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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.
12 Or Being, or Substance. 3 Viz. the space between the second circle and the third. 4 Or substance. 5 Or Ghost. 6 Or wit, or reason. 7 Or knowledge. * "The pure element is the working," etc. Lit., "The pure element is the operation in [or of] the true heaven, and it foldeth itself in and out [like floodgates] with the cross; it is the springing and moving in the fire-and-light-heaven." 218. The element is an 1 essence in respect of the Deity, as the life in the flesh 2 is in respect of the soul; for the tincture is higher, and giveth the ens of the spirit, wherein the light -fire is understood. Humanity; Flesh; Number 48.
2219. Under the words Pure Element, on the upper 3 line of the cross, Number 27, Death standeth; and the word beginneth at the left circle, and goeth through the cross, and through the first circle at the right hand. There look upon both the outward circles, that at the left, and that at the right, above, and below, and then thou shalt quickly find what the 4 right of death is, and that it is the dying source in the magic fire, and holdeth the essentiality captive in itself, as at the left hand below, Number 8, and at the right, Number 48, may be seen; and then above at this circle, Number 44, and at the left above, Number 5, is seen that the spiritual life goeth and sprouteth forth through death, and possesseth the highest circle. For whatsoever will attain the divine life, must go through the dying magic fire, and subsist therein, as the Heart on the Cross must subsist in the 5 fire of God. 1 Or substance. 2 must be taken to be. 3 Or stroke. 4 Or jurisdiction. 5 Or divine fire.
3220. Moreover, we must know, that in Adam we have turned ourselves away from the cross, and are above the cross with our lust and desire, Number 23, and gone with our will into 1 a self-government, and now death hath captivated us in itself: We must therefore sink down from death upon the cross, upon the line of Christ, into the Heart again, and be born anew in the Heart, or else death retaineth us captive: For death standeth now upon the line of the cross; but at the Judgment it shall be given to the dark world: For our will must now enter into rest through the death on the cross; but the outward cross shall be done away, and then death shall be made a scorn. 221. Thirdly, it signifieth that the life of God in Christ made death a 2 spectacle upon the cross, when death was destroyed on the cross 3 by the dying of Christ, where life grew up through death, and the Heart yielded itself into the middle (viz. into the centre) as a Conqueror of death. Paradise; Number 49.
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.
12 Or Being, or Substance. 3 Viz. the space between the second circle and the third. 4 Or substance. 5 Or Ghost. 6 Or wit, or reason. 7 Or knowledge. * "The pure element is the working," etc. Lit., "The pure element is the operation in [or of] the true heaven, and it foldeth itself in and out [like floodgates] with the cross; it is the springing and moving in the fire-and-light-heaven." 218. The element is an 1 essence in respect of the Deity, as the life in the flesh 2 is in respect of the soul; for the tincture is higher, and giveth the ens of the spirit, wherein the light -fire is understood. Humanity; Flesh; Number 48.
2219. Under the words Pure Element, on the upper 3 line of the cross, Number 27, Death standeth; and the word beginneth at the left circle, and goeth through the cross, and through the first circle at the right hand. There look upon both the outward circles, that at the left, and that at the right, above, and below, and then thou shalt quickly find what the 4 right of death is, and that it is the dying source in the magic fire, and holdeth the essentiality captive in itself, as at the left hand below, Number 8, and at the right, Number 48, may be seen; and then above at this circle, Number 44, and at the left above, Number 5, is seen that the spiritual life goeth and sprouteth forth through death, and possesseth the highest circle. For whatsoever will attain the divine life, must go through the dying magic fire, and subsist therein, as the Heart on the Cross must subsist in the 5 fire of God. 1 Or substance. 2 must be taken to be. 3 Or stroke. 4 Or jurisdiction. 5 Or divine fire.
3220. Moreover, we must know, that in Adam we have turned ourselves away from the cross, and are above the cross with our lust and desire, Number 23, and gone with our will into 1 a self-government, and now death hath captivated us in itself: We must therefore sink down from death upon the cross, upon the line of Christ, into the Heart again, and be born anew in the Heart, or else death retaineth us captive: For death standeth now upon the line of the cross; but at the Judgment it shall be given to the dark world: For our will must now enter into rest through the death on the cross; but the outward cross shall be done away, and then death shall be made a scorn. 221. Thirdly, it signifieth that the life of God in Christ made death a 2 spectacle upon the cross, when death was destroyed on the cross 3 by the dying of Christ, where life grew up through death, and the Heart yielded itself into the middle (viz. into the centre) as a Conqueror of death. Paradise; Number 49.
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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