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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.
151. Thus we herein understand very clearly, how God out of great love has promised the Serpent-Bruiser to the fallen man, and espoused and betrothed it unto the virgin-like and disappeared centre, and given in itself therewith for a help and companion. For when they were fallen from God, and had made themselves monstrous, then the image out of the limus of the earth became wholly brutal, and lived in opposition, in distemper, in sickness, and also in heat and cold, as all other beasts. 52. Now therefore God told them what their labour, work and employment should be in this world, viz. that they should bring forth children in sorrow, with painful smart, in trouble and distress, and eat the herb of the field, and now clothe their bestial image in turmoil and cumbring care, in toil and labour, until the four-elements man in the bestial Serpent's image should again be broken and dissolved, and return unto the earth, from whence it was taken and extracted as a limus. The Twenty-Fourth Chapter Of the Cause and Rise of the Curse of the Earth, and of the Body of Sickness
21. GOD'S cursing of the ground for man's sins' sake, that it should bring forth thorns and thistles, and commanding man not, till after sin was committed, to eat of the herb of the field, and in the sweat of his face to eat his bread, does plainly and sufficiently show us that this had not been in Paradise. The ground should not have borne thorns and thistles and other evil herbs, which are poisonful; but in the curse all these properties became manifest; for as the body was, after the fall, so likewise its food: the halfserpentine man must now eat such food as his desire required [or coveted] . 2. The curse is nothing else but the holy element's hiding of itself viz. the holy ens, which budded forth through the earth and bore fruit, and held the property of the four elements as 'twere captive in itself [did withdraw or closely conceal itself]. The heaven in the earth hid itself from the earth; the holy tincture, from the awakened vanity, viz. the heavenly part, which was from the heavenly ens [did keep itself secret] from the part in the curse, viz. in the ens of the dark world.
33. Thus the heavenly part was a mystery unto man, and so remained in the curse between time and eternity, half dead as to the heavenly part, yet anew embraced with the promise in the aim of the Covenant; and as to the earthly [part] strongly bound to the band of the stars and four elements, infected with the distemper of the Serpent and the devil; very hard tied with three strong chains, from which he cannot get free till the total dissolution of his earthly body; for the curse of the earth and the Serpent forced also into the earthly man, viz. into the limus of the earth. 4. For God's said, you are earth, and unto earth you shall return; for when the desire of the limus of the extract of the earth (viz. of the outward man) did enter again into the earth, and imagine after the earthly fruit, then the devil infected his desire by the property of the Serpent; and in each desire is the Fiat, which does impress and make the desire essential [into form]. Thus the earthly hunger became at this instant wholly earthly; therefore God said now unto him: you must turn again to earth, from whence you were taken; for the heavenly disappeared in the earthly, as the gold is disappeared in lead.
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.
151. Thus we herein understand very clearly, how God out of great love has promised the Serpent-Bruiser to the fallen man, and espoused and betrothed it unto the virgin-like and disappeared centre, and given in itself therewith for a help and companion. For when they were fallen from God, and had made themselves monstrous, then the image out of the limus of the earth became wholly brutal, and lived in opposition, in distemper, in sickness, and also in heat and cold, as all other beasts. 52. Now therefore God told them what their labour, work and employment should be in this world, viz. that they should bring forth children in sorrow, with painful smart, in trouble and distress, and eat the herb of the field, and now clothe their bestial image in turmoil and cumbring care, in toil and labour, until the four-elements man in the bestial Serpent's image should again be broken and dissolved, and return unto the earth, from whence it was taken and extracted as a limus. The Twenty-Fourth Chapter Of the Cause and Rise of the Curse of the Earth, and of the Body of Sickness
21. GOD'S cursing of the ground for man's sins' sake, that it should bring forth thorns and thistles, and commanding man not, till after sin was committed, to eat of the herb of the field, and in the sweat of his face to eat his bread, does plainly and sufficiently show us that this had not been in Paradise. The ground should not have borne thorns and thistles and other evil herbs, which are poisonful; but in the curse all these properties became manifest; for as the body was, after the fall, so likewise its food: the halfserpentine man must now eat such food as his desire required [or coveted] . 2. The curse is nothing else but the holy element's hiding of itself viz. the holy ens, which budded forth through the earth and bore fruit, and held the property of the four elements as 'twere captive in itself [did withdraw or closely conceal itself]. The heaven in the earth hid itself from the earth; the holy tincture, from the awakened vanity, viz. the heavenly part, which was from the heavenly ens [did keep itself secret] from the part in the curse, viz. in the ens of the dark world.
33. Thus the heavenly part was a mystery unto man, and so remained in the curse between time and eternity, half dead as to the heavenly part, yet anew embraced with the promise in the aim of the Covenant; and as to the earthly [part] strongly bound to the band of the stars and four elements, infected with the distemper of the Serpent and the devil; very hard tied with three strong chains, from which he cannot get free till the total dissolution of his earthly body; for the curse of the earth and the Serpent forced also into the earthly man, viz. into the limus of the earth. 4. For God's said, you are earth, and unto earth you shall return; for when the desire of the limus of the extract of the earth (viz. of the outward man) did enter again into the earth, and imagine after the earthly fruit, then the devil infected his desire by the property of the Serpent; and in each desire is the Fiat, which does impress and make the desire essential [into form]. Thus the earthly hunger became at this instant wholly earthly; therefore God said now unto him: you must turn again to earth, from whence you were taken; for the heavenly disappeared in the earthly, as the gold is disappeared in lead.
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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