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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.
1247 '. l It is a whole figure of the cross: according to the outward image of the body, it resembleth a cross-tree; the body having two arms, signifying two Principles, and the body in the midst, which is a whole person: The heart is the first Principle, and the brain is the second; the heart hath the 2 soul, and the brain the spirit of the soul: and it is a new child, and yet not a new one either; the stock is from eternity, but the branches grow out of the stock. 248. And though it hath not been a soul from eternity, yet it hath been known from eternity in the virgin of the divine wisdom upon the cross; and in the root it belongeth to God the Father, in the soul to God the Son, and in the will to God the Holy Ghost. 249. Seeing then its will could not stand in the Father (but would rule and domineer, and so it fell into the fire of wrathfulness), therefore the Father gave it to the Son, and the Son took it into himself, and became man in it, and brought it by the 3 Word Fiat into the Majesty, into the light again: for the Son bringeth it through the anger and death into the eye of holiness again, at the right hand; into another world, in God, to the angels, whereof there shall be further mention made hereafter. 1 The soul. 2 Viz. seated in it. 3 Verbum Fiat. Now we come again to the Sixth Form of Fire.
2250. Know then, wherefore we have set the cross here; the l Cross is otherwise the number Ten, when we number in the order of 2 reason: But according to the two Principles, where the eye appeareth parted, the cross should be between the fifth and sixth forms, where light and darkness part. 251. But you must know, that God is both the beginning and the end, and therefore we put the cross at the end, according to reason: for there we go through death into life; it is our resurrection. 252. Again, the number 3 Ten, is the first, and also the last, and through it is death, and after death, hell, viz. the wrath of the darkness, which is 4 without the cross, for it falleth again into the A, and the Creator is in the A, into which Lucifer would fain have insinuated himself, but he is driven out into darkness, which is his kingdom in the source. 253. You must understand, that we mean by the twofold eye, a round globe cut in two, wherein the cross stood from eternity: *it cannot be drawn in any portraiture, because the halves are so in one another, they are one, and yet two: the spirit only understandeth this; and whosoever doth not enter through death upon the cross, into regeneration (that is, into the divine body), he understandeth not this: and let him leave it 5 uncensured, or else he will 6 be a workman and censurer for the devil: we would have the Reader faithfully admonished, for it is most certain. + .X.
32 Outward computation according to the Roman numbering with capital letters. 3 X. or 10. 4 Or extra crucem. 5 Or uncontrolled. 6 Or make himself a devil in so doing. * "it cannot be drawn in any portraiture," or "no picture can represent it." 254. For this Figure containeth the whole ground, as deep as a spirit in itself is: and the Reader cannot know it without 1 true eyes; words cannot be set according to its right order, for the first is also the last, and the middlemost goeth through all, and is not known but in itself; therefore searching is not the best way to find the Mystery in: But to be born 2 in God, is the right way to find it; for without 3 that all is but Babel. 255. * All lieth in the will and in the earnestness, viz. that the will enter into the 4 magic, for the eternity is magical; all things come to essence out of the magic: for in the eternity, in the abyss, is nothing; but that which is, is magic.
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.
1247 '. l It is a whole figure of the cross: according to the outward image of the body, it resembleth a cross-tree; the body having two arms, signifying two Principles, and the body in the midst, which is a whole person: The heart is the first Principle, and the brain is the second; the heart hath the 2 soul, and the brain the spirit of the soul: and it is a new child, and yet not a new one either; the stock is from eternity, but the branches grow out of the stock. 248. And though it hath not been a soul from eternity, yet it hath been known from eternity in the virgin of the divine wisdom upon the cross; and in the root it belongeth to God the Father, in the soul to God the Son, and in the will to God the Holy Ghost. 249. Seeing then its will could not stand in the Father (but would rule and domineer, and so it fell into the fire of wrathfulness), therefore the Father gave it to the Son, and the Son took it into himself, and became man in it, and brought it by the 3 Word Fiat into the Majesty, into the light again: for the Son bringeth it through the anger and death into the eye of holiness again, at the right hand; into another world, in God, to the angels, whereof there shall be further mention made hereafter. 1 The soul. 2 Viz. seated in it. 3 Verbum Fiat. Now we come again to the Sixth Form of Fire.
2250. Know then, wherefore we have set the cross here; the l Cross is otherwise the number Ten, when we number in the order of 2 reason: But according to the two Principles, where the eye appeareth parted, the cross should be between the fifth and sixth forms, where light and darkness part. 251. But you must know, that God is both the beginning and the end, and therefore we put the cross at the end, according to reason: for there we go through death into life; it is our resurrection. 252. Again, the number 3 Ten, is the first, and also the last, and through it is death, and after death, hell, viz. the wrath of the darkness, which is 4 without the cross, for it falleth again into the A, and the Creator is in the A, into which Lucifer would fain have insinuated himself, but he is driven out into darkness, which is his kingdom in the source. 253. You must understand, that we mean by the twofold eye, a round globe cut in two, wherein the cross stood from eternity: *it cannot be drawn in any portraiture, because the halves are so in one another, they are one, and yet two: the spirit only understandeth this; and whosoever doth not enter through death upon the cross, into regeneration (that is, into the divine body), he understandeth not this: and let him leave it 5 uncensured, or else he will 6 be a workman and censurer for the devil: we would have the Reader faithfully admonished, for it is most certain. + .X.
32 Outward computation according to the Roman numbering with capital letters. 3 X. or 10. 4 Or extra crucem. 5 Or uncontrolled. 6 Or make himself a devil in so doing. * "it cannot be drawn in any portraiture," or "no picture can represent it." 254. For this Figure containeth the whole ground, as deep as a spirit in itself is: and the Reader cannot know it without 1 true eyes; words cannot be set according to its right order, for the first is also the last, and the middlemost goeth through all, and is not known but in itself; therefore searching is not the best way to find the Mystery in: But to be born 2 in God, is the right way to find it; for without 3 that all is but Babel. 255. * All lieth in the will and in the earnestness, viz. that the will enter into the 4 magic, for the eternity is magical; all things come to essence out of the magic: for in the eternity, in the abyss, is nothing; but that which is, is magic.
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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