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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.
1in the love-ens it would have been again born anew, yea even after the murder: which we leave unto the judgement of God, whether it were so or no, seeing the text in Moses does give him so bare a name in despair. For the Word, out of which the name Jesus was made manifest, was given to call poor lost sinners to repentance, and not the righteous ones, who were apprehended in the love; as Christ said. 21. Cain was a type of the first corrupt Adam in sin, and Abel was a type of Christ, the second Adam, viz. of the virgin-child; for the tree of evil and good began in Adam. And so likewise the fruit did forthwith appear, viz. Christ's children, and the children of the devil and the Serpent. 22. Now reason says, Was Cain then wholly conceived of the Serpent's ens in the anger of God, and predestinated to damnation? No. He was [conceived] of the ens of Adam's soul and body; and so also of the seed and ens of Eve her body;
2but the monster in the matrix of Eve did environ the sown seed; and it was that which did seduce and beguile him; but the mark [and aim] of the Covenant lay hidden in the ens of the soul and body. For the ens of the seed of Adam and Eve was out of the heavenly disappeared [limus], and then also out of the earthly awakened limus; but the will of the Serpent and of the devil took possession of the house, as the like was in the devil, who was an angel; but the will of the dark world took possession of the house in him, and got the upper hand: so also it was here, in Cain. 23. But you ask, How came this so to be? Hear and see, you fair child in the will of Adam and Eve, what their desire was before and after the fall: They desired the earthly kingdom, as we see that Eve was so wholly and only minded; for when she brought forth Cain, she said, I have gotten a man [who is to be] a Lord (Gen. iv. I). She thought him to be the bruiser and breaker of the Serpent; he should take in and possess the earthly kingdom, and expel the devil; she did not consider that she should die to her false earthly fleshly will, and be born anew in a holy will. And such a will she also brought into her seed; and the like did Adam also.
324. And hence now the will in the soul's essence did arise: the tree brought forth a twig out of [or like] itself. For it was Cain's desire only that he might be lord upon the earth; and being he saw that Abel was more acceptable in God's sight than himself; his free bestial will in him did elevate itself to slay Abel; for Cain's aim and endeavour was alone about the outward world, to domineer and be lord and master therein; but Abel sought God's love. 25. Thus there are yet two such Churches upon the earth; one which seeks only worldly pleasure, might, honour, and the outward god Mammon and Mausim (see Ch. 36, 32), and therein it lodges the Serpent's child. The other, which seeks the virginchild and God's kingdom, and must suffer itself to be persecuted, reviled, reproached, and killed by the Cainical Church, as Cain did to Abel. 26. For the devil will yet be continually a prince of this world in the Serpent's child; and so it is that if the virgin's child (which bruises the head of the Serpent) be not manifest in the Serpent's child, then the devil is and remains prince and host in the house of the soul: as happened to Cain.
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.
1in the love-ens it would have been again born anew, yea even after the murder: which we leave unto the judgement of God, whether it were so or no, seeing the text in Moses does give him so bare a name in despair. For the Word, out of which the name Jesus was made manifest, was given to call poor lost sinners to repentance, and not the righteous ones, who were apprehended in the love; as Christ said. 21. Cain was a type of the first corrupt Adam in sin, and Abel was a type of Christ, the second Adam, viz. of the virgin-child; for the tree of evil and good began in Adam. And so likewise the fruit did forthwith appear, viz. Christ's children, and the children of the devil and the Serpent. 22. Now reason says, Was Cain then wholly conceived of the Serpent's ens in the anger of God, and predestinated to damnation? No. He was [conceived] of the ens of Adam's soul and body; and so also of the seed and ens of Eve her body;
2but the monster in the matrix of Eve did environ the sown seed; and it was that which did seduce and beguile him; but the mark [and aim] of the Covenant lay hidden in the ens of the soul and body. For the ens of the seed of Adam and Eve was out of the heavenly disappeared [limus], and then also out of the earthly awakened limus; but the will of the Serpent and of the devil took possession of the house, as the like was in the devil, who was an angel; but the will of the dark world took possession of the house in him, and got the upper hand: so also it was here, in Cain. 23. But you ask, How came this so to be? Hear and see, you fair child in the will of Adam and Eve, what their desire was before and after the fall: They desired the earthly kingdom, as we see that Eve was so wholly and only minded; for when she brought forth Cain, she said, I have gotten a man [who is to be] a Lord (Gen. iv. I). She thought him to be the bruiser and breaker of the Serpent; he should take in and possess the earthly kingdom, and expel the devil; she did not consider that she should die to her false earthly fleshly will, and be born anew in a holy will. And such a will she also brought into her seed; and the like did Adam also.
324. And hence now the will in the soul's essence did arise: the tree brought forth a twig out of [or like] itself. For it was Cain's desire only that he might be lord upon the earth; and being he saw that Abel was more acceptable in God's sight than himself; his free bestial will in him did elevate itself to slay Abel; for Cain's aim and endeavour was alone about the outward world, to domineer and be lord and master therein; but Abel sought God's love. 25. Thus there are yet two such Churches upon the earth; one which seeks only worldly pleasure, might, honour, and the outward god Mammon and Mausim (see Ch. 36, 32), and therein it lodges the Serpent's child. The other, which seeks the virginchild and God's kingdom, and must suffer itself to be persecuted, reviled, reproached, and killed by the Cainical Church, as Cain did to Abel. 26. For the devil will yet be continually a prince of this world in the Serpent's child; and so it is that if the virgin's child (which bruises the head of the Serpent) be not manifest in the Serpent's child, then the devil is and remains prince and host in the house of the soul: as happened to Cain.
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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