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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.
1power (in Christ) to become the children of God: And, God willeth that all men should be saved: Also, Thou art not a God that willeth evil, or doth delight in wickedness. And in Ezekiel it is written; As I live, I desire not the death of a sinner, but that he turn and live. 18. For God hath no other will but to save that which is lost: therefore must none despair: for if the spirit of the soul lift up itself earnestly, it is stronger than God, and overcometh God, (for the anger belongeth unto God, and is God's greatest might, which it overcometh): It is stronger than the abyss of hell: It can remove mountains without any stir [a storm], only with its will. For by the will God created heaven and earth; and such a mighty will is hidden also in the soul. 19. But now it swimmeth in misery and much weakness, in the sinking down of death: it is tied and drawn up and down, as a poor captive creature, from one filthy puddle into another; and the devil rolleth it presently in this mire, and presently in that mire again, and so it is like a filthy rag, all mire and dirt: All stars dart their poison into the body, and defile the poor soul: It must endure to be defiled by the beasts, for the body feedeth upon the Jlesh of beasts, wherewith the poor soul is clad. Dost thou know why God did forbid the Jews to eat of some sort of flesh ? Kindle their fat, and consider their property, and thou shalt discern it.
220. The poor soul is a kindled fire, and so when such a property cometh into the soul, dost thou suppose that God will dwell therein? And therefore Christ taught us, saying, Be sober and temperate in eating and drinking; watch and pray; for your adversary the devil goeth about like a roaring lion, and seeketh whom he may devour. 21. Thus you see how we stand in a Threefold Life: the soul standeth upon the abyss, between two Principles, and is tied to them both; and the body merely in the spirit of this world; and therefore that seeketh only after eating and drinking, power and honour, for it belongeth to the earth, and careth little for the poor soul which cometh out of the eternity, [and belongeth to the eternity] . 22. Therefore we ought to tame the body, and not give way to it, but to damp [or kill] its desire, and not satisfy it when it pleaseth, but for necessity only; that it may not grow wanton, and invite the devil to lodge in it. 23. The poor soul must watch and pray, and continually put its will into God's will; it must not give way to the body in any thing, except it hath yielded itself to God first: the soul must not please itself at all in its own power; but cast itself merely upon God, as being itself weak and able to do nothing, (though it be strong), and so continually go out from itself from its natural will, and so fall into the will of God, and then the devil cannot meddle with it.
324. Indeed, it is irksome and troublesome to the body to be broken of its will; but that is no matter, eternity is very long: the body hath but a short time of continuance, and then it returneth to its mother [the earth] : and you know not in what moment death will come, when the body must be gone into its mother; and then it lets the poor soul go whither it can: it is a very inconstant [untrusty] neighbour to the soul. A True Open Gate. [Shewing] How a Man may seek and find himself [From whence he hath his beginning: and what he shall be in the end.] 25. Behold, O man! and consider thyself, what thou art from thy beginning, and what thou shalt be again in the end: and then thou wilt certainly find what home thou art in, in what lodging thou liest captive, and thou wilt find that thou art both a man, and also a beast; thou wilt well see the heavy Fall, if there be but a spark of God's light in thee. 26. For no beast is able to apprehend it, because a beast hath its original only from the life of this world; and therefore we know that there is another manner of life in us, in that we know the ground of this world.
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.
1power (in Christ) to become the children of God: And, God willeth that all men should be saved: Also, Thou art not a God that willeth evil, or doth delight in wickedness. And in Ezekiel it is written; As I live, I desire not the death of a sinner, but that he turn and live. 18. For God hath no other will but to save that which is lost: therefore must none despair: for if the spirit of the soul lift up itself earnestly, it is stronger than God, and overcometh God, (for the anger belongeth unto God, and is God's greatest might, which it overcometh): It is stronger than the abyss of hell: It can remove mountains without any stir [a storm], only with its will. For by the will God created heaven and earth; and such a mighty will is hidden also in the soul. 19. But now it swimmeth in misery and much weakness, in the sinking down of death: it is tied and drawn up and down, as a poor captive creature, from one filthy puddle into another; and the devil rolleth it presently in this mire, and presently in that mire again, and so it is like a filthy rag, all mire and dirt: All stars dart their poison into the body, and defile the poor soul: It must endure to be defiled by the beasts, for the body feedeth upon the Jlesh of beasts, wherewith the poor soul is clad. Dost thou know why God did forbid the Jews to eat of some sort of flesh ? Kindle their fat, and consider their property, and thou shalt discern it.
220. The poor soul is a kindled fire, and so when such a property cometh into the soul, dost thou suppose that God will dwell therein? And therefore Christ taught us, saying, Be sober and temperate in eating and drinking; watch and pray; for your adversary the devil goeth about like a roaring lion, and seeketh whom he may devour. 21. Thus you see how we stand in a Threefold Life: the soul standeth upon the abyss, between two Principles, and is tied to them both; and the body merely in the spirit of this world; and therefore that seeketh only after eating and drinking, power and honour, for it belongeth to the earth, and careth little for the poor soul which cometh out of the eternity, [and belongeth to the eternity] . 22. Therefore we ought to tame the body, and not give way to it, but to damp [or kill] its desire, and not satisfy it when it pleaseth, but for necessity only; that it may not grow wanton, and invite the devil to lodge in it. 23. The poor soul must watch and pray, and continually put its will into God's will; it must not give way to the body in any thing, except it hath yielded itself to God first: the soul must not please itself at all in its own power; but cast itself merely upon God, as being itself weak and able to do nothing, (though it be strong), and so continually go out from itself from its natural will, and so fall into the will of God, and then the devil cannot meddle with it.
324. Indeed, it is irksome and troublesome to the body to be broken of its will; but that is no matter, eternity is very long: the body hath but a short time of continuance, and then it returneth to its mother [the earth] : and you know not in what moment death will come, when the body must be gone into its mother; and then it lets the poor soul go whither it can: it is a very inconstant [untrusty] neighbour to the soul. A True Open Gate. [Shewing] How a Man may seek and find himself [From whence he hath his beginning: and what he shall be in the end.] 25. Behold, O man! and consider thyself, what thou art from thy beginning, and what thou shalt be again in the end: and then thou wilt certainly find what home thou art in, in what lodging thou liest captive, and thou wilt find that thou art both a man, and also a beast; thou wilt well see the heavy Fall, if there be but a spark of God's light in thee. 26. For no beast is able to apprehend it, because a beast hath its original only from the life of this world; and therefore we know that there is another manner of life in us, in that we know the ground of this world.
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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