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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.
1[At the house of correction or whipped through the streets], whom other whores likewise help to deride and scoff at; and yet they do but only judge and condemn themselves thereby. For if Christ be born, then the judgement passes upon the false bestial life, and that man must stand in the judgement of God as a malefactor, and be termed a fool, a heretic; and be jeered, scoffed and reviled, yea, even utterly defied and slain, that the monster may be judged before God's anger. But those that do it are the children of the lusty, pampered, and wellfattened anger of God, whom the wrath of God uses for its instrument; for God is a spirit, therefore he accomplishes his judgement by a material image. [ By some outward substantial means or persons] 22. For so soon as Abel did, in his offering, put on or attract the love of God in the Covenant anew into his human desire, and comprehended [or amassed] the same into his essence, then forthwith the judgement passed upon the external mortal man; and God's sword of anger took him, which Cain executed, and slew the outward body of Abel. And at this time also the judgement passed upon the false image of the anger in Cain, for he stood there, and cried, My sins are greater than can be forgiven me.
223. This does now hint and point at the figure of Christ, how the anger of the Father must devour [or swallow up] the life of Christ in death, and when as the anger had devoured the life in death, then the holy life of the deepest love of God moved itself in the death and the anger, and devoured the death and anger into itself; whereat the earth trembled, and the rocks clove asunder, and the graves of the saints opened. 24. And so likewise the love-fire and the anger-fire [ Good and evil now mixed and in contest one with the other] in the place of this world (which wrathful fire was enkindled in the creation when The Apostate [Lucifer] fell) shall at the Last Day be again changed into the divine joyfulness, and be availed or swallowed up in the love. Understand, it shall be thus in the third Principle, where love and anger do strive [during] this time one with another: but he [Lucifer] remains in the darkness in the first Principle. 25. The true cause wherefore Cain murdered Abel was by reason of their offerings and worship of God, viz. religion; as this contention continues still to this day; the Cainical Church is not yet one with the Abelical.
326. Now says reason, I see it well enough, that all contention and strife arises from religion, but what is the ground and most undoubted cause and reason thereof. Behold! this is the cause: set before you the false Serpent's child, which is evil and good, and then set before you the virgin's child, born of Christ, and then you hast the fundamental cause, exactly drawn to the life, before thine eyes. 27. The Cainical Church drives a subtle trade with external ceremonies, and will appease God with some external thing or other; it will be outwardly an accepted and adopted child, it must down right be called honest, godly, holy and heavenly, it adorns and trims up itself very finely, and stands mightily upon its calling, which it has itself ordained and instituted; it makes a very specious and renowned show in the white sheep's clothing; and therein lodges the high priest of selfhood, without Christ's spirit, and rules and masters the work of the outward letters; and whosoever learns to transpose and compose the same boldly and bravely [according to their form of forged opinions] he is a high priest in their office and order; he puts Christ's garment of innocency on him for his cloak and covert. 28. The other party of the confused Cainical Church cries out, and holds forth the goodly glistering child to sale for money [Makes good merchandise of its religious ceremonies]; and
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.
1[At the house of correction or whipped through the streets], whom other whores likewise help to deride and scoff at; and yet they do but only judge and condemn themselves thereby. For if Christ be born, then the judgement passes upon the false bestial life, and that man must stand in the judgement of God as a malefactor, and be termed a fool, a heretic; and be jeered, scoffed and reviled, yea, even utterly defied and slain, that the monster may be judged before God's anger. But those that do it are the children of the lusty, pampered, and wellfattened anger of God, whom the wrath of God uses for its instrument; for God is a spirit, therefore he accomplishes his judgement by a material image. [ By some outward substantial means or persons] 22. For so soon as Abel did, in his offering, put on or attract the love of God in the Covenant anew into his human desire, and comprehended [or amassed] the same into his essence, then forthwith the judgement passed upon the external mortal man; and God's sword of anger took him, which Cain executed, and slew the outward body of Abel. And at this time also the judgement passed upon the false image of the anger in Cain, for he stood there, and cried, My sins are greater than can be forgiven me.
223. This does now hint and point at the figure of Christ, how the anger of the Father must devour [or swallow up] the life of Christ in death, and when as the anger had devoured the life in death, then the holy life of the deepest love of God moved itself in the death and the anger, and devoured the death and anger into itself; whereat the earth trembled, and the rocks clove asunder, and the graves of the saints opened. 24. And so likewise the love-fire and the anger-fire [ Good and evil now mixed and in contest one with the other] in the place of this world (which wrathful fire was enkindled in the creation when The Apostate [Lucifer] fell) shall at the Last Day be again changed into the divine joyfulness, and be availed or swallowed up in the love. Understand, it shall be thus in the third Principle, where love and anger do strive [during] this time one with another: but he [Lucifer] remains in the darkness in the first Principle. 25. The true cause wherefore Cain murdered Abel was by reason of their offerings and worship of God, viz. religion; as this contention continues still to this day; the Cainical Church is not yet one with the Abelical.
326. Now says reason, I see it well enough, that all contention and strife arises from religion, but what is the ground and most undoubted cause and reason thereof. Behold! this is the cause: set before you the false Serpent's child, which is evil and good, and then set before you the virgin's child, born of Christ, and then you hast the fundamental cause, exactly drawn to the life, before thine eyes. 27. The Cainical Church drives a subtle trade with external ceremonies, and will appease God with some external thing or other; it will be outwardly an accepted and adopted child, it must down right be called honest, godly, holy and heavenly, it adorns and trims up itself very finely, and stands mightily upon its calling, which it has itself ordained and instituted; it makes a very specious and renowned show in the white sheep's clothing; and therein lodges the high priest of selfhood, without Christ's spirit, and rules and masters the work of the outward letters; and whosoever learns to transpose and compose the same boldly and bravely [according to their form of forged opinions] he is a high priest in their office and order; he puts Christ's garment of innocency on him for his cloak and covert. 28. The other party of the confused Cainical Church cries out, and holds forth the goodly glistering child to sale for money [Makes good merchandise of its religious ceremonies]; and
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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