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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.
1and yet in its ground and original it has taken its rise from the devil (through the Serpent's ens), who also departed with the free will from his own peculiar ens into strange desire. Whereby he has introduced and awakened in himself (by reason of his strange in-foisted ens) the hellish torment, pain and sickness, so that his life's astrum is wholly departed from its mutual accord and harmony, and entered into an enchanting sorcering property: and so likewise it goes with the fallen man. 13. But now man has his cure, and the devil has not; for when the divine providence knew that he would not stand, he caused all manner of medicine [for hunger and health] to grow out of the earth, to resist and withstand the strange introduced property, both from the astrum and elements. And for the cure of the mind God has given his Holy Word; that the mind should immerse itself into the Word, and through the power of the Word continually cast away the introduced strange abomination. 14. And if it does not this, but continues in the strange introduced ens (which the devil continually introduces through the Serpent's image), then the strange ens becomes substantial, and surrounds the hidden ens of the heavenly world's being or substance; and even then that ens which is from and of the divine property remains disappeared in death and cannot attain the place of God. And hence comes the eternal death;
2as is to be seen in Lucifer, in whom also his divine ens is included or shut up into the Nothing, viz. into the greatest hiddenness [or privation], so that he, in his magical astrum in the creatural property, cannot reach or obtain the place of God. 15. Therefore it is very necessary for man wholly to sink and dive himself into the promised incorporated Word of God; and continually and fully reject and cast away the strange introduced ens, which the devil insinuates into his mind (whereby he desires strange things); and only take for his corporal necessity and livelihood that which he may obtain with good truth and real upright honesty which befalls him in his calling [business, affairs]; the same his right life's astrum does bring unto him, and he is capable of it; and it creates him no vexation, trouble, discontent and pain, if he does not let in the Serpent's covetousness, pride, envy and anger thereinto. 16. And it is the greatest folly that man does eagerly and tearingly strive and hale for strange things [heterogene, and hurtful to his soul], and bring that into his desire which does only discontent and disturb him, and at last cast him quite from God; which does shut up his heavenly ens in body and soul. What profit is that unto him, which he sees without him, and does exalt himself in an outside lustre [as in a specious shadow and resemblance of a looking-glass], and yet is not capable of the same?
3And if he does get to be capable of it he turns it to his temporal and eternal vexation and disquietness. 17. God has created man naked, and given him nothing in this world that he can or may call his own, saying this or that is mine. Indeed all is his, but it is common; for God created only one man: to that one only man he gave all whatsoever is in this world. Now all men are proceeded out of this only man, he is the stem or body, the other are all his branches, and do receive power from their stem, and bring forth fruit out of one root, and each twig enjoys the tree's ens, also they do all alike enjoy the four elements and the astrum [stars, planets] alike. 18. What folly [and madness] is it then, that the twig wills to be an own [selfish] tree; and grows up of itselfas a strange plant, as if its fellow-twig did not stand also in its stem. It is the Serpent's introduced ens which seduces and divides the branches on the life's tree of man from the only life of man, bringing each twig into a peculiar sundry hunger, desiring to be a tree by itself in self-full power and domination. And therefore it desires the muchness [abundance] of this world for its own property, that it might greatly enlarge itself in the Serpent's ens, and be a great, thick, strong, fat, well-spread tree.
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.
1and yet in its ground and original it has taken its rise from the devil (through the Serpent's ens), who also departed with the free will from his own peculiar ens into strange desire. Whereby he has introduced and awakened in himself (by reason of his strange in-foisted ens) the hellish torment, pain and sickness, so that his life's astrum is wholly departed from its mutual accord and harmony, and entered into an enchanting sorcering property: and so likewise it goes with the fallen man. 13. But now man has his cure, and the devil has not; for when the divine providence knew that he would not stand, he caused all manner of medicine [for hunger and health] to grow out of the earth, to resist and withstand the strange introduced property, both from the astrum and elements. And for the cure of the mind God has given his Holy Word; that the mind should immerse itself into the Word, and through the power of the Word continually cast away the introduced strange abomination. 14. And if it does not this, but continues in the strange introduced ens (which the devil continually introduces through the Serpent's image), then the strange ens becomes substantial, and surrounds the hidden ens of the heavenly world's being or substance; and even then that ens which is from and of the divine property remains disappeared in death and cannot attain the place of God. And hence comes the eternal death;
2as is to be seen in Lucifer, in whom also his divine ens is included or shut up into the Nothing, viz. into the greatest hiddenness [or privation], so that he, in his magical astrum in the creatural property, cannot reach or obtain the place of God. 15. Therefore it is very necessary for man wholly to sink and dive himself into the promised incorporated Word of God; and continually and fully reject and cast away the strange introduced ens, which the devil insinuates into his mind (whereby he desires strange things); and only take for his corporal necessity and livelihood that which he may obtain with good truth and real upright honesty which befalls him in his calling [business, affairs]; the same his right life's astrum does bring unto him, and he is capable of it; and it creates him no vexation, trouble, discontent and pain, if he does not let in the Serpent's covetousness, pride, envy and anger thereinto. 16. And it is the greatest folly that man does eagerly and tearingly strive and hale for strange things [heterogene, and hurtful to his soul], and bring that into his desire which does only discontent and disturb him, and at last cast him quite from God; which does shut up his heavenly ens in body and soul. What profit is that unto him, which he sees without him, and does exalt himself in an outside lustre [as in a specious shadow and resemblance of a looking-glass], and yet is not capable of the same?
3And if he does get to be capable of it he turns it to his temporal and eternal vexation and disquietness. 17. God has created man naked, and given him nothing in this world that he can or may call his own, saying this or that is mine. Indeed all is his, but it is common; for God created only one man: to that one only man he gave all whatsoever is in this world. Now all men are proceeded out of this only man, he is the stem or body, the other are all his branches, and do receive power from their stem, and bring forth fruit out of one root, and each twig enjoys the tree's ens, also they do all alike enjoy the four elements and the astrum [stars, planets] alike. 18. What folly [and madness] is it then, that the twig wills to be an own [selfish] tree; and grows up of itselfas a strange plant, as if its fellow-twig did not stand also in its stem. It is the Serpent's introduced ens which seduces and divides the branches on the life's tree of man from the only life of man, bringing each twig into a peculiar sundry hunger, desiring to be a tree by itself in self-full power and domination. And therefore it desires the muchness [abundance] of this world for its own property, that it might greatly enlarge itself in the Serpent's ens, and be a great, thick, strong, fat, well-spread tree.
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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