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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.
1my Saviour and Regenerator in my soul: He will give me a heavenly body, which will remain eternally. 9. Try this, and thou shalt find wonders, thou shalt soon get one in thee, who will help thee to wrestle, fight and pray: And though thou canst not use many words, it is no matter, though you can say no more than the publican: O God, be merciful to me, a sinner. When thy will and all thy reason is once placed upon God, with a resolution not to leave him, though body and soul should be broken asunder, then thou holdest God [fast], and breakest through death, hell, and heaven, and goest into the temple of JESUS CHRIST, in spite of all the opposition of the devil: The anger of God cannot withhold thee, how great and powerful soever it is in thee; and though body and soul did burn in the anger, and stood in the midst of hell with all the devils; yet thou wouldst break forth, and come into the temple of Christ; and there thou wouldst get the Garland of Pearl, adorned with the noble and highly Precious Stone, that Lapis Philo-Angularis, The Chief Corner Stone. 10. But you must know, that the kingdom of heaven is thus sown in thee, and is small as a grain of mustard- seed, yet thou hast great joy with this angelical garland; but look to it, and set it not upon the old Adam, else it will go with thee as it did with Adam; keep what thou hast; necessity or want is an evil guest.
211. At length a young plant groweth to be a tree, if it standeth in good ground; but many a rough and cold wind bloweth upon a young plant before it cometh to be a tree; it is unsteady: Thou must be brought before the tree of temptation, and also into the wilderness of contempt and scorn in this world; if thou dost not hold out, thou hast nothing: If thou rootest up thy plant, thou dost as Adam did, thou wilt more hardly set it again than at first, and yet it groweth in the valley of roses [paradisical essence], hidden to the old Adam. 12. For it was a long time from Adam till the humanity of Christ, in which [time] the tree of pearl grew hidden under the veil of Moses, and yet in its time it came forth as a tree with fair fruits. 13. Therefore, if thou hast fallen, and hast lost the fair garland; do not despair, seek, knock, and come again, do as thou didst at first, and then thou wilt find by experience, from what spirit this pen and hand hath written: thou wilt afterwards get a tree instead of thy plant: And then thou wilt say, Is my plant, during my sleep, become a tree? Then you will begin to know the Philosopher's Stone; observe it. The Gates of the Firmamental Heaven, with the Stars and Elements. Also of the Threefold Life of Man. The Noble Stone rightly brought forth into the Light, Spiritually, for the Magi [or those that are wise].
314. If we will speak of the Noble Stone, and bring it forth into the light to be known, we must first shew the darkness and deformity of the stone, which hinder that it is not known. For, since we know that the noble stone lieth hidden in this world, and may be had everywhere, and yet is not known, we should therefore seek to know the cause why it is so hidden. 15. Reason saith, If this [outward] world be so dangerous for man, why hath God set him therein? Or, Why hath he created it? And thus he judgeth also concerning the devil; [saying], Why hath not God turned the devil into nothing again since his fall? 16. Yes, beloved reason, thou hast found the stone, and with it thou buildest a house of stone to dwell in. The noble stone lieth in the eternity: that which is eternal breaketh not, but that which hath a beginning breaketh. The devils are eternal, and therefore they break not; they were not in the form [or condition] of a spirit from eternity, but their essences are eternal. 17. And they have put their will into their essences, and their will is eternal: as the centre of nature [viz.] of the stern matrix, is eternal, into which their will is entered, so now they are eternal spirits therein, [viz. in the stern matrix] : Also they are as a looking-glass for the other angels, and for the souls of men. 18. But that God should cast away the Third Principle, [that is, the created world], for man's
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.
1my Saviour and Regenerator in my soul: He will give me a heavenly body, which will remain eternally. 9. Try this, and thou shalt find wonders, thou shalt soon get one in thee, who will help thee to wrestle, fight and pray: And though thou canst not use many words, it is no matter, though you can say no more than the publican: O God, be merciful to me, a sinner. When thy will and all thy reason is once placed upon God, with a resolution not to leave him, though body and soul should be broken asunder, then thou holdest God [fast], and breakest through death, hell, and heaven, and goest into the temple of JESUS CHRIST, in spite of all the opposition of the devil: The anger of God cannot withhold thee, how great and powerful soever it is in thee; and though body and soul did burn in the anger, and stood in the midst of hell with all the devils; yet thou wouldst break forth, and come into the temple of Christ; and there thou wouldst get the Garland of Pearl, adorned with the noble and highly Precious Stone, that Lapis Philo-Angularis, The Chief Corner Stone. 10. But you must know, that the kingdom of heaven is thus sown in thee, and is small as a grain of mustard- seed, yet thou hast great joy with this angelical garland; but look to it, and set it not upon the old Adam, else it will go with thee as it did with Adam; keep what thou hast; necessity or want is an evil guest.
211. At length a young plant groweth to be a tree, if it standeth in good ground; but many a rough and cold wind bloweth upon a young plant before it cometh to be a tree; it is unsteady: Thou must be brought before the tree of temptation, and also into the wilderness of contempt and scorn in this world; if thou dost not hold out, thou hast nothing: If thou rootest up thy plant, thou dost as Adam did, thou wilt more hardly set it again than at first, and yet it groweth in the valley of roses [paradisical essence], hidden to the old Adam. 12. For it was a long time from Adam till the humanity of Christ, in which [time] the tree of pearl grew hidden under the veil of Moses, and yet in its time it came forth as a tree with fair fruits. 13. Therefore, if thou hast fallen, and hast lost the fair garland; do not despair, seek, knock, and come again, do as thou didst at first, and then thou wilt find by experience, from what spirit this pen and hand hath written: thou wilt afterwards get a tree instead of thy plant: And then thou wilt say, Is my plant, during my sleep, become a tree? Then you will begin to know the Philosopher's Stone; observe it. The Gates of the Firmamental Heaven, with the Stars and Elements. Also of the Threefold Life of Man. The Noble Stone rightly brought forth into the Light, Spiritually, for the Magi [or those that are wise].
314. If we will speak of the Noble Stone, and bring it forth into the light to be known, we must first shew the darkness and deformity of the stone, which hinder that it is not known. For, since we know that the noble stone lieth hidden in this world, and may be had everywhere, and yet is not known, we should therefore seek to know the cause why it is so hidden. 15. Reason saith, If this [outward] world be so dangerous for man, why hath God set him therein? Or, Why hath he created it? And thus he judgeth also concerning the devil; [saying], Why hath not God turned the devil into nothing again since his fall? 16. Yes, beloved reason, thou hast found the stone, and with it thou buildest a house of stone to dwell in. The noble stone lieth in the eternity: that which is eternal breaketh not, but that which hath a beginning breaketh. The devils are eternal, and therefore they break not; they were not in the form [or condition] of a spirit from eternity, but their essences are eternal. 17. And they have put their will into their essences, and their will is eternal: as the centre of nature [viz.] of the stern matrix, is eternal, into which their will is entered, so now they are eternal spirits therein, [viz. in the stern matrix] : Also they are as a looking-glass for the other angels, and for the souls of men. 18. But that God should cast away the Third Principle, [that is, the created world], for man's
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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