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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.
159. Thus likewise men do prate in the stone houses of the mantle and offering of Christ, and yet in the meanwhile, in this prate and babble, do murder the children of Christ, condemn and judge them, and make a whole heap and crew of reviling devouring wolves, that do all cry out, snarl and snap; and none knows where the hind is which they hunt, save only that the devil does thus act and drive on his sport by them; so that the true, real offering of Christ may remain covered and hidden, and be only as a mystery in this world. 60. For we poor children of Eve do sojourn here in this cottage in a strange lodging, wherein the devil in God's anger is host. We dwell upon the cursed earth, where the devil rides over our soul and body, and at all times tempts us: we had need be wary and watchful, and at no time secure: it costs body and soul. The Twenty-Eighth Chapter Of Cain's Killing of his Brother, viz. of the Proud, Haughty, Antichristian, hypocritical Church upon the Earth; and also of the True Christendom hidden under this Antichristian Church 1. WHEN the devil in God's anger, in the wrath of the eternal nature, had introduced his throne and seat into the human property, and awakened the centre of the wrathful nature in him, there forthwith arose up such a desire out of the awakened anger's property in the human ens or seed, in the propagation; out of which property Babel, viz. the antichristian Church, is begotten and brought forth.
22. And now as God had incorporated and promised the SerpentBruiser of this false property (who should bruise the head of the Serpent's ens and will or desire) unto the heavenly ens of man, which disappeared in and to Paradise, which word of promise was a mystery, and a very secret hiddenness to the earthly man; even so also the false Cainical Church of hypocrisy and seeming holiness, whose heart and desire is only [of] the outward world, has gotten aloft this whole time, and has the outward dominion and name as if it offered to God. But the true, real Christian Church is hidden under it, as a very secret Mystery, and is not known of the Cainical Church. 3. Cain's Church sets forth itself very devoutly, and glisters on all sides with specious ceremonies and pompous ostentation; giving forth that it is holy, righteous, and good; that it also offers in the Covenant of Christ; but its heart is only a glozing, soothing, bravely attired harlot, full of Cainical murder, reviling and blasphemy, full of censure and self-speculation in pride, in covetousness and high mindedness. But Abel's Church is hidden under it in great plainness, and with no respect and reputation, and is accounted but foolish in reference to the glittering show of Cain; and is continually slain by Cain in its simplicity.
34. Now says reason, What, had God any pleasure herein, that he suffered Cain to kill Abel; and why is it still to this day that the children of God are slain, despised, contemned, reproached, mocked, scorned, and cried down for false by Cain, viz. by his posterity? One cause hereof is this: 5. Prince Lucifer was a hierarch in the kingdom or place of this world (as Christ even calls him a prince of this world, viz. in the kingdom of darkness in the anger of God), and was cast for his pride's sake out of the light into the darkness. 6. But seeing God then created another prince, viz. Adam, in and for this place, with whom he bound himselfeven with his deepest love before the foundation of the world in the dear and precious name Jesus, that he would break down and destroy the throne and kingdom of proud prince Lucifer in the human property, and overcome and be predominant with love; thence forthwith arose his envy and wrath against man.
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.
159. Thus likewise men do prate in the stone houses of the mantle and offering of Christ, and yet in the meanwhile, in this prate and babble, do murder the children of Christ, condemn and judge them, and make a whole heap and crew of reviling devouring wolves, that do all cry out, snarl and snap; and none knows where the hind is which they hunt, save only that the devil does thus act and drive on his sport by them; so that the true, real offering of Christ may remain covered and hidden, and be only as a mystery in this world. 60. For we poor children of Eve do sojourn here in this cottage in a strange lodging, wherein the devil in God's anger is host. We dwell upon the cursed earth, where the devil rides over our soul and body, and at all times tempts us: we had need be wary and watchful, and at no time secure: it costs body and soul. The Twenty-Eighth Chapter Of Cain's Killing of his Brother, viz. of the Proud, Haughty, Antichristian, hypocritical Church upon the Earth; and also of the True Christendom hidden under this Antichristian Church 1. WHEN the devil in God's anger, in the wrath of the eternal nature, had introduced his throne and seat into the human property, and awakened the centre of the wrathful nature in him, there forthwith arose up such a desire out of the awakened anger's property in the human ens or seed, in the propagation; out of which property Babel, viz. the antichristian Church, is begotten and brought forth.
22. And now as God had incorporated and promised the SerpentBruiser of this false property (who should bruise the head of the Serpent's ens and will or desire) unto the heavenly ens of man, which disappeared in and to Paradise, which word of promise was a mystery, and a very secret hiddenness to the earthly man; even so also the false Cainical Church of hypocrisy and seeming holiness, whose heart and desire is only [of] the outward world, has gotten aloft this whole time, and has the outward dominion and name as if it offered to God. But the true, real Christian Church is hidden under it, as a very secret Mystery, and is not known of the Cainical Church. 3. Cain's Church sets forth itself very devoutly, and glisters on all sides with specious ceremonies and pompous ostentation; giving forth that it is holy, righteous, and good; that it also offers in the Covenant of Christ; but its heart is only a glozing, soothing, bravely attired harlot, full of Cainical murder, reviling and blasphemy, full of censure and self-speculation in pride, in covetousness and high mindedness. But Abel's Church is hidden under it in great plainness, and with no respect and reputation, and is accounted but foolish in reference to the glittering show of Cain; and is continually slain by Cain in its simplicity.
34. Now says reason, What, had God any pleasure herein, that he suffered Cain to kill Abel; and why is it still to this day that the children of God are slain, despised, contemned, reproached, mocked, scorned, and cried down for false by Cain, viz. by his posterity? One cause hereof is this: 5. Prince Lucifer was a hierarch in the kingdom or place of this world (as Christ even calls him a prince of this world, viz. in the kingdom of darkness in the anger of God), and was cast for his pride's sake out of the light into the darkness. 6. But seeing God then created another prince, viz. Adam, in and for this place, with whom he bound himselfeven with his deepest love before the foundation of the world in the dear and precious name Jesus, that he would break down and destroy the throne and kingdom of proud prince Lucifer in the human property, and overcome and be predominant with love; thence forthwith arose his envy and wrath against man.
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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