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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.
135. Here a grain of seed is sown, which stands in three Principles, and is fit or pregnant to bear a creature in and to all three; for the divine possibility from God's manifested Word in love and anger, viz. the Verbum Fiat lies therein. As the free will conceives itself so it begets (or generates) an ens; and in the ens the spirit arises which forms it a creature out of the ens, and the spirit signs itself in the body what it is: and so stands its figure. The Twenty-Fifth Chapter How God drove Adam out of Paradise, and laid the Cherub before the Garden 1. WHEN God had cursed the Serpent, and the earth, then the beast-man was no longer profitable in Paradise, for he could not any more enjoy the fruits of Paradise; therefore God laid upon him the labour and toil of the world; and drove him out of the Garden of Eden, and placed the Cherub with the fire- sword of judgement before it, that if the new born virgin-child of the seed of the woman would again return and enter into Paradise, this angel with the fire-sword should cut away the Serpent's beast from it, and not any more suffer it to come into Paradise. [ Understand the beast] 2. The angel with the fire- sword is the right destroying angel, who carries death and life in his sword; he has therein God's love and anger, and when man dies in this world, then he comes before the gates of Paradise, before this angel: and even there the poor soul must pass through this [garden] judgement.
23. Now if it be captivated in the anger of God, then it cannot pass through this judgement; but ifit be a virgin-child, born of the seed of the woman, then it can pass quite through this sword, and then the angel cuts off the beast begotten of the Serpent's ens. And even then the soul is an angel of God, and serves him in his temple, in Paradise, and expects the Day of judgement, viz. the resurrection of the outward body. When this angel with the fiery sword shall sever the earth from the curse, then the right human body returns again, for it must also pass through this sword, and the sword will cut of fits beast, that he may be only a man, and no more a beast. 4. The speech of Moses concerning this Mystery is wholly hidden to the earthly man; for Moses speaks of an angel and a sword; and albeit the outward figure was even just so (for so was Adam driven out) yet it has far another ABC internally. The natural man without God's light understands nothing thereof. 5. This sword is in man. When man converts and enters into sorrow for his committed sins, and casts away the vanity, and steps into the infant's shirt, then the Morning- Star arises in the spirit of Christ, in the virgin-like, occluse [shut up] ens, in the true, woman's seed.
36. And in this anxious sorrowful gate of true Repentance, the angel stands with the fire-flaming sword, and the virgin-bud forces quite through this fire-sword into Paradise, viz. into the light, into the life of Christ, and grows forth through this sword. 7. And now the virgin-child stands with its fair rose in the new plant in Paradise, and the poor soul which begets this child stands the whole time of this life under the reach and swing of this firesword, and is fast bound with a band to the gross beast in the outward world. Where the virgin-child is sufficiently thrust at and wounded with this fire- sword; for the fire-soul, which in the fire-sword of God's anger is bound to the Serpent's monster, does daily amuse itself upon the Serpentmonster, and sins. And even then this fire-sword does cut away the sins, and devours them into God's anger, where they are examined and judged. 8. Therefore the poor virgin-child which is born out of the soul must stand under Christ's cross, in Christ's death; and the piercing sword of tribulation and grief passes quite through it. It must suffer itself to be drawn quite through this flaming sword; and the fire burns away the abomination which the soul continually brings into itself from the Serpent's monster [or false image]. And even then it is in a sore strait, when that is cut of ffrom the fire-soul which it fain would have from its monster.
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.
135. Here a grain of seed is sown, which stands in three Principles, and is fit or pregnant to bear a creature in and to all three; for the divine possibility from God's manifested Word in love and anger, viz. the Verbum Fiat lies therein. As the free will conceives itself so it begets (or generates) an ens; and in the ens the spirit arises which forms it a creature out of the ens, and the spirit signs itself in the body what it is: and so stands its figure. The Twenty-Fifth Chapter How God drove Adam out of Paradise, and laid the Cherub before the Garden 1. WHEN God had cursed the Serpent, and the earth, then the beast-man was no longer profitable in Paradise, for he could not any more enjoy the fruits of Paradise; therefore God laid upon him the labour and toil of the world; and drove him out of the Garden of Eden, and placed the Cherub with the fire- sword of judgement before it, that if the new born virgin-child of the seed of the woman would again return and enter into Paradise, this angel with the fire-sword should cut away the Serpent's beast from it, and not any more suffer it to come into Paradise. [ Understand the beast] 2. The angel with the fire- sword is the right destroying angel, who carries death and life in his sword; he has therein God's love and anger, and when man dies in this world, then he comes before the gates of Paradise, before this angel: and even there the poor soul must pass through this [garden] judgement.
23. Now if it be captivated in the anger of God, then it cannot pass through this judgement; but ifit be a virgin-child, born of the seed of the woman, then it can pass quite through this sword, and then the angel cuts off the beast begotten of the Serpent's ens. And even then the soul is an angel of God, and serves him in his temple, in Paradise, and expects the Day of judgement, viz. the resurrection of the outward body. When this angel with the fiery sword shall sever the earth from the curse, then the right human body returns again, for it must also pass through this sword, and the sword will cut of fits beast, that he may be only a man, and no more a beast. 4. The speech of Moses concerning this Mystery is wholly hidden to the earthly man; for Moses speaks of an angel and a sword; and albeit the outward figure was even just so (for so was Adam driven out) yet it has far another ABC internally. The natural man without God's light understands nothing thereof. 5. This sword is in man. When man converts and enters into sorrow for his committed sins, and casts away the vanity, and steps into the infant's shirt, then the Morning- Star arises in the spirit of Christ, in the virgin-like, occluse [shut up] ens, in the true, woman's seed.
36. And in this anxious sorrowful gate of true Repentance, the angel stands with the fire-flaming sword, and the virgin-bud forces quite through this fire-sword into Paradise, viz. into the light, into the life of Christ, and grows forth through this sword. 7. And now the virgin-child stands with its fair rose in the new plant in Paradise, and the poor soul which begets this child stands the whole time of this life under the reach and swing of this firesword, and is fast bound with a band to the gross beast in the outward world. Where the virgin-child is sufficiently thrust at and wounded with this fire- sword; for the fire-soul, which in the fire-sword of God's anger is bound to the Serpent's monster, does daily amuse itself upon the Serpentmonster, and sins. And even then this fire-sword does cut away the sins, and devours them into God's anger, where they are examined and judged. 8. Therefore the poor virgin-child which is born out of the soul must stand under Christ's cross, in Christ's death; and the piercing sword of tribulation and grief passes quite through it. It must suffer itself to be drawn quite through this flaming sword; and the fire burns away the abomination which the soul continually brings into itself from the Serpent's monster [or false image]. And even then it is in a sore strait, when that is cut of ffrom the fire-soul which it fain would have from its monster.
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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