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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.
137. Now this holy virgin-like matrix in Eve was captivated by the monstrous property, and the image of the heavenly ens did disappear in her. And in this heavenly ens, (understand, in the right virgin-like seed of chastity, sanctity and purity, which was captived in Eve by the monstrous Serpent and bestial whore's-desire), the Word of God did inhest [infuse] itself with the dear, precious and holy name JESUS; that it would again introduce [a] living heavenly ens into this captived disappeared ens, and bruise the head of the Serpent's ens, viz. the whore's monster, and mortify its desire, and cast away the whore's image [or bastard] and overpower and allay the enkindled anger of God in this virgin-like matrix with the deepest love of God, and wholly kill and null the monster [of the Serpent in flesh and blood]. And this is that which God said, the seed of the woman shall bruise the Serpent's head. 38. Understand it aright: The virgin-like seed of Eve in the Word of God should do it in the name and sweet power of JESUS : the seed included in the Covenant of God, whereout the virgin-child is born as the dew out of the morning, that (I say) should and must do it.
239. For the child which is from the blood of the man and woman shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven; but that which is [born] of the virgin-like ens, in the aim of the Covenant, out of the promised Word of God. The child of the man and woman is a monstrum, and must die, and putrify and rot in the earth; but the virgin-like ens which lies hidden in this monstrum is the true seed, of which the children of Christ are born; yea, even in this life-time, for the life of this child is the true faith and great divine desire. 40. This virgin-like child does live in Christ's children in the spirit and flesh of Christ, in a spiritual body, outwardly covered with the monstrum in the child of the whore and Serpent; there is no man which does not outwardly carry on him the Serpent's child. 41. But the virgin's child, born of the divine virgin-like ens of JESUS, does not live in all: there is indeed in many a one a glimmering incentive thereunto, viz. a weak faith and divine desire; but the true, holy and precious life of the virginity is not born: it stands captivated in the judgement of God.
342. Yet well for those who have but an incentive in them; to those we give this direction: that their soul's desire should in the spirit of Christ dive itself into the divine incentive; and with the fire-desire enkindle that incentive, and also forsake and hate the Serpent's monster and bastard, and introduce their great hunger and thirst into the virgin-like ens, into the Word of God's Covenant, and into the fulfilling of the Covenant, viz. into the humanity of Christ; and ever mortify and trample under foot the whore's monster in the will of the desire, as a venomous stinging evil Serpent, a false bastard, that cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and is only a hinderance to the virgin's child. 43. For the Word of the Promise in the Covenant would not incorporate itself into the man's tincture, viz. in the soul's fire-ens, but into the woman's, viz. into the light's tincture, into the virginlike centre, which should have brought forth magically in Adam; even into the heavenly matrix of the holy pregnatress; in which light's tincture the fiery soul's ens was weaker than in the man's fire-ens.
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.
137. Now this holy virgin-like matrix in Eve was captivated by the monstrous property, and the image of the heavenly ens did disappear in her. And in this heavenly ens, (understand, in the right virgin-like seed of chastity, sanctity and purity, which was captived in Eve by the monstrous Serpent and bestial whore's-desire), the Word of God did inhest [infuse] itself with the dear, precious and holy name JESUS; that it would again introduce [a] living heavenly ens into this captived disappeared ens, and bruise the head of the Serpent's ens, viz. the whore's monster, and mortify its desire, and cast away the whore's image [or bastard] and overpower and allay the enkindled anger of God in this virgin-like matrix with the deepest love of God, and wholly kill and null the monster [of the Serpent in flesh and blood]. And this is that which God said, the seed of the woman shall bruise the Serpent's head. 38. Understand it aright: The virgin-like seed of Eve in the Word of God should do it in the name and sweet power of JESUS : the seed included in the Covenant of God, whereout the virgin-child is born as the dew out of the morning, that (I say) should and must do it.
239. For the child which is from the blood of the man and woman shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven; but that which is [born] of the virgin-like ens, in the aim of the Covenant, out of the promised Word of God. The child of the man and woman is a monstrum, and must die, and putrify and rot in the earth; but the virgin-like ens which lies hidden in this monstrum is the true seed, of which the children of Christ are born; yea, even in this life-time, for the life of this child is the true faith and great divine desire. 40. This virgin-like child does live in Christ's children in the spirit and flesh of Christ, in a spiritual body, outwardly covered with the monstrum in the child of the whore and Serpent; there is no man which does not outwardly carry on him the Serpent's child. 41. But the virgin's child, born of the divine virgin-like ens of JESUS, does not live in all: there is indeed in many a one a glimmering incentive thereunto, viz. a weak faith and divine desire; but the true, holy and precious life of the virginity is not born: it stands captivated in the judgement of God.
342. Yet well for those who have but an incentive in them; to those we give this direction: that their soul's desire should in the spirit of Christ dive itself into the divine incentive; and with the fire-desire enkindle that incentive, and also forsake and hate the Serpent's monster and bastard, and introduce their great hunger and thirst into the virgin-like ens, into the Word of God's Covenant, and into the fulfilling of the Covenant, viz. into the humanity of Christ; and ever mortify and trample under foot the whore's monster in the will of the desire, as a venomous stinging evil Serpent, a false bastard, that cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and is only a hinderance to the virgin's child. 43. For the Word of the Promise in the Covenant would not incorporate itself into the man's tincture, viz. in the soul's fire-ens, but into the woman's, viz. into the light's tincture, into the virginlike centre, which should have brought forth magically in Adam; even into the heavenly matrix of the holy pregnatress; in which light's tincture the fiery soul's ens was weaker than in the man's fire-ens.
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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