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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. THIS is also above human reason, no outward reason can comprehend it; but seeing l it is born, it must be made manifest: For there are such Mysteries couched in it as the world is not able to conceive, and we shall not mention them at large, for they have their 2 limit how far they shall go; for in this [time] wonders shall be done upon the earth, for which cause our speech is taken from us, that we must be silent. 2. Yet we shall shew what kind of life it is, or whither Enoch is gone, as also Elias and Moses: it is no fiction, we declare only what is given us; we shall further be silent, and not believe reason, for it is a fool herein. 3. But we may well speak something of it, for the time is 3 born, for 4 Enoch to speak, and * 5 Elias to work again; which Babel shall find by experience: for Moses hath 6 horns, and yet he is a patient lamb. 1 the Enochian life is brought forth. 2 bounds, or appointed time. 3 Or come. 4 Or prophecy. 5 Or the sword. 6 Or beams, or rays, which with their light shall contend with darkness. * "Elias to work again," lit., "Elias to work wonders." 4. O how wouldst thou rejoice if thou wouldst go among Moses 'flock, for he hath a good message: Rejoice O heaven, and *be merry O earth! for Enoch is in the field, and keepeth his flock.
25. What will Elias do? for he is clothed with a white garment, and was with Christ on the mount, and spake of the consummation of man's redemption; he spake also of the entering into paradise, and of the final deliverance from the l hunter. 6. He that is born blind, seeth nothing: How can a lame man get the prize, or a deaf man distinguish languages? Doth not the sun shine daily, and yet the mole remaineth blind? Shall Babel come to see? We know she is a scorner, and therefore she must be blind, though the sun shine clearly to her. 7. How can he behold two worlds that always liveth but in one? Or is it not fart and wit, that hath understanding able to search out the deep gates; but 2 they pass away, as a wind which bringeth forth nothing, though it maketh such a bluster; and so doth Babel. 8. When we will speak of the Enochian life, we must consider the Scripture, and see who Enoch was, and what life he led; and then we may soon find where he is, and what his translation was. 9. You know that the 3 Scripture saith his Father's name was 4 JARED; if you understood the language of nature, you had the whole ground. 1 Or driver, or persecutor. 2 art and wit. 3 Gen. v. 18. 4 See the Mysterium Magnum, Ch. 30, ver. 19, 20. * "be merry" (jauchtze), "shout for joy." t "art and wit" (Kunst Witze), "the wits of art."
310. And Enoch begat Methusalah, who attained the highest age of man; and after he had begotten him, he continued in a divine life, till the Lord took him into his own Principle. 11. But we must not understand it as if he were wholly perfect in the light of the divine Majesty, and should not appear at the Day of Judgment. Indeed he is in God without death, or want of anything; he is in God's Love, but in the birth of the Divine Principle, for he had also Adam's flesh. 12. And you know well that the outward kingdom, with the earthly flesh, belongeth to the turba; though it is clear that he had the body of the wonders of God in the outward body, in which divine body of the wonders he was taken away into the Mystery; so that the outward body was, as it were, swallowed up by the Mystery. 13. But now the Mystery must give up all whatsoever it hath swallowed up; as you know, that at the end, the outward body must appear, with all its 1 works, before the Judgment: and thus the turba is in the outward body with the wonders, which shall be made manifest and tried in the fire.
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. THIS is also above human reason, no outward reason can comprehend it; but seeing l it is born, it must be made manifest: For there are such Mysteries couched in it as the world is not able to conceive, and we shall not mention them at large, for they have their 2 limit how far they shall go; for in this [time] wonders shall be done upon the earth, for which cause our speech is taken from us, that we must be silent. 2. Yet we shall shew what kind of life it is, or whither Enoch is gone, as also Elias and Moses: it is no fiction, we declare only what is given us; we shall further be silent, and not believe reason, for it is a fool herein. 3. But we may well speak something of it, for the time is 3 born, for 4 Enoch to speak, and * 5 Elias to work again; which Babel shall find by experience: for Moses hath 6 horns, and yet he is a patient lamb. 1 the Enochian life is brought forth. 2 bounds, or appointed time. 3 Or come. 4 Or prophecy. 5 Or the sword. 6 Or beams, or rays, which with their light shall contend with darkness. * "Elias to work again," lit., "Elias to work wonders." 4. O how wouldst thou rejoice if thou wouldst go among Moses 'flock, for he hath a good message: Rejoice O heaven, and *be merry O earth! for Enoch is in the field, and keepeth his flock.
25. What will Elias do? for he is clothed with a white garment, and was with Christ on the mount, and spake of the consummation of man's redemption; he spake also of the entering into paradise, and of the final deliverance from the l hunter. 6. He that is born blind, seeth nothing: How can a lame man get the prize, or a deaf man distinguish languages? Doth not the sun shine daily, and yet the mole remaineth blind? Shall Babel come to see? We know she is a scorner, and therefore she must be blind, though the sun shine clearly to her. 7. How can he behold two worlds that always liveth but in one? Or is it not fart and wit, that hath understanding able to search out the deep gates; but 2 they pass away, as a wind which bringeth forth nothing, though it maketh such a bluster; and so doth Babel. 8. When we will speak of the Enochian life, we must consider the Scripture, and see who Enoch was, and what life he led; and then we may soon find where he is, and what his translation was. 9. You know that the 3 Scripture saith his Father's name was 4 JARED; if you understood the language of nature, you had the whole ground. 1 Or driver, or persecutor. 2 art and wit. 3 Gen. v. 18. 4 See the Mysterium Magnum, Ch. 30, ver. 19, 20. * "be merry" (jauchtze), "shout for joy." t "art and wit" (Kunst Witze), "the wits of art."
310. And Enoch begat Methusalah, who attained the highest age of man; and after he had begotten him, he continued in a divine life, till the Lord took him into his own Principle. 11. But we must not understand it as if he were wholly perfect in the light of the divine Majesty, and should not appear at the Day of Judgment. Indeed he is in God without death, or want of anything; he is in God's Love, but in the birth of the Divine Principle, for he had also Adam's flesh. 12. And you know well that the outward kingdom, with the earthly flesh, belongeth to the turba; though it is clear that he had the body of the wonders of God in the outward body, in which divine body of the wonders he was taken away into the Mystery; so that the outward body was, as it were, swallowed up by the Mystery. 13. But now the Mystery must give up all whatsoever it hath swallowed up; as you know, that at the end, the outward body must appear, with all its 1 works, before the Judgment: and thus the turba is in the outward body with the wonders, which shall be made manifest and tried in the fire.
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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