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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.
160. We have too much experience of this, that many times the Holy Ghost is called a devil, and the devil called a good spirit; which happeneth out of ignorance: for the flattering hypocrites do so fill the ears of the laity with their eloquence in their sermons, and drawing the Scriptures to their desire [and meaning] . 61. 0 what horrible blasphemy it is, that the spirit of God must be thus slandered by the image of God; though we do not say that the image itself doth it, but the serpent in the image: so soon as the mind is turned away from God, the serpent taketh hold of it, and then ruleth it, and poureth forth blasphemies against God, and his children. Therefore observe this following text. [Here the Author again sheweth the Eternal Being.] 62. As God the Father himself is All; he is the Number Three of the Deity; he is the Majesty; he is the still eternity; he is the nature, and in it he is the love and the anger: the anger is a cause of his strength and might; as also a cause of life, and of all mobility, as the poison [or gall] in man is: and the love is a cause of the Heart of his Majesty, and a cause of the Number Three, and of the Three Principles.
263. And as we know and have mentioned before, that the fire is a cause of the light, for without fire there would be no light, so there would be no love without light; the light is love [or pleasantness], for it is kind and amiable, and we see that the light and the fire have two several [properties or] sources; the fire is biting, wrathful, devouring and consuming; and the light is pleasant, sweet, and desirous of a body; the love desireth a body; and the fire also desireth a body for its nourishment, but devoureth it quite; and the light raiseth it up [vivivies it], and desireth to fill it; it taketh nothing away from the body, but quickeneth it, and maketh it friendly. 64. So you must understand us concerning the eternal Being. The eternal Being is so, and if it were not so, all would be as nothing, but an eternal stillness without being; and that we find to be so in every thing. 65. Thus we may consider with ourselves, whence it ariseth that there is a wrathful and a good will: For you see the fire hath two spirits, one is that which proceedeth from the heat, and the other that which proceedeth from the light: Now the heat is nature, and the light is the eternal liberty without [or beyond] nature: for nature comprehendeth not the light. 66. And so you must understand us concerning the two sorts of wills in God, the one is nature,
3and is not called God, and yet is God's, for he is angry, severe, sharp as a sting, consuming, attracting all things to himself, and devouring them, always striving, to fly up above the light, [which is the other will], and yet cannot; as the fire doth, which the higher it flieth, the higher goeth the light, and so they may well be called two Principles. 67. For the light desireth substantiality, and preserveth the substantiality, and doth not consume it: but the fire desireth to devour all things, and turn them to nothing; and when it hath turned all to nothing, it becometh a darkness. 68. And therefore God hath moved himself in the light of meekness, and attracted the meekness, so that the light hath a substantiality, and that is water, or in Ternario sancto the water spirit, which holdeth the fire captive; so that the fire is a darkness, and is not known, except it be kindled, and it standeth in itself in the hunger, in the eternal darkness, and so is a continual desire. 69. Out of such an original came the devils, for it is the fierce wrath of God, and whatsoever is false and evil, hath its original thus out of this matrix [Or womb], as also all the creatures of this world, let it be heaven, the stars, the earth, or what it will; they have all a twofold source, viz. the fire and the water: in those two consist all bodies, heavenly and earthly; the heavenly consist in the matrix of the water, and they have the fire hidden in them.
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.
160. We have too much experience of this, that many times the Holy Ghost is called a devil, and the devil called a good spirit; which happeneth out of ignorance: for the flattering hypocrites do so fill the ears of the laity with their eloquence in their sermons, and drawing the Scriptures to their desire [and meaning] . 61. 0 what horrible blasphemy it is, that the spirit of God must be thus slandered by the image of God; though we do not say that the image itself doth it, but the serpent in the image: so soon as the mind is turned away from God, the serpent taketh hold of it, and then ruleth it, and poureth forth blasphemies against God, and his children. Therefore observe this following text. [Here the Author again sheweth the Eternal Being.] 62. As God the Father himself is All; he is the Number Three of the Deity; he is the Majesty; he is the still eternity; he is the nature, and in it he is the love and the anger: the anger is a cause of his strength and might; as also a cause of life, and of all mobility, as the poison [or gall] in man is: and the love is a cause of the Heart of his Majesty, and a cause of the Number Three, and of the Three Principles.
263. And as we know and have mentioned before, that the fire is a cause of the light, for without fire there would be no light, so there would be no love without light; the light is love [or pleasantness], for it is kind and amiable, and we see that the light and the fire have two several [properties or] sources; the fire is biting, wrathful, devouring and consuming; and the light is pleasant, sweet, and desirous of a body; the love desireth a body; and the fire also desireth a body for its nourishment, but devoureth it quite; and the light raiseth it up [vivivies it], and desireth to fill it; it taketh nothing away from the body, but quickeneth it, and maketh it friendly. 64. So you must understand us concerning the eternal Being. The eternal Being is so, and if it were not so, all would be as nothing, but an eternal stillness without being; and that we find to be so in every thing. 65. Thus we may consider with ourselves, whence it ariseth that there is a wrathful and a good will: For you see the fire hath two spirits, one is that which proceedeth from the heat, and the other that which proceedeth from the light: Now the heat is nature, and the light is the eternal liberty without [or beyond] nature: for nature comprehendeth not the light. 66. And so you must understand us concerning the two sorts of wills in God, the one is nature,
3and is not called God, and yet is God's, for he is angry, severe, sharp as a sting, consuming, attracting all things to himself, and devouring them, always striving, to fly up above the light, [which is the other will], and yet cannot; as the fire doth, which the higher it flieth, the higher goeth the light, and so they may well be called two Principles. 67. For the light desireth substantiality, and preserveth the substantiality, and doth not consume it: but the fire desireth to devour all things, and turn them to nothing; and when it hath turned all to nothing, it becometh a darkness. 68. And therefore God hath moved himself in the light of meekness, and attracted the meekness, so that the light hath a substantiality, and that is water, or in Ternario sancto the water spirit, which holdeth the fire captive; so that the fire is a darkness, and is not known, except it be kindled, and it standeth in itself in the hunger, in the eternal darkness, and so is a continual desire. 69. Out of such an original came the devils, for it is the fierce wrath of God, and whatsoever is false and evil, hath its original thus out of this matrix [Or womb], as also all the creatures of this world, let it be heaven, the stars, the earth, or what it will; they have all a twofold source, viz. the fire and the water: in those two consist all bodies, heavenly and earthly; the heavenly consist in the matrix of the water, and they have the fire hidden in them.
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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