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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.
1yet these speak evil of the things they know not: this ought not so to be, but to return good for evil; and if we know a fault in our brother, we should tell him of it in private, and if he hears us, we have won our brother; and it is far better so than to contemn, despise, scorn and find fault with the slips and failings one of another in any kind; moreover, to be reproached, is that which everyone who would be the disciple of Christ must look for in this world, and not think to be above his master; for if they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they call them of his household (Matt. x. 25). Also there were, that said of Christ, he has Beelzebub (Mark iii. 22). But such names cast upon any should deter none from examining the sayings or writings of any man, that they may be discerned whether they be good or evil. It may be supposed that the persons who judge evil of this author, have received
2misrepresentations concerning some part of his writings, that speak of magic: as if the knowledge of magic must needs be witchcraft: when if they consider that Daniel said, Destroy not the wise men of Babylon (Dan. ii. 24); and that Daniel, otherwise called Belteshazzar (Dan. iv. 8, 9), was master of the magicians: also what the Magi or wise men of the East that came to Christ were; cannot think but they were excellent men, and had the knowledge of the Magia, in English, magic; not to be rejected, but to be sought after, with all diligence; that we may be able to disclose the secret workings, and oppose the wiles of the devil and Satan, used by his wicked magi or magicians, his instruments in this world: that (2 Kings ix. 22) the witchcrafts of the wicked Jezebel, may be discovered; and together with the mistress of witchcrafts, that sells nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts (Nahum iii. 4), and such as (Gal. iii. I) bewitched the Galatians to whom Paul wrote; may be overthrown, and destroyed utterly. Let us study seriously to understand the things that are expressed in the words of the Scripture, that we may not be such as speak evil of what we know not.
3We ought not to look at the mote that is in our brother's eye, before we have pulled the beam out of our own; much rather, ought we to be sure there is a mote in our brother's eye before we think to go about to pull it out; some censure this author's writings to be full of nonsense, who yet confess they cannot understand them, why do they then judge; for, all that I apprehend not the sense of; is not nonsense in itself; though I think it so: another great fault is found with his hard words; now, hard words are used in the most excellent Book, and never the worse for being hard: deep things and mysteries cannot be expressed in easy words; some things most excellent (Rom. viii. 26; 2 Cor. xii. 4) cannot be uttered by any words; therefore 'tis happy some other hard things may be uttered though by hard words; better than not at all: the words we account easy in the ordinary sense, are hard in their true sense and meaning: even the hard words of these writings are easier to the chimick philosophers, than CX,(3,Y,§ to one that cannot read Greek: so one that has not been at the School of Mysteries or of Pentecost, it is hard for him to read the Christ-CrossRow. This author writes of the mysteries of eternity before they be produced and made perceptible to the creature, that is, before the Creation; also of the creation of angels, before Lucifer fell, and of his
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.
1yet these speak evil of the things they know not: this ought not so to be, but to return good for evil; and if we know a fault in our brother, we should tell him of it in private, and if he hears us, we have won our brother; and it is far better so than to contemn, despise, scorn and find fault with the slips and failings one of another in any kind; moreover, to be reproached, is that which everyone who would be the disciple of Christ must look for in this world, and not think to be above his master; for if they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they call them of his household (Matt. x. 25). Also there were, that said of Christ, he has Beelzebub (Mark iii. 22). But such names cast upon any should deter none from examining the sayings or writings of any man, that they may be discerned whether they be good or evil. It may be supposed that the persons who judge evil of this author, have received
2misrepresentations concerning some part of his writings, that speak of magic: as if the knowledge of magic must needs be witchcraft: when if they consider that Daniel said, Destroy not the wise men of Babylon (Dan. ii. 24); and that Daniel, otherwise called Belteshazzar (Dan. iv. 8, 9), was master of the magicians: also what the Magi or wise men of the East that came to Christ were; cannot think but they were excellent men, and had the knowledge of the Magia, in English, magic; not to be rejected, but to be sought after, with all diligence; that we may be able to disclose the secret workings, and oppose the wiles of the devil and Satan, used by his wicked magi or magicians, his instruments in this world: that (2 Kings ix. 22) the witchcrafts of the wicked Jezebel, may be discovered; and together with the mistress of witchcrafts, that sells nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts (Nahum iii. 4), and such as (Gal. iii. I) bewitched the Galatians to whom Paul wrote; may be overthrown, and destroyed utterly. Let us study seriously to understand the things that are expressed in the words of the Scripture, that we may not be such as speak evil of what we know not.
3We ought not to look at the mote that is in our brother's eye, before we have pulled the beam out of our own; much rather, ought we to be sure there is a mote in our brother's eye before we think to go about to pull it out; some censure this author's writings to be full of nonsense, who yet confess they cannot understand them, why do they then judge; for, all that I apprehend not the sense of; is not nonsense in itself; though I think it so: another great fault is found with his hard words; now, hard words are used in the most excellent Book, and never the worse for being hard: deep things and mysteries cannot be expressed in easy words; some things most excellent (Rom. viii. 26; 2 Cor. xii. 4) cannot be uttered by any words; therefore 'tis happy some other hard things may be uttered though by hard words; better than not at all: the words we account easy in the ordinary sense, are hard in their true sense and meaning: even the hard words of these writings are easier to the chimick philosophers, than CX,(3,Y,§ to one that cannot read Greek: so one that has not been at the School of Mysteries or of Pentecost, it is hard for him to read the Christ-CrossRow. This author writes of the mysteries of eternity before they be produced and made perceptible to the creature, that is, before the Creation; also of the creation of angels, before Lucifer fell, and of his
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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