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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.
1whence such an ens does adhere unto many an unclean creature. And it signifies unto us, in the right understanding, that the dark world, viz. the unclean world, shall appear before the wisdom of God only in one manifest form, viz. in the darkness. But the properties shall be manifest only in the creatures themselves, each in its own peculiar self and nature. 18. For the formed wisdom as to the darkness is the heaven of them all, which is manifest only according to the darkness, wherein the property lies hidden, according to which God calls himself an angry zealous God. Out of this dark heaven every creature receives its power and virtue according to its property. According as its hunger is, so it sucks with its desire from thence: and it signifies unto us, that the unclean beasts, each kind of them in their form, shall appear only in one form in the wisdom of the darkness, viz. in the figure, as they were created in the beginning, and not in seven properties according to the centre of nature in all properties according to light and darkness, as the rest shall; for they are in the figure of the first Principle, which in the pure heaven shall be manifest only in one property, viz. according to the burning [property] wherein the light is moved, 1 and the wisdom formed. 1 Movable and formable.
219. But here I will warn the Reader to understand our sense and meaning aright, and not to put me calves, cows and beasts, in their spirit and body, into heaven. I speak only of the eternal formed wisdom, whence evil and good has been brought to manifestation. 20. Moreover, God said to Noah, For yet seven days, will I cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance which I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. Wherefore did God say, after seven days the flood shall come? why not presently, either sooner or later; why does he set even seven days? In this the seven properties of nature are contained mystically, in which the Verbum Fiat had introduced itself into an ens, viz. into the formed Word; that is, into the creation of the world; in which creation the formed Word repented at the vanity of all creatures, and moved itself through the generatress of nature in the formed Word, to destroy the turba.
321. Now the first motion and information of the Word in the creation, with the six days' works and the day of rest, being seven days, was brought into a form of time, and it yet stood so, in its form. Now then, when the Word (which said it would drown every life with water) did open, disclose and manifest itself through the seven properties of nature to the water's birth, it came to pass in the form wherein the Word had given in itself with the creation, viz. in the same sevenfold operation, which should open itself in its own peculiar order, and not enkindle or elevate anyone property above the other; but if all seven would open and manifest themselves according to the water's birth, then the only fountain or head- spring of all the deeps in the centre of nature should break open. And seeing they came in seven days into their outward, formed, working dominion, the speaking Word did also proceed in the opening thereofin seven days unto the limit for its manifestation of that which it desired; as namely, to drown the turba. 22. And let none look upon this as a fiction, or laugh at it, for whosoever does so, does not yet understand our spirit and meaning at all. Nor has [he] any knowledge at all of the formed Word, but has only an external understanding of nature, like [a brute beast or] a bird that flies in the air, and knows not what the essence is.
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.
1whence such an ens does adhere unto many an unclean creature. And it signifies unto us, in the right understanding, that the dark world, viz. the unclean world, shall appear before the wisdom of God only in one manifest form, viz. in the darkness. But the properties shall be manifest only in the creatures themselves, each in its own peculiar self and nature. 18. For the formed wisdom as to the darkness is the heaven of them all, which is manifest only according to the darkness, wherein the property lies hidden, according to which God calls himself an angry zealous God. Out of this dark heaven every creature receives its power and virtue according to its property. According as its hunger is, so it sucks with its desire from thence: and it signifies unto us, that the unclean beasts, each kind of them in their form, shall appear only in one form in the wisdom of the darkness, viz. in the figure, as they were created in the beginning, and not in seven properties according to the centre of nature in all properties according to light and darkness, as the rest shall; for they are in the figure of the first Principle, which in the pure heaven shall be manifest only in one property, viz. according to the burning [property] wherein the light is moved, 1 and the wisdom formed. 1 Movable and formable.
219. But here I will warn the Reader to understand our sense and meaning aright, and not to put me calves, cows and beasts, in their spirit and body, into heaven. I speak only of the eternal formed wisdom, whence evil and good has been brought to manifestation. 20. Moreover, God said to Noah, For yet seven days, will I cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance which I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. Wherefore did God say, after seven days the flood shall come? why not presently, either sooner or later; why does he set even seven days? In this the seven properties of nature are contained mystically, in which the Verbum Fiat had introduced itself into an ens, viz. into the formed Word; that is, into the creation of the world; in which creation the formed Word repented at the vanity of all creatures, and moved itself through the generatress of nature in the formed Word, to destroy the turba.
321. Now the first motion and information of the Word in the creation, with the six days' works and the day of rest, being seven days, was brought into a form of time, and it yet stood so, in its form. Now then, when the Word (which said it would drown every life with water) did open, disclose and manifest itself through the seven properties of nature to the water's birth, it came to pass in the form wherein the Word had given in itself with the creation, viz. in the same sevenfold operation, which should open itself in its own peculiar order, and not enkindle or elevate anyone property above the other; but if all seven would open and manifest themselves according to the water's birth, then the only fountain or head- spring of all the deeps in the centre of nature should break open. And seeing they came in seven days into their outward, formed, working dominion, the speaking Word did also proceed in the opening thereofin seven days unto the limit for its manifestation of that which it desired; as namely, to drown the turba. 22. And let none look upon this as a fiction, or laugh at it, for whosoever does so, does not yet understand our spirit and meaning at all. Nor has [he] any knowledge at all of the formed Word, but has only an external understanding of nature, like [a brute beast or] a bird that flies in the air, and knows not what the essence is.
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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