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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.
1before God, out of the matrix of the earth, like the first body which was in Adam, and must receive [or assume] our human soul into it, and enter into death [suffer death], and bring us out of death on the cross into the element again, into the substantiality in the presence of God, in Ternarium sanctum [into the Holy Ternary]: For Adam's soul was taken on the cross in the eternal centre, where the Heart of God ariseth from eternity, and was breathed into the created body of Adam from the spirit of God: and therefore the Heart of God must become man [be incarnate]. 140. And as Adam was entered into the earthly cross, into the death of the four elements; so must the New Adam ( Christ) suffer himself to be hanged on the earthly cross, and enter into the earthly elementary death; for death sticketh not only in the earth, but also in the air, and Adam desired also with his imagination, not [to enter] into the earth, but into the air: he lusted after the spirit of the Principle of this world; and it laid hold on him: And so he fell also into the earth. 141. For the four elements are altogether in one another, and the ground [or foundation] upon which they stand, is the fire of the fierce anger of God, wherein the devils dwell, as is above mentioned. 142. And so the New Adam (Christ) must
2enter into the abyss of the four elements, viz. into the hellish fire of the wrath, and press through [or pass] the hell of the wrath, through death, and bring the human soul again into the paradise of God. 143. And therefore the New Adam ( Christ) was [tempted or] tried forty days in the wilderness, whether he could stand in the paradisical source [or property], and so eat only paradisical fruit, which groweth in the source [or property] from the essences of the spirit of God; and there he did eat, ex verbo Domini [of the Word of the Lord], and not at all of the four elements. 144. For he did bear also the earthly image, and there the new heavenly must overcome the earthly, and the soul must enter again into the new heavenly body, that the earthly may but only hang to it: And thus also was Adam created in the beginning. 145. He was to eat of paradise, whose property should rule over the earthly; and though he was in the four elements, yet he was to live in the pure element; and then he might have continued so eternally; though the outward Principle should be broken, yet he would have remained. 146. For he was in paradise, and not in the four elements; but when he entered into them, he entered into death; and the anger of God, in the abyss of hell, did captivate the soul, which Christ brought forth from thence again.
3147. O ye children of men ! Mark what is revealed to you, do not account it a fiction and a history. It is known in Ternario Sancto, in the opened seal of the seventh form, in the centre, therefore consider what it is. 148. Hereby is signified to you the final breaking of the outward Principle: Trim your lamps, the bridegroom is ready, his trumpet soundeth, the seventh angel from the throne of heaven soundeth: The Mysteries of the kingdom of God shall be accomplished at the time of his sounding; and then there is no time more in the four elements; but then the eternal time in the element in the life of God, and the time in the abyss, goeth on. 149. Go out from the languages in Babel: for we all speak but one only language in Jerusalem. Babel burneth in the fire [or confounded Christendom is kindled in wars, contention, and strife, in famine, and pestilence, in the anger of God]. Amen. THE SIXTH CHAPTER The Two Gates: Of the World, and also of Paradise: most highly to be considered. 1. WE have shewn you before, the ground of the language of nature, how Adam
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.
1before God, out of the matrix of the earth, like the first body which was in Adam, and must receive [or assume] our human soul into it, and enter into death [suffer death], and bring us out of death on the cross into the element again, into the substantiality in the presence of God, in Ternarium sanctum [into the Holy Ternary]: For Adam's soul was taken on the cross in the eternal centre, where the Heart of God ariseth from eternity, and was breathed into the created body of Adam from the spirit of God: and therefore the Heart of God must become man [be incarnate]. 140. And as Adam was entered into the earthly cross, into the death of the four elements; so must the New Adam ( Christ) suffer himself to be hanged on the earthly cross, and enter into the earthly elementary death; for death sticketh not only in the earth, but also in the air, and Adam desired also with his imagination, not [to enter] into the earth, but into the air: he lusted after the spirit of the Principle of this world; and it laid hold on him: And so he fell also into the earth. 141. For the four elements are altogether in one another, and the ground [or foundation] upon which they stand, is the fire of the fierce anger of God, wherein the devils dwell, as is above mentioned. 142. And so the New Adam (Christ) must
2enter into the abyss of the four elements, viz. into the hellish fire of the wrath, and press through [or pass] the hell of the wrath, through death, and bring the human soul again into the paradise of God. 143. And therefore the New Adam ( Christ) was [tempted or] tried forty days in the wilderness, whether he could stand in the paradisical source [or property], and so eat only paradisical fruit, which groweth in the source [or property] from the essences of the spirit of God; and there he did eat, ex verbo Domini [of the Word of the Lord], and not at all of the four elements. 144. For he did bear also the earthly image, and there the new heavenly must overcome the earthly, and the soul must enter again into the new heavenly body, that the earthly may but only hang to it: And thus also was Adam created in the beginning. 145. He was to eat of paradise, whose property should rule over the earthly; and though he was in the four elements, yet he was to live in the pure element; and then he might have continued so eternally; though the outward Principle should be broken, yet he would have remained. 146. For he was in paradise, and not in the four elements; but when he entered into them, he entered into death; and the anger of God, in the abyss of hell, did captivate the soul, which Christ brought forth from thence again.
3147. O ye children of men ! Mark what is revealed to you, do not account it a fiction and a history. It is known in Ternario Sancto, in the opened seal of the seventh form, in the centre, therefore consider what it is. 148. Hereby is signified to you the final breaking of the outward Principle: Trim your lamps, the bridegroom is ready, his trumpet soundeth, the seventh angel from the throne of heaven soundeth: The Mysteries of the kingdom of God shall be accomplished at the time of his sounding; and then there is no time more in the four elements; but then the eternal time in the element in the life of God, and the time in the abyss, goeth on. 149. Go out from the languages in Babel: for we all speak but one only language in Jerusalem. Babel burneth in the fire [or confounded Christendom is kindled in wars, contention, and strife, in famine, and pestilence, in the anger of God]. Amen. THE SIXTH CHAPTER The Two Gates: Of the World, and also of Paradise: most highly to be considered. 1. WE have shewn you before, the ground of the language of nature, how Adam
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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