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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.
11. IT is sufficiently declared already; for God's wrath in the darkness is their dwelling place; their light is that which shineth from their fiery eyes, like the glimmering of a flash of fire; they have no light at all but that, for they dwell in that which is 1 outermost, and so ascend in haughtiness above the thrones, like strong champions; and yet they have different qualifications among them, as their spirits differ. 2. For a dog acts like a dog, a wolf like a wolf, and so a horse, a fowl, a toad, a serpent, every one after his kind; yet they are all more speedy and swift than thoughts. 3. They have their joy in their abominations, and their chiefest joy is to scorn God; in that they are fiery spirits, and God a spirit of light. 4. Their boast is always of their strong, fiery might; they are as a dragon that spitteth fire, they seek perdition, and find abominations. 5. They have also fruit growing out of their own Principle, all according to the abominations of their wills. 1 As in utmost, or utter darkness.
26. They have a sport like such as play with fireworks, as rockets, and balls of fire, spitting fire out of their mouths; * fooling and juggling is their pastime; though indeed there is no time; nor is there any fear of any other torment, after the Last Judgment-day; but their whole life is a continual fear, horror, terror and lamentation: every one hath his work (which he did here while he lived) in the figure; which awakeneth the turba there, and so he rideth in the fire. 7. The soul hath no feeling, for it is without the fire, but the turba plagueth it with those abominations which it introduced; there is an eternal despairing in them, and therefore they are God's enemies. 8. To blaspheme God is their chiefest power; they devour hellish brimstone and abominations, for their fruits are a kind of matter that is outwardly fair, but inwardly mere 2 wrathfulness; such hypocrites as they have been upon earth, such bread doth their heaven afford them to eat. 9. They are at liberty, and shut up by nothing; they may descend as deep as they will, for the abyss and darkness is everywhere, and yet they are but in their first place; the deeper they desire to throw themselves, the deeper they fall, and yet they find no end or bottom.
310. 3 Their number is not the number of any human time, their 4 delight is a mere stink of fire and brimstone; when they consider themselves in their abominations, that they were once angels and now devils, then presently the gnawing worm ariseth, which devoureth and tormenteth them. 1 jesting, jeering, scoffing, and deriding in strange apish gestures of face, and body. 2 strong abominations, malice, or wickedness. 3 Their time not the time of man. 4 Refocillation. 11. To what end should their wickedness be described? They are evil, unclean beasts; that which they practised on earth, that followeth them, and that they desire to do there also; they swallow down abomination and cursing without measure. 12. Their l government is no way better to be known than in the antichristian 2 horse, and scornful men, who rave with cursing and blaspheming; yet this is but a 3 glass of the hellish abominations; we will not mention them any further, for they are not worthy to be named. 1 Or dominion. 2 Or beast. 3 shadow, or resemblance. THE THIRTY-FIFTH QUESTION What is the Enochian Life; and how long is it to continue?
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.
11. IT is sufficiently declared already; for God's wrath in the darkness is their dwelling place; their light is that which shineth from their fiery eyes, like the glimmering of a flash of fire; they have no light at all but that, for they dwell in that which is 1 outermost, and so ascend in haughtiness above the thrones, like strong champions; and yet they have different qualifications among them, as their spirits differ. 2. For a dog acts like a dog, a wolf like a wolf, and so a horse, a fowl, a toad, a serpent, every one after his kind; yet they are all more speedy and swift than thoughts. 3. They have their joy in their abominations, and their chiefest joy is to scorn God; in that they are fiery spirits, and God a spirit of light. 4. Their boast is always of their strong, fiery might; they are as a dragon that spitteth fire, they seek perdition, and find abominations. 5. They have also fruit growing out of their own Principle, all according to the abominations of their wills. 1 As in utmost, or utter darkness.
26. They have a sport like such as play with fireworks, as rockets, and balls of fire, spitting fire out of their mouths; * fooling and juggling is their pastime; though indeed there is no time; nor is there any fear of any other torment, after the Last Judgment-day; but their whole life is a continual fear, horror, terror and lamentation: every one hath his work (which he did here while he lived) in the figure; which awakeneth the turba there, and so he rideth in the fire. 7. The soul hath no feeling, for it is without the fire, but the turba plagueth it with those abominations which it introduced; there is an eternal despairing in them, and therefore they are God's enemies. 8. To blaspheme God is their chiefest power; they devour hellish brimstone and abominations, for their fruits are a kind of matter that is outwardly fair, but inwardly mere 2 wrathfulness; such hypocrites as they have been upon earth, such bread doth their heaven afford them to eat. 9. They are at liberty, and shut up by nothing; they may descend as deep as they will, for the abyss and darkness is everywhere, and yet they are but in their first place; the deeper they desire to throw themselves, the deeper they fall, and yet they find no end or bottom.
310. 3 Their number is not the number of any human time, their 4 delight is a mere stink of fire and brimstone; when they consider themselves in their abominations, that they were once angels and now devils, then presently the gnawing worm ariseth, which devoureth and tormenteth them. 1 jesting, jeering, scoffing, and deriding in strange apish gestures of face, and body. 2 strong abominations, malice, or wickedness. 3 Their time not the time of man. 4 Refocillation. 11. To what end should their wickedness be described? They are evil, unclean beasts; that which they practised on earth, that followeth them, and that they desire to do there also; they swallow down abomination and cursing without measure. 12. Their l government is no way better to be known than in the antichristian 2 horse, and scornful men, who rave with cursing and blaspheming; yet this is but a 3 glass of the hellish abominations; we will not mention them any further, for they are not worthy to be named. 1 Or dominion. 2 Or beast. 3 shadow, or resemblance. THE THIRTY-FIFTH QUESTION What is the Enochian Life; and how long is it to continue?
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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