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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.
167. Here was no counsel in the whole Deity, unless the eternal Word and Heart of God did become man, and did enter into the Third Principle into human flesh and blood, and assume a human soul, and go into death to the poor soul, and did take away the power of death (which held the soul captive) and the wrathful sting of hell, which it had stuck into the soul, and did lead the poor soul out of death, and out of hell, in [by or through] himself. 68. And here we see, that after the Word became man, that man suffered himself to be hanged on the cross, and entered into death on the cross: Understand here, the new living Man born of God went into the abyss, and brake death in the soul, and opened the centre of the soul: He brake all the seven seals of the centre of nature, so that the soul came to have its own powers again; for he kindled the divine fire in the soul again, so that the soul again reached the eternal tincture out of its own fire. 69. And thus it came again into its first mother, in power and Majesty: and the Old Adam hung to the cross as a curse, to the scorn of all devils; there they might do as far as they could with it, as indeed they were busy with the sophisters and Antichrists, the Pharisees. 70. There the devils ran with other subtlety and tricks into holes [corners and secret places] and hid [covered and concealed] the Resurrection, through the ministers
2of the dragon, the Pharisees, which yet pretended to be the ministers of God; but they served the devil in his lies, as is done nowadays, where the death and power of Christ is closed up and denied. 71. This hanging on the cross is nothing else, but that as the soul hath its original upon the cross in the centre of nature, (out of the Word of the Lord, ex verbo Domini), where the name of the Number Three standeth, there hath the Word, of the Father moved itself, and is entered into the humanity, as is heretofore mentioned concerning the virgin, and is become man on the cross, in the eternal and in the earthly virgin; and hath been made a spectacle on the cross, to the old Adamical man and all devils, and their lofty pride; and hath slain death on the cross, and thereby broke through it, and so brought the Adamical man (with flesh and blood) as a spectacle into death; and hath cast away from him all earthliness, and brought him powerfully through death into life. 72. Thus he is new born in God, and sitteth upon the rainbow, on the substantiality and colours of the eternity, in the power of the Majesty; and is a Lord of heaven and of this world, and a judge of hell, and a conquest [Or power] over death.
373. Of this you have a true ground, ye that are regenerated in Christ, that as Christ brought his body, both the heavenly and the earthly, (which he received in his mother Mary), out from death again, and cast away from him nothing else but the earthly source [or property,] viz. the spirit of this [outward] world. 74. So also must our bodies in the power of the souls that are in him, (that is, in his Word and Heart, which is every where), come forth again at the Last [Judgment] Day, and cast away no more from them, but this source and spirit [of the outward world] ; for none rise again in the entire corrupt body, but in the flesh and blood of Christ. 75. But the corrupted spirit (which remaineth in the earthly matrix in its tincture) must appear before the Judgment of God at the end of days; and there shall the sentence and judgment of the Judge Christ be pronounced; and then, after the pronouncing, all goeth into the ether [receptacle or devourer] : and then the spirit of God, which created the world, will execute that sentence. 76. But that I may not meet with false interpreters,
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.
167. Here was no counsel in the whole Deity, unless the eternal Word and Heart of God did become man, and did enter into the Third Principle into human flesh and blood, and assume a human soul, and go into death to the poor soul, and did take away the power of death (which held the soul captive) and the wrathful sting of hell, which it had stuck into the soul, and did lead the poor soul out of death, and out of hell, in [by or through] himself. 68. And here we see, that after the Word became man, that man suffered himself to be hanged on the cross, and entered into death on the cross: Understand here, the new living Man born of God went into the abyss, and brake death in the soul, and opened the centre of the soul: He brake all the seven seals of the centre of nature, so that the soul came to have its own powers again; for he kindled the divine fire in the soul again, so that the soul again reached the eternal tincture out of its own fire. 69. And thus it came again into its first mother, in power and Majesty: and the Old Adam hung to the cross as a curse, to the scorn of all devils; there they might do as far as they could with it, as indeed they were busy with the sophisters and Antichrists, the Pharisees. 70. There the devils ran with other subtlety and tricks into holes [corners and secret places] and hid [covered and concealed] the Resurrection, through the ministers
2of the dragon, the Pharisees, which yet pretended to be the ministers of God; but they served the devil in his lies, as is done nowadays, where the death and power of Christ is closed up and denied. 71. This hanging on the cross is nothing else, but that as the soul hath its original upon the cross in the centre of nature, (out of the Word of the Lord, ex verbo Domini), where the name of the Number Three standeth, there hath the Word, of the Father moved itself, and is entered into the humanity, as is heretofore mentioned concerning the virgin, and is become man on the cross, in the eternal and in the earthly virgin; and hath been made a spectacle on the cross, to the old Adamical man and all devils, and their lofty pride; and hath slain death on the cross, and thereby broke through it, and so brought the Adamical man (with flesh and blood) as a spectacle into death; and hath cast away from him all earthliness, and brought him powerfully through death into life. 72. Thus he is new born in God, and sitteth upon the rainbow, on the substantiality and colours of the eternity, in the power of the Majesty; and is a Lord of heaven and of this world, and a judge of hell, and a conquest [Or power] over death.
373. Of this you have a true ground, ye that are regenerated in Christ, that as Christ brought his body, both the heavenly and the earthly, (which he received in his mother Mary), out from death again, and cast away from him nothing else but the earthly source [or property,] viz. the spirit of this [outward] world. 74. So also must our bodies in the power of the souls that are in him, (that is, in his Word and Heart, which is every where), come forth again at the Last [Judgment] Day, and cast away no more from them, but this source and spirit [of the outward world] ; for none rise again in the entire corrupt body, but in the flesh and blood of Christ. 75. But the corrupted spirit (which remaineth in the earthly matrix in its tincture) must appear before the Judgment of God at the end of days; and there shall the sentence and judgment of the Judge Christ be pronounced; and then, after the pronouncing, all goeth into the ether [receptacle or devourer] : and then the spirit of God, which created the world, will execute that sentence. 76. But that I may not meet with false interpreters,
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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