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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.
164. Thus it goes with the simple, single-hearted children of Christ, whom the Spirit of Christ drives, and out of whom he teaches here in this world, etc. They are only as sheep among wolves; as Christ said, / send you as sheep among wolves. The earthly man is a serpentine wolf under whom the virgin-child, viz. Christ's lamb, must dwell; and then begins and arises murdering, slaying [or robbing], and killing. 65. But it does not at all hurt the virgin-child; its external wolf is also by this means hitten off by another, for the outward wolf of all men is grown from the anger of God, and arisen with the sin in Adam; therefore it must be given for food to the anger of God, that the virgin-child of the woman's seed may become manifest. 66. For thus they do separate themselves as two enemies, and are continually opposite enemies one against another in the time of this outward life; for the judgement is given to the virgin-child against the introduced Serpent's child of sin. In the resurrection the virgin-child shall condemn the serpent-child into the fire of God; there the limus of the earth shall be proved and purged from the Serpent's ens, and again put upon the virgin-child.
267. Now says reason, What pleasure has God in this murdering ofhis children, can he not defend them from the enemy? Thus it must be: that the light may be manifest in the darkness, else the light would stand still in the darkness and bring forth no fruit. Seeing then the light receives into itself essence and perceivancy, also sensation from the darkness, viz. from the source of the fire, therefore one is set against the other, that so one might be manifest in the other: the joy against grief and grief against joy; that it may be known what evil or good is. 68. For if there were no grief then the joy were not manifest to itself; but yet all is in the free will: as every thing does introduce itself into evil or good, so it runs on its course, and the one is but the manifestation of the other; for if there were no night or darkness then we should know nothing of the light or day. Thus the great God has introduced himself into severation, to his own contemplation and sport of joy. 69. The like also is to be understood in the various diversity and severalty of men, touching evil and good. The evil must be a cause that the good be made manifest to itself; and the good must be a cause to manifest the evil in its wicked malicious subtlety and iniquity;
3that all things may come into their contemplation [and visible ken], and every thing might manifest its judgement in itself unto the great separation-day of the LORD of all beings, where every thing shall give in itself into its barn, for its usefulness and profit, that, in the eternity, the great God may be known in a creatural and formal manner, according to light and darkness. 70. for all things were created by the Word, and brought into a form. Seeing then God is an angry jealous God and a consuming fire, and also a merciful loving meek God of light and giving [or free grace], in whom there cannot be any evil at all, therefore he has introduced fire and light, evil and good, one with another in the Verbum Fiat, into a free will, whereby the will may form [or work] either in the evil or [in the] good; and yet he has created all things good, and to the light, and set them into the free will, to multiply themselves in the free will, to conceive in evil or good; and yet has associated to each thing its likeness, viz. to a male its female, that so nothing has cause to degenerate [or fall from its place and order into destruction] ; and to man he has given commands what to do, and [what to] leave undone.
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.
164. Thus it goes with the simple, single-hearted children of Christ, whom the Spirit of Christ drives, and out of whom he teaches here in this world, etc. They are only as sheep among wolves; as Christ said, / send you as sheep among wolves. The earthly man is a serpentine wolf under whom the virgin-child, viz. Christ's lamb, must dwell; and then begins and arises murdering, slaying [or robbing], and killing. 65. But it does not at all hurt the virgin-child; its external wolf is also by this means hitten off by another, for the outward wolf of all men is grown from the anger of God, and arisen with the sin in Adam; therefore it must be given for food to the anger of God, that the virgin-child of the woman's seed may become manifest. 66. For thus they do separate themselves as two enemies, and are continually opposite enemies one against another in the time of this outward life; for the judgement is given to the virgin-child against the introduced Serpent's child of sin. In the resurrection the virgin-child shall condemn the serpent-child into the fire of God; there the limus of the earth shall be proved and purged from the Serpent's ens, and again put upon the virgin-child.
267. Now says reason, What pleasure has God in this murdering ofhis children, can he not defend them from the enemy? Thus it must be: that the light may be manifest in the darkness, else the light would stand still in the darkness and bring forth no fruit. Seeing then the light receives into itself essence and perceivancy, also sensation from the darkness, viz. from the source of the fire, therefore one is set against the other, that so one might be manifest in the other: the joy against grief and grief against joy; that it may be known what evil or good is. 68. For if there were no grief then the joy were not manifest to itself; but yet all is in the free will: as every thing does introduce itself into evil or good, so it runs on its course, and the one is but the manifestation of the other; for if there were no night or darkness then we should know nothing of the light or day. Thus the great God has introduced himself into severation, to his own contemplation and sport of joy. 69. The like also is to be understood in the various diversity and severalty of men, touching evil and good. The evil must be a cause that the good be made manifest to itself; and the good must be a cause to manifest the evil in its wicked malicious subtlety and iniquity;
3that all things may come into their contemplation [and visible ken], and every thing might manifest its judgement in itself unto the great separation-day of the LORD of all beings, where every thing shall give in itself into its barn, for its usefulness and profit, that, in the eternity, the great God may be known in a creatural and formal manner, according to light and darkness. 70. for all things were created by the Word, and brought into a form. Seeing then God is an angry jealous God and a consuming fire, and also a merciful loving meek God of light and giving [or free grace], in whom there cannot be any evil at all, therefore he has introduced fire and light, evil and good, one with another in the Verbum Fiat, into a free will, whereby the will may form [or work] either in the evil or [in the] good; and yet he has created all things good, and to the light, and set them into the free will, to multiply themselves in the free will, to conceive in evil or good; and yet has associated to each thing its likeness, viz. to a male its female, that so nothing has cause to degenerate [or fall from its place and order into destruction] ; and to man he has given commands what to do, and [what to] leave undone.
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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