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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.
18. We do not hereby understand the totally spiritual man, which is only as a spirit, but that [man] which is from the limus of the good part of the earth, which lies captive in Ham, that is, in the gross bestial flesh, and is as dead without the divine lubet, which the spiritual Christus, viz. the totally spiritual man, shall put on at the end of the days in Noah [that is, out of the beginning and end]. This inward hidden man, his gross earthly brother Ham, viz. the gross earthly flesh (which is nothing worth) (John vi. 63), does devour and swallow up. 9. And from the lubet of Sem springs forth the third branch out of the centre of nature, where the divine lubet does behold itself through nature; and this the spirit called Japhet, which is, in the Language of Nature, an appendix of Sem, a birth out of Cain's line of wonders, where the divine lubet does bring itself through nature into a form of the wonders of the divine wisdom. With Sem it introduces itself into a contemplation of the spiritual wonders in the holiness of God, and in Japhet into a natural wonder, viz. into the septenary of the eternal and [the] temporal nature; understand, into a form of the sevenfold wheel, 1 or life's forms, in which vital sphere 2 the Spirit of God appears as a glorious glee, or gleam of the wonders. 1 Orb, or sphere. 2 Or, life's wheel.
210. Sem is a type of the light-world, and Japhet is a type of the fire-world, where the light does through- shine. Japhet a type [or image] of the Father; and Sem a type of the Son; but Ham is an image and type of the outward world. 11. For the type and figure of the three Principles stood in the three brethren, and clearly points out the second monarchy, even to the end of the world; and withal shows what kind of men would thenceforward possess the world, viz. a spiritual world, and a natural world of wonders, and a bestial world of folly. These are the three sorts of men, viz. out of the stock and fanlily of Sem came Israel, and out of Japhet's the Gentiles, who governed themselves in the light of nature, but Sem's [generation were disciplined] in the Covenant and word of God; but Ham [both in Sem and Japhet] he ruled himself in the bestial brutish property, against whom the curse of God was pronounced through the spirit in his father, Noah; for Paul said, that flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God. 12. And Moses speaks now further, thus: But when men began to multiply upon the earth, and daughters were born unto them; that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and took unto them wives as they pleased. Then said the Lord, Men will not suffer my spirit any more to reprove them, for they are flesh; yet I will make their days an hundred and twenty years 1 (Gen. vi. 1-3).
3Here Moses has again the veil before his eyes; for he says that the children of God looked upon the beauty of the daughters of men, and took unto them wives according as they listed, and should not suffer the Spirit of God to reprope and admonish them. 1 I will yet give them 120 years' respite. 13. The meaning of it is this: The children of God, in whom the Spirit of God did manifest itself looked, in the lust of the flesh after fleshly women, although they were of the generation and lineage of Ham, without God's Spirit; yet if they were but fair and beautiful for their lust of the flesh, they introduced the seed of the holy ens into such bestial vessels, and afterwards brought forth such tyrants,2 and fleshly-minded men, who would not suffer the Spirit of God to rebuke them, for they were only flesh, without divine spirit and will. 2 Giants. 14. They should not have mixed themselves with the bestial daughters, but looked after those in whom the Spirit of God was, even those who feared and loved God; but they looked only at the lust of their eyes and flesh, and corrupted the holy ens in the Covenant, in which God had espoused 3 and betrothed himself: Against these the spirit here complains, that they would not be instructed and reformed, but follow the lust of the flesh. 3 Incorporated.
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.
18. We do not hereby understand the totally spiritual man, which is only as a spirit, but that [man] which is from the limus of the good part of the earth, which lies captive in Ham, that is, in the gross bestial flesh, and is as dead without the divine lubet, which the spiritual Christus, viz. the totally spiritual man, shall put on at the end of the days in Noah [that is, out of the beginning and end]. This inward hidden man, his gross earthly brother Ham, viz. the gross earthly flesh (which is nothing worth) (John vi. 63), does devour and swallow up. 9. And from the lubet of Sem springs forth the third branch out of the centre of nature, where the divine lubet does behold itself through nature; and this the spirit called Japhet, which is, in the Language of Nature, an appendix of Sem, a birth out of Cain's line of wonders, where the divine lubet does bring itself through nature into a form of the wonders of the divine wisdom. With Sem it introduces itself into a contemplation of the spiritual wonders in the holiness of God, and in Japhet into a natural wonder, viz. into the septenary of the eternal and [the] temporal nature; understand, into a form of the sevenfold wheel, 1 or life's forms, in which vital sphere 2 the Spirit of God appears as a glorious glee, or gleam of the wonders. 1 Orb, or sphere. 2 Or, life's wheel.
210. Sem is a type of the light-world, and Japhet is a type of the fire-world, where the light does through- shine. Japhet a type [or image] of the Father; and Sem a type of the Son; but Ham is an image and type of the outward world. 11. For the type and figure of the three Principles stood in the three brethren, and clearly points out the second monarchy, even to the end of the world; and withal shows what kind of men would thenceforward possess the world, viz. a spiritual world, and a natural world of wonders, and a bestial world of folly. These are the three sorts of men, viz. out of the stock and fanlily of Sem came Israel, and out of Japhet's the Gentiles, who governed themselves in the light of nature, but Sem's [generation were disciplined] in the Covenant and word of God; but Ham [both in Sem and Japhet] he ruled himself in the bestial brutish property, against whom the curse of God was pronounced through the spirit in his father, Noah; for Paul said, that flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God. 12. And Moses speaks now further, thus: But when men began to multiply upon the earth, and daughters were born unto them; that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and took unto them wives as they pleased. Then said the Lord, Men will not suffer my spirit any more to reprove them, for they are flesh; yet I will make their days an hundred and twenty years 1 (Gen. vi. 1-3).
3Here Moses has again the veil before his eyes; for he says that the children of God looked upon the beauty of the daughters of men, and took unto them wives according as they listed, and should not suffer the Spirit of God to reprope and admonish them. 1 I will yet give them 120 years' respite. 13. The meaning of it is this: The children of God, in whom the Spirit of God did manifest itself looked, in the lust of the flesh after fleshly women, although they were of the generation and lineage of Ham, without God's Spirit; yet if they were but fair and beautiful for their lust of the flesh, they introduced the seed of the holy ens into such bestial vessels, and afterwards brought forth such tyrants,2 and fleshly-minded men, who would not suffer the Spirit of God to rebuke them, for they were only flesh, without divine spirit and will. 2 Giants. 14. They should not have mixed themselves with the bestial daughters, but looked after those in whom the Spirit of God was, even those who feared and loved God; but they looked only at the lust of their eyes and flesh, and corrupted the holy ens in the Covenant, in which God had espoused 3 and betrothed himself: Against these the spirit here complains, that they would not be instructed and reformed, but follow the lust of the flesh. 3 Incorporated.
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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