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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.
175. God knows the false whorish soul which does only woo and wantonise with the Serpent, (with the idol Babel), and will still live in the lust and will of the flesh and of the Serpent; and yet wills to be an outwardly adopted child: God should forgive it its sins by an outward word-speaking, but it wills still to hang and cleave to the wanton love of the Serpent in its false lust. This, God chooses to judgement. 76. For the free will which was inspired into Adam, and which it [the soul] has inherited from Adam, hangs on Lucifer; and therefore God confirms it unto the kingdom of darkness with Lucifer; but the gate of grace stands yet open unto it [during] this time of the outward life. The Twenty-Seventh Chapter Of Cain's and Abel's offering and of the False and Antichristian Church, and also of the True Holy Church A LOOKING-GLASS FOR THE WORLD 1. HERE again, the veil lies before the face of Moses, in respect of the offerings of both these brothers; wherefore God willed to have them offer, whereas the reconciliation and atonement consists only in the earnest will toward God's mercy, in prayer and supplication to God, that a man depart and turn away from his evil will, and repent, and introduce his faith and hope into God's mercy.
22. They must verily needs know wherefore they offered incense; what pleasure and delight God took therein; which Moses has not once so much as mentioned, and that from God's purpose; and yet it has not been hidden to the children of the Saints, and also not to Moses; but he has a veil hanging before his eyes. 3. Israel (seeing for the most part they were evil children, and also idolatrous, as soon appeared by making them a Golden Calf) might not know it by reason of the false magic; and we also shall write only to those that are of our tribe, and yet plain and easy enough to be understood. Observe and mark it, thus: 4. The soul's free will is as thin [subtle] as a nothing; and though it be in its body indeed encompassed with the something, yet its amassed or conceived something is in a false distempered essence, by reason of the original of sin. 5. Now if the free will would approach to God with the desire, then it must depart out of its false something, and if it now does so depart, then it is bare and impotent, for it is again in the first nothing: for if it will come to God, then it must die to its false selfhood, and forsake it; and if it forsakes the same, then it is barely and merely as a nothing, and so it cannot go, work, or move. Ifit will show its might, then it must be in something, wherein it does imaginate and form itself.
36. An example hereof we have in faith. If faith would effectually work, then it must immass [or imaginate] itself into something wherein it may work; God's free will has conceived [or immassed] itself with the inward spiritual world, and works through the same; and the inward world's free will has conceived itself in the outward world, and works through the same. Even so the soul's free will, which also has its original out of the abyss, immasses itself in something, that it might be manifest, and thereby be able to move and act in God's sight. 7. Seeing then Adam's body was out of the limus of the earth, and also out of the limus of the holy heaven, which limus of heaven in Adam was now disappeared, wherein the free will had power to immass [or conceive] itself into a holy form, and act, work, pray and supplicate before God, therefore they made burnt-offerings of the fruits of the earth. As Cain, he brought of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and these they enkindled with fire. 8. But understand a magical fire, as that of Moses, for Moses declares so also. God looked graciously upon the offering of Abel, and not upon Cain's; that is, they brought offerings before God, and the free will of the soul should earnestly press with its prayer in to God. Therefore it would have a substance [subject or means], when it would go out of the human house of corruption into God, that it might work in something;
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.
175. God knows the false whorish soul which does only woo and wantonise with the Serpent, (with the idol Babel), and will still live in the lust and will of the flesh and of the Serpent; and yet wills to be an outwardly adopted child: God should forgive it its sins by an outward word-speaking, but it wills still to hang and cleave to the wanton love of the Serpent in its false lust. This, God chooses to judgement. 76. For the free will which was inspired into Adam, and which it [the soul] has inherited from Adam, hangs on Lucifer; and therefore God confirms it unto the kingdom of darkness with Lucifer; but the gate of grace stands yet open unto it [during] this time of the outward life. The Twenty-Seventh Chapter Of Cain's and Abel's offering and of the False and Antichristian Church, and also of the True Holy Church A LOOKING-GLASS FOR THE WORLD 1. HERE again, the veil lies before the face of Moses, in respect of the offerings of both these brothers; wherefore God willed to have them offer, whereas the reconciliation and atonement consists only in the earnest will toward God's mercy, in prayer and supplication to God, that a man depart and turn away from his evil will, and repent, and introduce his faith and hope into God's mercy.
22. They must verily needs know wherefore they offered incense; what pleasure and delight God took therein; which Moses has not once so much as mentioned, and that from God's purpose; and yet it has not been hidden to the children of the Saints, and also not to Moses; but he has a veil hanging before his eyes. 3. Israel (seeing for the most part they were evil children, and also idolatrous, as soon appeared by making them a Golden Calf) might not know it by reason of the false magic; and we also shall write only to those that are of our tribe, and yet plain and easy enough to be understood. Observe and mark it, thus: 4. The soul's free will is as thin [subtle] as a nothing; and though it be in its body indeed encompassed with the something, yet its amassed or conceived something is in a false distempered essence, by reason of the original of sin. 5. Now if the free will would approach to God with the desire, then it must depart out of its false something, and if it now does so depart, then it is bare and impotent, for it is again in the first nothing: for if it will come to God, then it must die to its false selfhood, and forsake it; and if it forsakes the same, then it is barely and merely as a nothing, and so it cannot go, work, or move. Ifit will show its might, then it must be in something, wherein it does imaginate and form itself.
36. An example hereof we have in faith. If faith would effectually work, then it must immass [or imaginate] itself into something wherein it may work; God's free will has conceived [or immassed] itself with the inward spiritual world, and works through the same; and the inward world's free will has conceived itself in the outward world, and works through the same. Even so the soul's free will, which also has its original out of the abyss, immasses itself in something, that it might be manifest, and thereby be able to move and act in God's sight. 7. Seeing then Adam's body was out of the limus of the earth, and also out of the limus of the holy heaven, which limus of heaven in Adam was now disappeared, wherein the free will had power to immass [or conceive] itself into a holy form, and act, work, pray and supplicate before God, therefore they made burnt-offerings of the fruits of the earth. As Cain, he brought of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and these they enkindled with fire. 8. But understand a magical fire, as that of Moses, for Moses declares so also. God looked graciously upon the offering of Abel, and not upon Cain's; that is, they brought offerings before God, and the free will of the soul should earnestly press with its prayer in to God. Therefore it would have a substance [subject or means], when it would go out of the human house of corruption into God, that it might work in something;
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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