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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.
126. For the only eternal life must be introduced into the Nothing, without [or beyond] every creature and being; for it has its eternal original out of the Nothing, viz. out of the divine understanding, and it is in a disquiet source in the Something; unless that its Something be also bent and set with its desire into the Nothing; and then the Something is a joy to the life; that the life of the Nothing in itself may dwell and work in Something. 27. For God, in reference to the creature, is as a Nothing, but if the creature introduces its desire into him, viz. into the Nothing, then the creature is the Something of the Nothing, and the Nothing moves, wills and works in the Something of the creature, and the creature in the Nothing; and in this working no turba can arise, for it is its own love-play, a mutual loving [of] itself; and it stands at the end of nature with its life. 28. Thus we understand what inheritance Adam has left us, viz. the curse, and the vain desire; and we consider the outward man in its life as a monster of a true human life: unless that the precious noble mind be born again in the spirit of Christ, else the outward centre in the mind is a serpent.
229. And in this serpent the gross beast which is from the astrum and four elements does sit, and holds possession in the house of the mind. And according to its bestial property produces various desires, one desiring this, another that, and causes manifold figures in the minds of men. One makes in his mind a fixed substance,l another a [shattered] ruinable [matter], that which he makes to-day, that he breaks down to-morrow, and has an inconstant beast in the mind, falls sometimes upon this, sometimes upon that [and of ten changes his mind] . 30. But he that brings up a fixed beast, he holds it in him for his treasure, and vaunts therewith as if it were the virgin-child, and gathers up earthly treasures for his bestial pleasure, and yet before God he is only a fool with his beast, for he must leave it to the earth and the judgement of God. 31. But he in whom the virgin's child is born, he treads the beast in the mind under foot. He must indeed suffer it outwardly upon him, to creep and falter as a laden ass that must carry the earthly sack. But he has enmity with it, as God said to Adam, I wil put enmity between you and the Serpent, and between the woman's seed and the seed of the Serpent, which shall bruise the Serpent's head, viz. the Serpent's beast. This monster of the beast in the earthly mind the true man does bruise the head or its desire and might.
332. Thus a godly man must have enmity in himself; and trample under foot the monster, viz. the Serpent's child, and continually kill it, for if this bestial Serpent's Seed were not [had not been] impressed and wholly incorporated in us, God would not have said, I will put enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the Serpent. The enmity is within man, and not without man with the creeping Serpent; this Serpent's seed in man is the devil's riding horse, his stronghold and fort, where he is able to dwell in man. 33. And therefore because the devil was a prince of this world, and still is so, in the anger, it is his will and aim to possess the image of God, which God created in his stead, and to rule it under his jurisdiction, and bring it into his kingdom; and this the curse of God's anger has brought along with it, which now works mightily unto destruction. 34. And on the contrary the Serpent-Bruiser works unto eternal life, and the human mind stands in the midst of these in the free will; to which the free will does engraft [Inoculate, or incorporate] itself; therein the mind works. It brings up a beast, and also an angel, or a beast and a devil; according to the outward world a beast, and according to the inward spiritual world an angel or a devil.
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.
126. For the only eternal life must be introduced into the Nothing, without [or beyond] every creature and being; for it has its eternal original out of the Nothing, viz. out of the divine understanding, and it is in a disquiet source in the Something; unless that its Something be also bent and set with its desire into the Nothing; and then the Something is a joy to the life; that the life of the Nothing in itself may dwell and work in Something. 27. For God, in reference to the creature, is as a Nothing, but if the creature introduces its desire into him, viz. into the Nothing, then the creature is the Something of the Nothing, and the Nothing moves, wills and works in the Something of the creature, and the creature in the Nothing; and in this working no turba can arise, for it is its own love-play, a mutual loving [of] itself; and it stands at the end of nature with its life. 28. Thus we understand what inheritance Adam has left us, viz. the curse, and the vain desire; and we consider the outward man in its life as a monster of a true human life: unless that the precious noble mind be born again in the spirit of Christ, else the outward centre in the mind is a serpent.
229. And in this serpent the gross beast which is from the astrum and four elements does sit, and holds possession in the house of the mind. And according to its bestial property produces various desires, one desiring this, another that, and causes manifold figures in the minds of men. One makes in his mind a fixed substance,l another a [shattered] ruinable [matter], that which he makes to-day, that he breaks down to-morrow, and has an inconstant beast in the mind, falls sometimes upon this, sometimes upon that [and of ten changes his mind] . 30. But he that brings up a fixed beast, he holds it in him for his treasure, and vaunts therewith as if it were the virgin-child, and gathers up earthly treasures for his bestial pleasure, and yet before God he is only a fool with his beast, for he must leave it to the earth and the judgement of God. 31. But he in whom the virgin's child is born, he treads the beast in the mind under foot. He must indeed suffer it outwardly upon him, to creep and falter as a laden ass that must carry the earthly sack. But he has enmity with it, as God said to Adam, I wil put enmity between you and the Serpent, and between the woman's seed and the seed of the Serpent, which shall bruise the Serpent's head, viz. the Serpent's beast. This monster of the beast in the earthly mind the true man does bruise the head or its desire and might.
332. Thus a godly man must have enmity in himself; and trample under foot the monster, viz. the Serpent's child, and continually kill it, for if this bestial Serpent's Seed were not [had not been] impressed and wholly incorporated in us, God would not have said, I will put enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the Serpent. The enmity is within man, and not without man with the creeping Serpent; this Serpent's seed in man is the devil's riding horse, his stronghold and fort, where he is able to dwell in man. 33. And therefore because the devil was a prince of this world, and still is so, in the anger, it is his will and aim to possess the image of God, which God created in his stead, and to rule it under his jurisdiction, and bring it into his kingdom; and this the curse of God's anger has brought along with it, which now works mightily unto destruction. 34. And on the contrary the Serpent-Bruiser works unto eternal life, and the human mind stands in the midst of these in the free will; to which the free will does engraft [Inoculate, or incorporate] itself; therein the mind works. It brings up a beast, and also an angel, or a beast and a devil; according to the outward world a beast, and according to the inward spiritual world an angel or a devil.
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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