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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.
113. For Cain offered in the proud Serpent's desire as a hypocrite, and would be an honest, demure, devout and godly child in his Serpent's desire; but Abel humbled himself before God, and set his desire into God's mercy. God's love-fire took his offering, and penetrated through the earthly offering and fire; and the like also is to be understood in the body of Abel; as the incorruptible [being] shall swallow up the corruptible, so also the heavenly took the earthly captive in itself. 14. But that Cain slew the outward body of Abel has this type [signification] and figure: that the outward body shall be slain [or mortified] in the anger of God. The anger must devour and mortify the outward image which is grown up in the anger; and out of death springs forth the eternal life. 15. Abel was a figure of Christ; the children of God's anger must execute the right of God's anger upon the outward earthly and also [upon the] bestial image of the children of the holy one. Even as the Pharisees (who before God were only false serpent-children, as Christ called them) must persecute and kill the humanity of Christ; so likewise was Cain a type of these serpentine wolfish Pharisees, and also of the verbal titular Christendom.
216. As the false Serpent's child is a monster and fool before the angelical world, so likewise the children of darkness do account and esteem the children of the light for fools; for there must be a contrary, that the one might be manifest in the other. If the anger had not taken hold of the humanity, and devoured it into itself then the deepest love of God would not have been manifest in man. 17. But thus the love takes cause, by the anger, to overpower and prevail over the same with its motion and manifestation; as the same may be known in Christ. The true Son of God gave himself into our image, which was awakened in the anger, that so he might be made manifest with his love in the anger, and change the same into joy. 18. Christ gave our human image to the anger of his Father to be devoured in death, and brought his life into death, and yet manifested his love in the life which death had devoured, and brought forth the life in love through the death. As a grain of corn which is sown into the earth, the same must die in the earth, but out of that mortified grain grows a fair new body; even so the corrupt body of Adam shall and must be offered to death and the anger; and out of the death and anger the body of the divine love shall be manifest.
319. It was exactly typified and prefigured in Cain and Abel how it would be in the succeeding and future generations. Seeing Abel outwardly did bear the earthly image, and yet in the spirit he was an image of heaven, his outward body in the corruption was only a visard [Larva or strange disguised person] before the outward world; for there was another spirit hidden therein, which was not of the outward world's essence and property; therefore because he was not wholly a right child of the earthly world, it would not suffer him (being as a strange child) in it; for the devil was prince in the wrathful essence in this world, who would not that a child of the light should spring forth through the wrathful essence [and be in his garden]. 20. Thus the image or person of Cain and Abel is a true figure of the false, and then also of the holy and true, children of God; of the outward sinful corrupt and mortal man, and of the inward new regenerate holy man. When Christ with his love-kingdom arises from death out of the disappeared ens, then Adam's earthly image must die in Christ's death; and if it now be that the outward body must yet live, it is only a scorn and fool before the heaven's image, and so also before the natural life of this world. 21. For so soon as Christ is born, the sinful life is condemned to death; and stands in scorn and open shame before all the false children in the anger of God, as a whore in Bridewell
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.
113. For Cain offered in the proud Serpent's desire as a hypocrite, and would be an honest, demure, devout and godly child in his Serpent's desire; but Abel humbled himself before God, and set his desire into God's mercy. God's love-fire took his offering, and penetrated through the earthly offering and fire; and the like also is to be understood in the body of Abel; as the incorruptible [being] shall swallow up the corruptible, so also the heavenly took the earthly captive in itself. 14. But that Cain slew the outward body of Abel has this type [signification] and figure: that the outward body shall be slain [or mortified] in the anger of God. The anger must devour and mortify the outward image which is grown up in the anger; and out of death springs forth the eternal life. 15. Abel was a figure of Christ; the children of God's anger must execute the right of God's anger upon the outward earthly and also [upon the] bestial image of the children of the holy one. Even as the Pharisees (who before God were only false serpent-children, as Christ called them) must persecute and kill the humanity of Christ; so likewise was Cain a type of these serpentine wolfish Pharisees, and also of the verbal titular Christendom.
216. As the false Serpent's child is a monster and fool before the angelical world, so likewise the children of darkness do account and esteem the children of the light for fools; for there must be a contrary, that the one might be manifest in the other. If the anger had not taken hold of the humanity, and devoured it into itself then the deepest love of God would not have been manifest in man. 17. But thus the love takes cause, by the anger, to overpower and prevail over the same with its motion and manifestation; as the same may be known in Christ. The true Son of God gave himself into our image, which was awakened in the anger, that so he might be made manifest with his love in the anger, and change the same into joy. 18. Christ gave our human image to the anger of his Father to be devoured in death, and brought his life into death, and yet manifested his love in the life which death had devoured, and brought forth the life in love through the death. As a grain of corn which is sown into the earth, the same must die in the earth, but out of that mortified grain grows a fair new body; even so the corrupt body of Adam shall and must be offered to death and the anger; and out of the death and anger the body of the divine love shall be manifest.
319. It was exactly typified and prefigured in Cain and Abel how it would be in the succeeding and future generations. Seeing Abel outwardly did bear the earthly image, and yet in the spirit he was an image of heaven, his outward body in the corruption was only a visard [Larva or strange disguised person] before the outward world; for there was another spirit hidden therein, which was not of the outward world's essence and property; therefore because he was not wholly a right child of the earthly world, it would not suffer him (being as a strange child) in it; for the devil was prince in the wrathful essence in this world, who would not that a child of the light should spring forth through the wrathful essence [and be in his garden]. 20. Thus the image or person of Cain and Abel is a true figure of the false, and then also of the holy and true, children of God; of the outward sinful corrupt and mortal man, and of the inward new regenerate holy man. When Christ with his love-kingdom arises from death out of the disappeared ens, then Adam's earthly image must die in Christ's death; and if it now be that the outward body must yet live, it is only a scorn and fool before the heaven's image, and so also before the natural life of this world. 21. For so soon as Christ is born, the sinful life is condemned to death; and stands in scorn and open shame before all the false children in the anger of God, as a whore in Bridewell
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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