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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.
115. But seeing the fiery wrathful will so overcame the good which was from the light's essence, that the light's ens was taken captive in the wrathful ens, this image fell under the power and command of the outward dominion, which was evil and good; and also under the wrath of the inward nature, viz. of the fiery darkness; upon which image God had compassion, and did re-inhest [inpromise] the Covenant of Grace into the captivated, disappeared and (as to the divine wisdom) blind ens of the holy world's being, and did incorporate the same as a Covenant of a new regeneration of a new holy will and life. 16. Thus now we are to consider aright of the stock of the human tree, how it has spread forth and displayed itself in the properties, and introduced itself as a tree (evil and good) into boughs and branches; and from whence his [man's] temporal government of distinct and sundry offices and callings is arisen, which he did awaken in him when he lusted after evil and good, and thereby brought himself in subjection to nature, seeing he fell under its dominion. 17. And we see very clearly that Moses has described and set down in his first book [Genesis] how the human tree has opened itself in evil and good, and introduced itself into boughs and branches for its fruit.
2Also we see how the fiery wrathful property has always gone before, and first of all brought forth its fruit: we have a clear and plain understanding hereofin the names of those which the Spirit of God has put by Moses in the lines of propagation. [Genealogy] 18. For first he sets Cain, whereby is understood, in the Language of Nature, a source out of the centre of the fiery desire, a self-full will of the fiery might of the soul, viz. a sprout or twig out of the first Principle, in which branch or sprig the first Principle did, in an especial manner, prevail, and would sever itself into a selffullness, and break itself off from the love-ens. Yet not as a dark source, but as a source of self-full lust, and also [of] fiery strength and might. 19. For out of the ens of Cain (as the same was in the centre of the begetting nature in the wrestling wheel of life) arose his will; and out of the will, the desire; and out of the desire, the substance; in which substance the false mind is understood, wherein the dominion of the outward did form and fasten itself; whereinto the devil also, in the wrath of nature, crept in with his desire, and desired the lordship and domination of this world in selfhood. As the fallen devil does always desire domination in the place of this world, in the inward eternal, and [in the] outward temporal nature.
320. But seeing the word of divine power and holiness had incorporated itself 1 with a Covenant of regeneration, into the woman's seed, viz. into the disappeared ens of the spiritual world's essence, that it would deprive the fiery wrathful will, proceeding from the centre of the dark world, of its fiery might of selfhood; thereupon after Cain there sprang forth out of the human tree a sprout out of the aim of the Covenant, viz. Abel, whose name, in the Language of Nature, signifies an out-breathed angel, which, in the first will of the essence whence the soul arises, had formed and fixed itself in the centre of light, in the love-desire, and penetrated quite through the fire's centre. Whereupon the fiery desire did desire to cut off the earthly life, which has its original out of the fiery desire as its property; for which cause Abel and all his posterity became martyrs. 21. For this is the door of Christ, who must give himself into this death of the wrath, and penetrate the human centre (of the soul's original according to the fire- world), with the love-ens, viz. with the deepest love of the Deity, and change the fiery wrathful desire of the dark world's essence into love. 22. Adam was the stock of the universal human tree. But when Eve was made out of him then the tree was divided according to two Principles, not wholly in the essence, but according to the nature and quality of the centres of fire and light; for the centre of the light,
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.
115. But seeing the fiery wrathful will so overcame the good which was from the light's essence, that the light's ens was taken captive in the wrathful ens, this image fell under the power and command of the outward dominion, which was evil and good; and also under the wrath of the inward nature, viz. of the fiery darkness; upon which image God had compassion, and did re-inhest [inpromise] the Covenant of Grace into the captivated, disappeared and (as to the divine wisdom) blind ens of the holy world's being, and did incorporate the same as a Covenant of a new regeneration of a new holy will and life. 16. Thus now we are to consider aright of the stock of the human tree, how it has spread forth and displayed itself in the properties, and introduced itself as a tree (evil and good) into boughs and branches; and from whence his [man's] temporal government of distinct and sundry offices and callings is arisen, which he did awaken in him when he lusted after evil and good, and thereby brought himself in subjection to nature, seeing he fell under its dominion. 17. And we see very clearly that Moses has described and set down in his first book [Genesis] how the human tree has opened itself in evil and good, and introduced itself into boughs and branches for its fruit.
2Also we see how the fiery wrathful property has always gone before, and first of all brought forth its fruit: we have a clear and plain understanding hereofin the names of those which the Spirit of God has put by Moses in the lines of propagation. [Genealogy] 18. For first he sets Cain, whereby is understood, in the Language of Nature, a source out of the centre of the fiery desire, a self-full will of the fiery might of the soul, viz. a sprout or twig out of the first Principle, in which branch or sprig the first Principle did, in an especial manner, prevail, and would sever itself into a selffullness, and break itself off from the love-ens. Yet not as a dark source, but as a source of self-full lust, and also [of] fiery strength and might. 19. For out of the ens of Cain (as the same was in the centre of the begetting nature in the wrestling wheel of life) arose his will; and out of the will, the desire; and out of the desire, the substance; in which substance the false mind is understood, wherein the dominion of the outward did form and fasten itself; whereinto the devil also, in the wrath of nature, crept in with his desire, and desired the lordship and domination of this world in selfhood. As the fallen devil does always desire domination in the place of this world, in the inward eternal, and [in the] outward temporal nature.
320. But seeing the word of divine power and holiness had incorporated itself 1 with a Covenant of regeneration, into the woman's seed, viz. into the disappeared ens of the spiritual world's essence, that it would deprive the fiery wrathful will, proceeding from the centre of the dark world, of its fiery might of selfhood; thereupon after Cain there sprang forth out of the human tree a sprout out of the aim of the Covenant, viz. Abel, whose name, in the Language of Nature, signifies an out-breathed angel, which, in the first will of the essence whence the soul arises, had formed and fixed itself in the centre of light, in the love-desire, and penetrated quite through the fire's centre. Whereupon the fiery desire did desire to cut off the earthly life, which has its original out of the fiery desire as its property; for which cause Abel and all his posterity became martyrs. 21. For this is the door of Christ, who must give himself into this death of the wrath, and penetrate the human centre (of the soul's original according to the fire- world), with the love-ens, viz. with the deepest love of the Deity, and change the fiery wrathful desire of the dark world's essence into love. 22. Adam was the stock of the universal human tree. But when Eve was made out of him then the tree was divided according to two Principles, not wholly in the essence, but according to the nature and quality of the centres of fire and light; for the centre of the light,
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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