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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.
131. Now we do here understand this, that if God should have again introduced the enkindled ens, out of which the earth and man were created, into the unformable Word, viz. wholly and fully into the likeness, into the love, then no creature might have been produced or brought forth; for every soul's spirit, yea the angels, and whatsoever lives, must be a stirring [or working] fire. 32. Now no fire-source can be generated out of the perfect likeness, unless the likeness does move itself. Yet the eternal likeness, viz. God, had before moved himself in his Mystery with the creation of the angelical thrones. Now if he should have changed this motion (which was enkindled, and also poisoned by the hierarch Lucifer with false distemper) into love, before he had created the earth and man, then he must yet once more have moved himself according to the fire's property, if he would have created another hierarch and angelical prince. 33. But seeing that might not be, he created the earth, and out of the earth, man, out of the first motion; and breathed into man the light- and fire-soul, out of that breath of his manifested and moved Word, viz. out of the first motion. For out of the first motion of the Word another prince should come into the princely created throne of Lucifer, and take in and possess the first motion.
234. And God appointed the judgement to the first motion, and took away Lucifer's domineering fire-sword, and gave it unto Adam; and afterwards introduced the deepest love of God in Christ into Adam, and brought the moved Word again into the likeness, viz. into an eternal confirmation, and gave Adam in Christ the fire-sword over the fallen prince Lucifer. 35. for Adam, viz. the corrupted limus of the earth, should, in Christ its first enjoyed prince, judge with this flaming sword; as Paul has told us, that the saints shall judge the world. Understand, the enkindled ens of man and of the earth should judge the false prince of lies, who had perversely changed the truth in the holy ens into lies, and corrupted it with such [false desire] . 36. But seeing the ens of man was corrupted, and could not, God, out of his deepest hiddenness, introduced the most holy ens into the corrupt ens of man, viz. into the heavenly part, and brought the outward [part] also through the sword of the fire and death into the inward, into an eternal likeness [or temperature]. And thus there is here a looking-glass for reason. If reason be illuminated of God it will then understand us here; but if it be not, then there is not any possibility to understand this.
337. And we faithfully and seriously warn the caviller and carper, not to say it is a blasphemy. Let him first put away his calfish and bestial eyes; and look us here in the face, before he takes upon him to censure and cavil at us; it has far another ABC than reason has. It must have its birth a degree deeper. 38. Thus we are able very well to understand the casting out of Adam, wherefore he was tempted, and driven out of Paradise. Seeing his ens was somewhat enkindled by the devil's poison he could not possess Paradise; and therefore God drove him out from thence with the sword of judgement into death and corruption. And yet gave the promised Word of his deepest love to be with and in him in the ens of the heavenly world's being, for a sure and certain Covenant; wherein Adam and his children should trust, and believe that at the end and accomplishment of this time he would in this incorporated Word bring them again, with the introduction of the holy ens, out of death through the fire-sword; and clean cut off the false infection and lust with the sword of judgement, and set them as angels of God in the place of fallen Lucifer: And this is the mystery of the angel and sword of Paradise. 39. The angel did bear the name of the Covenant, out of which God would manifest Jesus, viz. the high and almighty prince. And it was even this angel which afterwards wrought many wonders upon the earth, who was with Abel, Shem, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Moses;
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.
131. Now we do here understand this, that if God should have again introduced the enkindled ens, out of which the earth and man were created, into the unformable Word, viz. wholly and fully into the likeness, into the love, then no creature might have been produced or brought forth; for every soul's spirit, yea the angels, and whatsoever lives, must be a stirring [or working] fire. 32. Now no fire-source can be generated out of the perfect likeness, unless the likeness does move itself. Yet the eternal likeness, viz. God, had before moved himself in his Mystery with the creation of the angelical thrones. Now if he should have changed this motion (which was enkindled, and also poisoned by the hierarch Lucifer with false distemper) into love, before he had created the earth and man, then he must yet once more have moved himself according to the fire's property, if he would have created another hierarch and angelical prince. 33. But seeing that might not be, he created the earth, and out of the earth, man, out of the first motion; and breathed into man the light- and fire-soul, out of that breath of his manifested and moved Word, viz. out of the first motion. For out of the first motion of the Word another prince should come into the princely created throne of Lucifer, and take in and possess the first motion.
234. And God appointed the judgement to the first motion, and took away Lucifer's domineering fire-sword, and gave it unto Adam; and afterwards introduced the deepest love of God in Christ into Adam, and brought the moved Word again into the likeness, viz. into an eternal confirmation, and gave Adam in Christ the fire-sword over the fallen prince Lucifer. 35. for Adam, viz. the corrupted limus of the earth, should, in Christ its first enjoyed prince, judge with this flaming sword; as Paul has told us, that the saints shall judge the world. Understand, the enkindled ens of man and of the earth should judge the false prince of lies, who had perversely changed the truth in the holy ens into lies, and corrupted it with such [false desire] . 36. But seeing the ens of man was corrupted, and could not, God, out of his deepest hiddenness, introduced the most holy ens into the corrupt ens of man, viz. into the heavenly part, and brought the outward [part] also through the sword of the fire and death into the inward, into an eternal likeness [or temperature]. And thus there is here a looking-glass for reason. If reason be illuminated of God it will then understand us here; but if it be not, then there is not any possibility to understand this.
337. And we faithfully and seriously warn the caviller and carper, not to say it is a blasphemy. Let him first put away his calfish and bestial eyes; and look us here in the face, before he takes upon him to censure and cavil at us; it has far another ABC than reason has. It must have its birth a degree deeper. 38. Thus we are able very well to understand the casting out of Adam, wherefore he was tempted, and driven out of Paradise. Seeing his ens was somewhat enkindled by the devil's poison he could not possess Paradise; and therefore God drove him out from thence with the sword of judgement into death and corruption. And yet gave the promised Word of his deepest love to be with and in him in the ens of the heavenly world's being, for a sure and certain Covenant; wherein Adam and his children should trust, and believe that at the end and accomplishment of this time he would in this incorporated Word bring them again, with the introduction of the holy ens, out of death through the fire-sword; and clean cut off the false infection and lust with the sword of judgement, and set them as angels of God in the place of fallen Lucifer: And this is the mystery of the angel and sword of Paradise. 39. The angel did bear the name of the Covenant, out of which God would manifest Jesus, viz. the high and almighty prince. And it was even this angel which afterwards wrought many wonders upon the earth, who was with Abel, Shem, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Moses;
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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