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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.
19. Hearken reason! I have above already answered you, that if God should once more have moved himself for man's sake, and introduced the first motion in the human and earthly ens into a stillness, then the six days' works of the creation must have retired back; and have been brought into a workless rest. And this, God would not; the whole creation should and must subsist in its first motion; its first formed ens in the Verbum Fiat must stand, be it either in love or in anger, let who will, apprehend either: the anger was open, and so was the love also. 10. Only the love is called God: the anger is called his strength and might. Now what the free will would desire, therein it should be confirmed, either in the love or in the anger. 11. For the free will was born or sprung forth from the love and anger, viz. from the fire- and light-world: and so likewise it might choose itself a place for its working life. If God's love should have drowned the free will in the ens in Eve's seed in the love, (in which [seed] it [the free will] was enkindled in the anger) , then the fiery motion in the matrix must have ceased. Now, out of the light's ens only and alone no soul may be brought forth. 12. Also the corrupt ens of the earthly limus must have then been
2presently judged through the fire, which could not be; for the motion of the new regeneration, and the opening or full explication of the divine sweetness, and the overcoming of the fire, viz. of the anger of God, did belong only to the name of Jesus. 13. The Word which had incorporated itself had [done this] from without the fire-sword, viz. the Cherub, and from within the Jesus, who should overcome the fire-sword with love. Thus the name Jesu stood hidden in the fire-sword, and was not manifest until the time that God would move himself therein, and manifest the same. 14. Thus the insinuated ens of the Serpent, that Eve had introduced through imagination into lust, must be wholly cast away; for in Cain the murdering image [or the evil corrupt nature and property of the Serpent]was manifest, which cannot inherit the kingdom of God. But on the contrary, the mark of the Covenant in the promised Word was in the free will, and in the heavenly disappeared ens of the soul, into which [Covenant of the promised grace] the soul should enter. 15. And although the Serpent's ens should have been rejected (as it must be, in all the children of Eve), yet the part of the heavenly world's being lay hidden in the Covenant of the Word in the disappeared ens, as a possibility to the new regeneration. Therefore God said to Cain, when the murdering spirit persuaded him, Rule over the sin.
316. If you say, Wherewith? He could not! But wherefore could he not? The Serpent's desire held him, and brought him to kill his brother: Wherefore? The free will had given itself up into the Serpent's ens which held him captive. 17. Now says reason, God would have it so, else he had turned away his will. No. Indeed God's anger-will in the Serpent's ens which had captivated the free will would have it. But yet God's love-will said in him, Rule over sin, that is, over the wrath and anger of the Serpent, and let it not have its power and prevalency. 18. And here we are rightly to know how God's love and anger are in continual contest, understand, in the manifested Word in the limus of the earth, and in the ens of the human property out of the earth. For the anger-ens is stirred up and driven by the devil, and desires continually to devour the love-ens, and possess this kingdom in the anger-ens. 19. The anger-ens desires to have man; for it has its king in Lucifer. And the love-ens desires also to have him; for it has its king in Christ. And therefore Christ must bring the human love-ens through death and the anger-ens, and open another Principle, viz. another kingdom; and leave prince Lucifer in his own anger, for his free will had chosen it him. 20. Thus also the free will in Cain did choose the false, viz. the devil's will. But you say, Was then the murdering-will wholly rejected? It did reject [abandon] itself; but if the free will had again conceived
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.
19. Hearken reason! I have above already answered you, that if God should once more have moved himself for man's sake, and introduced the first motion in the human and earthly ens into a stillness, then the six days' works of the creation must have retired back; and have been brought into a workless rest. And this, God would not; the whole creation should and must subsist in its first motion; its first formed ens in the Verbum Fiat must stand, be it either in love or in anger, let who will, apprehend either: the anger was open, and so was the love also. 10. Only the love is called God: the anger is called his strength and might. Now what the free will would desire, therein it should be confirmed, either in the love or in the anger. 11. For the free will was born or sprung forth from the love and anger, viz. from the fire- and light-world: and so likewise it might choose itself a place for its working life. If God's love should have drowned the free will in the ens in Eve's seed in the love, (in which [seed] it [the free will] was enkindled in the anger) , then the fiery motion in the matrix must have ceased. Now, out of the light's ens only and alone no soul may be brought forth. 12. Also the corrupt ens of the earthly limus must have then been
2presently judged through the fire, which could not be; for the motion of the new regeneration, and the opening or full explication of the divine sweetness, and the overcoming of the fire, viz. of the anger of God, did belong only to the name of Jesus. 13. The Word which had incorporated itself had [done this] from without the fire-sword, viz. the Cherub, and from within the Jesus, who should overcome the fire-sword with love. Thus the name Jesu stood hidden in the fire-sword, and was not manifest until the time that God would move himself therein, and manifest the same. 14. Thus the insinuated ens of the Serpent, that Eve had introduced through imagination into lust, must be wholly cast away; for in Cain the murdering image [or the evil corrupt nature and property of the Serpent]was manifest, which cannot inherit the kingdom of God. But on the contrary, the mark of the Covenant in the promised Word was in the free will, and in the heavenly disappeared ens of the soul, into which [Covenant of the promised grace] the soul should enter. 15. And although the Serpent's ens should have been rejected (as it must be, in all the children of Eve), yet the part of the heavenly world's being lay hidden in the Covenant of the Word in the disappeared ens, as a possibility to the new regeneration. Therefore God said to Cain, when the murdering spirit persuaded him, Rule over the sin.
316. If you say, Wherewith? He could not! But wherefore could he not? The Serpent's desire held him, and brought him to kill his brother: Wherefore? The free will had given itself up into the Serpent's ens which held him captive. 17. Now says reason, God would have it so, else he had turned away his will. No. Indeed God's anger-will in the Serpent's ens which had captivated the free will would have it. But yet God's love-will said in him, Rule over sin, that is, over the wrath and anger of the Serpent, and let it not have its power and prevalency. 18. And here we are rightly to know how God's love and anger are in continual contest, understand, in the manifested Word in the limus of the earth, and in the ens of the human property out of the earth. For the anger-ens is stirred up and driven by the devil, and desires continually to devour the love-ens, and possess this kingdom in the anger-ens. 19. The anger-ens desires to have man; for it has its king in Lucifer. And the love-ens desires also to have him; for it has its king in Christ. And therefore Christ must bring the human love-ens through death and the anger-ens, and open another Principle, viz. another kingdom; and leave prince Lucifer in his own anger, for his free will had chosen it him. 20. Thus also the free will in Cain did choose the false, viz. the devil's will. But you say, Was then the murdering-will wholly rejected? It did reject [abandon] itself; but if the free will had again conceived
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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