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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.
141. Therefore ye elect children of God, who are born again in Christ, take it into consideration, depart from covetousness and self-will: you have been a long time led blindfold in Babel; go out from her, you are called with a 1 shrill voice, it will shortly raise the dead; let it prevail with you, that you may obtain eternal joy in God. 42. The spirit sheweth plainly, that whatsoever will not grow forth, together with the new sprout which groweth in the 2 mother, shall and must be cast into the lake of brimstone, with the dragon's whore in Babel. 43. There is a time of earnestness at hand; and though thou seest it not with earthly eyes, yet it will certainly come upon thee: thou wilt see well enough in thy death, what kind of judgment this is, and in what time, and under what turba thou hast lived; we speak in good earnest, as we ought. 1 strong, or loud- sounding voice. 2 Viz. the eternal Word. THE THIRTEENTH QUESTION How doth the Soul feed upon the Word of God? 1. IF the soul entereth thus (as above mentioned) into the light of the Majesty, and receiveth the light of God, then it hath wholly a longing and lusting, and continually attracteth in its desire the divine power, viz. the divine body, into itself; and the Holy Ghost is the power of God's spirit, and so it obtaineth the body and spirit of God, and eateth at God's table: All that the Father hath is the Son's, and whatever the Son hath, that belongeth to his image.
22. It eateth God's flesh and Christ's body, and by this eating the divine body doth also grow 1 in it, so that it thus gets the divine body, and so becometh God's child, not only a similitude, but a child born in God out of his essences, and liveth in God. 3. When it heareth God's children teach and speak God's 2 word (even in this world), it receiveth it, and eateth it. 4. The outward man eateth earthly bread, and the soul eateth the bread of God; of which Christ said, that he giveth us his body for meat, and his 3 Testaments are nothing else. 1 Or from, or out of it, or as a chicken groweth in an egg. 2 Note the food of the soul. 3 The author calleth Baptism and the Supper of the Lord two Testaments. 5. Indeed we eat not spirit without body; for the soul is spirit already, and desireth to have a body, and so it getteth both body and spirit. 6. Let this be spoken to thee, Babel, and see how thou managest Christ's Testaments, and what thou teachest; when thou sayest Christ's Testaments are spirit without body, thou behest God, and deniest God's substantiality, Christ's heavenly body, which is greater than all things, which is the fulness of all things, but in its own Principle. 7. O earthly mouth, thou shalt not chew it with thy teeth: the soul hath another mouth, which receiveth it under the outward element: the outward receiveth the outward, and the inward receiveth the inward.
38. The Supper of Christ with his disciples was so: the outward is a remembrance; the inward is the substance; for the kingdom of God consisteth in power, it is magical; not as a thought; but essential, substantial. 9. The magia maketh substance: for in the eternal nothing there is nothing; but the magia createth l where nothing is. 10. Now in God there is not only spirit, but nature, substance, flesh and blood, tincture, and all: this world outwardly is a similitude of the inward world. 11. We tell you, we speak what we feel, see, taste, and know, and not a fiction or opinion, and that not for ourselves only, but for your sake, as one member is bound to do for another, that so our joy may be in you, and we also may enjoy you again, as brethren together in one essence: He that desireth to know further of this, let him read our 2 third book, and there he shall find the circumstances, concerning the 3 souls meal, and Christ's Testaments. 1 something. 2 Threefold Life, 13th Chap. 3 Seele-Messe, the food, mess, supper, or eating of the soul. THE FOURTEENTH QUESTION Whether is such a new Soul without Sin? We understand here, the propagated Soul in a Child newly born.
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.
141. Therefore ye elect children of God, who are born again in Christ, take it into consideration, depart from covetousness and self-will: you have been a long time led blindfold in Babel; go out from her, you are called with a 1 shrill voice, it will shortly raise the dead; let it prevail with you, that you may obtain eternal joy in God. 42. The spirit sheweth plainly, that whatsoever will not grow forth, together with the new sprout which groweth in the 2 mother, shall and must be cast into the lake of brimstone, with the dragon's whore in Babel. 43. There is a time of earnestness at hand; and though thou seest it not with earthly eyes, yet it will certainly come upon thee: thou wilt see well enough in thy death, what kind of judgment this is, and in what time, and under what turba thou hast lived; we speak in good earnest, as we ought. 1 strong, or loud- sounding voice. 2 Viz. the eternal Word. THE THIRTEENTH QUESTION How doth the Soul feed upon the Word of God? 1. IF the soul entereth thus (as above mentioned) into the light of the Majesty, and receiveth the light of God, then it hath wholly a longing and lusting, and continually attracteth in its desire the divine power, viz. the divine body, into itself; and the Holy Ghost is the power of God's spirit, and so it obtaineth the body and spirit of God, and eateth at God's table: All that the Father hath is the Son's, and whatever the Son hath, that belongeth to his image.
22. It eateth God's flesh and Christ's body, and by this eating the divine body doth also grow 1 in it, so that it thus gets the divine body, and so becometh God's child, not only a similitude, but a child born in God out of his essences, and liveth in God. 3. When it heareth God's children teach and speak God's 2 word (even in this world), it receiveth it, and eateth it. 4. The outward man eateth earthly bread, and the soul eateth the bread of God; of which Christ said, that he giveth us his body for meat, and his 3 Testaments are nothing else. 1 Or from, or out of it, or as a chicken groweth in an egg. 2 Note the food of the soul. 3 The author calleth Baptism and the Supper of the Lord two Testaments. 5. Indeed we eat not spirit without body; for the soul is spirit already, and desireth to have a body, and so it getteth both body and spirit. 6. Let this be spoken to thee, Babel, and see how thou managest Christ's Testaments, and what thou teachest; when thou sayest Christ's Testaments are spirit without body, thou behest God, and deniest God's substantiality, Christ's heavenly body, which is greater than all things, which is the fulness of all things, but in its own Principle. 7. O earthly mouth, thou shalt not chew it with thy teeth: the soul hath another mouth, which receiveth it under the outward element: the outward receiveth the outward, and the inward receiveth the inward.
38. The Supper of Christ with his disciples was so: the outward is a remembrance; the inward is the substance; for the kingdom of God consisteth in power, it is magical; not as a thought; but essential, substantial. 9. The magia maketh substance: for in the eternal nothing there is nothing; but the magia createth l where nothing is. 10. Now in God there is not only spirit, but nature, substance, flesh and blood, tincture, and all: this world outwardly is a similitude of the inward world. 11. We tell you, we speak what we feel, see, taste, and know, and not a fiction or opinion, and that not for ourselves only, but for your sake, as one member is bound to do for another, that so our joy may be in you, and we also may enjoy you again, as brethren together in one essence: He that desireth to know further of this, let him read our 2 third book, and there he shall find the circumstances, concerning the 3 souls meal, and Christ's Testaments. 1 something. 2 Threefold Life, 13th Chap. 3 Seele-Messe, the food, mess, supper, or eating of the soul. THE FOURTEENTH QUESTION Whether is such a new Soul without Sin? We understand here, the propagated Soul in a Child newly born.
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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