, misery, and sorrows; in the death of the four elements. 139. And therefore, seeing the four elements must break, thence it is that corruption [perishableness, transitoriness] is in man's body; and the soul (which is taken out of the eternal) remaineth in the eternal: therefore there must come a heavenly body out of the pure element again, out of the substantiality [which 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.
1shall be free again) that it shall get a body again out of the property [and source] of its own mother, where then all its works in its mother shall appear before it. 130. For the Last Day is only to awaken again that which slept, and to break the death which is in the four elements: For the veil must be done away, and all that which is generated out of the eternal must spring up again and live. 131. But that which is generated out of the death, viz. out of the four elements, as the beasts, and every living thing of the four elements, attain no body any more; and if the spirit of it be with the four elements also, and the figure only remaineth of the elementary substance, viz. of the four out-births. 132. But that which is out of the eternal (out of the centre of the eternal life) is and remaineth for ever: even all words and works which are generated out of the eternal, remain in the substance of the figure: but they cannot remain for ever in the spirit and power, for a word of a spirit [breath] doth not proceed from the eternity, but hath its beginning in the outward Principle. 133. And therefore every spirit will have joy and sorrow in its works and words in eternity, all according as it is in its place and source, or property.
2For, when the spirit shall consider with itself its source [or condition ], and why it is in the place where it is, then the source or property of its words and works ascend in it; and giveth it joy or sorrow, according to the condition or source and place that it is in, every one in [that which is] its own duly. 134. But you must know, that the sins, evil works and words of the new Regenerate in Christ, sprout out from the death of Christ (into which the children of Christ are again entered/rom their sins), and shall receive another source [or property] : and in the beholding and considering of them, the spirit shall make a hymn of thanks to the praise of God's works of wonder; as Isaiah saith, Though your sins were red as blood (if you turn), they shall be as wool, white as snow. And yet you must know, that in the life to come they shall appear in the figure, but in another source [or property] . Mark this, ye children of God, for much is herein contained. 135. From this ground we know, that Adam in his innocency before his sleep, (which signifieth death, when he had imagined into the spirit of the four elements), was in this world in paradise; and yet it might well be said, not in this world; he was indeed in this world upon the face of the earth, but in a paradisical source [or property] in the dominion of the [one pure ] element, and not in the four elements.
3136. But when he entered into the four elements, he entered into death, and his body became like a beast; and the earth was cursed from the Lord, so that it bare no more paradisical fruit: For Adam was driven out, into the outward Principle: and there he must eat earthly fruit, and open [or manifest] the wonders of the outward Principle, and so he instantly became earthly. 137. For his body was from the earth, and created out of the earth, but it was not earth, [any more than gold is earth, though it groweth in the earth, and proceedeth from the earth], for it was Ex Matrix, ex Massa; [from the matrix, out of a mass] ; understand, out of the substantiality out of which the earth was originally generated and created. The pure element is also in the earth, as also paradise: and it is only the source [or property] that maketh the alteration, wherein the light of God is detained. 138. Adam would be as God in all the three principles; and the serpent also persuaded Eve to it, that if she would eat of the fruit of the earth, she should know good and evil: indeed evil enough; care, misery, and sorrows; in the death of the four elements. 139. And therefore, seeing the four elements must break, thence it is that corruption [perishableness, transitoriness] is in man's body; and the soul (which is taken out of the eternal) remaineth in the eternal: therefore there must come a heavenly body out of the pure element again, out of the substantiality [which 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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