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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.
1who appeared to Moses in the fire-sword of flame in the bush, and brought Israel out of Egypt, and went before them in a fiery pillar [by night], and in a cloudy pillar by day; who gave them the Law in the fire, and at last brought them by Joshua (being the type of Him who was to be born out of the fire-sword) into the Land [of] Israel. 40. This fire-angel turned its internal light outwards, and manifested itself in Christ's person in the humanity, with whom [or in which] Christ, viz. the holy anointing oil of the deepest hidden love, changed the fire- sword of the angel into a love- sword and holy dominion. 41. And this is the true Cherub which drove the false Adam out of Paradise, and brings him in again by Christ, the virgin's child, new born out of Adam in Christ; and it has no other ground or meaning. The Twenty-Sixth Chapter Of the Propagation of Man in this World, and of Cain, the First-born, The Murderer of his Brother 1. WE are here to consider this weighty point in right earnestness; and not to make conclusions with fictions and fables, as hitherto has been done as touching the election of Grace; whereas it has been handled only in a very blind and absurd manner, and no right [fundamental] understanding has been found thereof.
22. Seeing that men have sought only in reason, and have not been able through true repentance to force through the fire-sword, and see with divine eyes, thereupon the fire-sword of God's anger and severe purpose and decree of judgement has remained in the eyes of [their] reason alone; and further they have not seen. Therefore they have made dreadful and dangerous conclusions, without fundamental and plain understanding. 3. But Christendom is hereby faithfully and truly admonished, once throughly to awake, and shake off the conclusions of reason, and to see God's clear countenance, which desires no evil, nor can desire it; but has also set himself to be judge against all wickedness, and will destroy all such conclusions in the sword of his anger, and do away the Cherub. 4. Now it does here offer itself to our consideration, how it came to pass that Adam and Eve at first brought forth an evil child and a murderer. To this, reason says that it was from God's purpose, who has made to himself an Election, and chose one company of men to damnation, and the other unto his love. 5. Forsooth! dear reason: Whence are you born? and from whence do you speak under the cover of the Scripture? Do you not speak from the ens and words of the Serpent? Who brought the false ens into Eve her matrix, wherein Cain was apprehended? Did not the devil do it through the Serpent, and make the matrix of Eve monstrous?
36. Do you not understand how the Word of Promise did forthwith incorporate itself into the matrix of Eve in her seed, and that the contest between God's anger and God's love did presently begin; for God's love had incorporated itself [and betrothed itself] to bruise the head of the Serpent's monster in the anger of God; and thereinto the fire-soul, which lay captivated in God's anger, should give its free will. 7. For the fire-soul is a root proceeded from the divine omnipotence, and therefore it has free will, and nothing can deprive it thereof: It may conceive either in the life or in the light. 8. But if you ask why the Serpent-Bruiser did not forthwith bruise the head of the Serpent's ens in the first seed, and not suffer the Serpent's murderous, poisonful will to get the upper hand in the soul's ens, it is just as if I should ask, Wherefore did not God, when he saw that Adam became evil, wholly reject him, or make him to nothing, and create a new Adam? Thus likewise will reason judge of the devils, saying that it has pleased God that there should be devils, that it might be known what an angel is.
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.
1who appeared to Moses in the fire-sword of flame in the bush, and brought Israel out of Egypt, and went before them in a fiery pillar [by night], and in a cloudy pillar by day; who gave them the Law in the fire, and at last brought them by Joshua (being the type of Him who was to be born out of the fire-sword) into the Land [of] Israel. 40. This fire-angel turned its internal light outwards, and manifested itself in Christ's person in the humanity, with whom [or in which] Christ, viz. the holy anointing oil of the deepest hidden love, changed the fire- sword of the angel into a love- sword and holy dominion. 41. And this is the true Cherub which drove the false Adam out of Paradise, and brings him in again by Christ, the virgin's child, new born out of Adam in Christ; and it has no other ground or meaning. The Twenty-Sixth Chapter Of the Propagation of Man in this World, and of Cain, the First-born, The Murderer of his Brother 1. WE are here to consider this weighty point in right earnestness; and not to make conclusions with fictions and fables, as hitherto has been done as touching the election of Grace; whereas it has been handled only in a very blind and absurd manner, and no right [fundamental] understanding has been found thereof.
22. Seeing that men have sought only in reason, and have not been able through true repentance to force through the fire-sword, and see with divine eyes, thereupon the fire-sword of God's anger and severe purpose and decree of judgement has remained in the eyes of [their] reason alone; and further they have not seen. Therefore they have made dreadful and dangerous conclusions, without fundamental and plain understanding. 3. But Christendom is hereby faithfully and truly admonished, once throughly to awake, and shake off the conclusions of reason, and to see God's clear countenance, which desires no evil, nor can desire it; but has also set himself to be judge against all wickedness, and will destroy all such conclusions in the sword of his anger, and do away the Cherub. 4. Now it does here offer itself to our consideration, how it came to pass that Adam and Eve at first brought forth an evil child and a murderer. To this, reason says that it was from God's purpose, who has made to himself an Election, and chose one company of men to damnation, and the other unto his love. 5. Forsooth! dear reason: Whence are you born? and from whence do you speak under the cover of the Scripture? Do you not speak from the ens and words of the Serpent? Who brought the false ens into Eve her matrix, wherein Cain was apprehended? Did not the devil do it through the Serpent, and make the matrix of Eve monstrous?
36. Do you not understand how the Word of Promise did forthwith incorporate itself into the matrix of Eve in her seed, and that the contest between God's anger and God's love did presently begin; for God's love had incorporated itself [and betrothed itself] to bruise the head of the Serpent's monster in the anger of God; and thereinto the fire-soul, which lay captivated in God's anger, should give its free will. 7. For the fire-soul is a root proceeded from the divine omnipotence, and therefore it has free will, and nothing can deprive it thereof: It may conceive either in the life or in the light. 8. But if you ask why the Serpent-Bruiser did not forthwith bruise the head of the Serpent's ens in the first seed, and not suffer the Serpent's murderous, poisonful will to get the upper hand in the soul's ens, it is just as if I should ask, Wherefore did not God, when he saw that Adam became evil, wholly reject him, or make him to nothing, and create a new Adam? Thus likewise will reason judge of the devils, saying that it has pleased God that there should be devils, that it might be known what an angel is.
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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