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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.
144. In this light's ens God would arouse the fire-ens, viz. the true soul, and as it were beget it anew, as may be seen in the person of Christ according to the humanity, who in this virgin-like ens did assume a manly fire-soul from the woman's property, from the female virgin-like seed, wholly contrary to nature's proper and peculiar ability, for the image of God is a man-like virgin, neither woman nor man. 45. And if a man will rightly consider both properties according to the divine property, then let him ascribe the male to God the Father, viz. to the first Principle, where God's Word does manifest itself with the fire- world, which is the first centre of the creature; and the female let him ascribe to God the Son, viz. to the second Principle, where the divine eternal Word does manifest itself in the light of love, and opens another centre in the love-desire, and comes into the fire's centre; in manner as the fire produces a light; and the light [is] a great meekness of an oily, watery and aery property, which property the fire draws in again, whence it receives its shining lustre, and also its life to burn, else it would smother and suffocate.
246. And as these three, viz. the fire, light and air, have one only original, yet they give a very evident distinction in their property. The like also we are here to mind: into this property in the life of man's soul the most sweet name JESUS has incorporated itself in the Word of Promise, as into the likeness which stood in the light's centre of the heavenly matrix, viz. in the right virgin-like ens, inspired out of the light's property into Adam; and has awaked [itself] in the same limus, as a true centre of the second Principle, viz. of the angelical world, a real temple of the spirit of God; an open, and wide [or stirring] gate of the divine wisdom, in the highest beauty, excellency and love, wherein the holy angelical life consists, and bears therein the name of the great holy God, viz. the holy Word of the Deity. 47. Into this property the Word of God did betroth and espouse itself in the Covenant; for it was opened out of the holy Word in Adam. God would not forsake his holy manifested Word, which, with the creating of Adam, had introduced itself into an ens, which the devil obscured and darkened in in the Serpent's ens from the anger; but would again open the same, and thereby bruise the head of the Serpent's ens, and beget the human soul out of this divine ens, to a manlike virgin, viz. to an angel, servant and child of God.
348. We do not mean that this holy ens did receive the Serpent's desire into itself when Adam and Eve became monstrous. No, but it disappeared; yet the soul, according to the first Principle, took it into the fire's property, viz. into the Fiat, and introduced the Serpent's ens, with the desire of the Fiat, into the earthly limus, whereupon out of the one only element four elements were manifest in man. 49. Therefore the virgin-like ens of the one only element must now bruise the head of the introduced Serpent's ens in the four elements; and the man of the four elements must die and putrify, and the first [man] must return at the last day clothed with the virginlike ens in the one only element wherein all things lie in equal weight [or perfect harmony] . 50. for this virgin-like ens, new-born in the spirit of Christ, dies not any more, although the four-elements man, viz. the image of this world, dies; but it lives in God's kingdom, and shall in the resurrection of the dead embrace and put on the limus of the earth, viz. the third Principle, as a garment of the wonder-deeds of God. But the Serpent's ens remains in the earth, and shall be burnt away at the last day through the fire, from the pure limus of the earth, where the dark world shall devour it with all its works.
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.
144. In this light's ens God would arouse the fire-ens, viz. the true soul, and as it were beget it anew, as may be seen in the person of Christ according to the humanity, who in this virgin-like ens did assume a manly fire-soul from the woman's property, from the female virgin-like seed, wholly contrary to nature's proper and peculiar ability, for the image of God is a man-like virgin, neither woman nor man. 45. And if a man will rightly consider both properties according to the divine property, then let him ascribe the male to God the Father, viz. to the first Principle, where God's Word does manifest itself with the fire- world, which is the first centre of the creature; and the female let him ascribe to God the Son, viz. to the second Principle, where the divine eternal Word does manifest itself in the light of love, and opens another centre in the love-desire, and comes into the fire's centre; in manner as the fire produces a light; and the light [is] a great meekness of an oily, watery and aery property, which property the fire draws in again, whence it receives its shining lustre, and also its life to burn, else it would smother and suffocate.
246. And as these three, viz. the fire, light and air, have one only original, yet they give a very evident distinction in their property. The like also we are here to mind: into this property in the life of man's soul the most sweet name JESUS has incorporated itself in the Word of Promise, as into the likeness which stood in the light's centre of the heavenly matrix, viz. in the right virgin-like ens, inspired out of the light's property into Adam; and has awaked [itself] in the same limus, as a true centre of the second Principle, viz. of the angelical world, a real temple of the spirit of God; an open, and wide [or stirring] gate of the divine wisdom, in the highest beauty, excellency and love, wherein the holy angelical life consists, and bears therein the name of the great holy God, viz. the holy Word of the Deity. 47. Into this property the Word of God did betroth and espouse itself in the Covenant; for it was opened out of the holy Word in Adam. God would not forsake his holy manifested Word, which, with the creating of Adam, had introduced itself into an ens, which the devil obscured and darkened in in the Serpent's ens from the anger; but would again open the same, and thereby bruise the head of the Serpent's ens, and beget the human soul out of this divine ens, to a manlike virgin, viz. to an angel, servant and child of God.
348. We do not mean that this holy ens did receive the Serpent's desire into itself when Adam and Eve became monstrous. No, but it disappeared; yet the soul, according to the first Principle, took it into the fire's property, viz. into the Fiat, and introduced the Serpent's ens, with the desire of the Fiat, into the earthly limus, whereupon out of the one only element four elements were manifest in man. 49. Therefore the virgin-like ens of the one only element must now bruise the head of the introduced Serpent's ens in the four elements; and the man of the four elements must die and putrify, and the first [man] must return at the last day clothed with the virginlike ens in the one only element wherein all things lie in equal weight [or perfect harmony] . 50. for this virgin-like ens, new-born in the spirit of Christ, dies not any more, although the four-elements man, viz. the image of this world, dies; but it lives in God's kingdom, and shall in the resurrection of the dead embrace and put on the limus of the earth, viz. the third Principle, as a garment of the wonder-deeds of God. But the Serpent's ens remains in the earth, and shall be burnt away at the last day through the fire, from the pure limus of the earth, where the dark world shall devour it with all its works.
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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