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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.
136. Furthermore, it denotes that the potent and mighty of the world would build the ark, viz. the service and worship of God, upon their heart and reason, with great stone houses, and churches, and that these houses thus built up of stone should be their God, whom they would serve in the ark;
2and they would wage war for the houses of stone of their own contriving and framing, and for their devices and opinions therein maintained, and contend about the figure of the true ark. And not consider that the ark stands upon their mountain, that God has set it above them, and that they ought to walk under God's dominion, in humility, and suffer the ark to stand upon them; and not usurp unto themselves the power of the Holy Ghost, or take it away, and bind him unto their feigned power and hypocritical forms, and command him to be silent, as they do, in that they cry with full mouth: lo! here is an assembly of divines: here is the true Church of Christ: this you must believe and do: this is the law and ordinance of the Church. No, the ark stands above them, they are under, as the mount Ararat was underneath the ark. Christ is the ark, and not the contrived heaps of stone [or any form of man's devised worship or opinion]. All assemblies, congregations, or synods are under the ark Christ, and not above [it], for the ark of Noah placed itself above the mountain: to signify that the mountain must bear the ark. We must bear the ark of Christ upon us, and have the temple of this ark within us.
337. Furthermore, it denotes how the figure of this ark, viz. the spiritual kingdom upon the earth, 1 would place itself upon the mountain of power, domination, and lordliness, and would rule with the mountain in the ark; and take upon itself to meddle with the worldly dominions and authority; and bring the mountain, viz. the power of the secular arm, above the ark: whereas the ark ought to stand upon the mountain, and Noah, with the Covenant, to remain in the ark, till the Lord bid him come forth, that is, till Christ deliver the ark to his Father. 1 Ecclesiastical, clergical priesthood. 38. And Moses says further, At the end of forty days, when the ark had set itself down, Noah sent forth a raven, to see whether the water was abated, hut the raven flew to and fro till the waters were dried upfront off the face of the earth (Gen. viii. 6, 7). The raven denotes the earthly man, and shows how that he would first put forth himself upon the mountain Ararat, that is, advance himself in his selfhood and earthly lust, and build up his kingdom in the second monarchy. 39. And though he came forth out of the ark, yet he would fly to, and again in, the kingdom of his selfhood, and not return into the ark, from whence he departed in Adam, and would be only a covetous muck- worm, and a greedy devourer of fleshly temporal pleasure in his own will;
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.
136. Furthermore, it denotes that the potent and mighty of the world would build the ark, viz. the service and worship of God, upon their heart and reason, with great stone houses, and churches, and that these houses thus built up of stone should be their God, whom they would serve in the ark;
2and they would wage war for the houses of stone of their own contriving and framing, and for their devices and opinions therein maintained, and contend about the figure of the true ark. And not consider that the ark stands upon their mountain, that God has set it above them, and that they ought to walk under God's dominion, in humility, and suffer the ark to stand upon them; and not usurp unto themselves the power of the Holy Ghost, or take it away, and bind him unto their feigned power and hypocritical forms, and command him to be silent, as they do, in that they cry with full mouth: lo! here is an assembly of divines: here is the true Church of Christ: this you must believe and do: this is the law and ordinance of the Church. No, the ark stands above them, they are under, as the mount Ararat was underneath the ark. Christ is the ark, and not the contrived heaps of stone [or any form of man's devised worship or opinion]. All assemblies, congregations, or synods are under the ark Christ, and not above [it], for the ark of Noah placed itself above the mountain: to signify that the mountain must bear the ark. We must bear the ark of Christ upon us, and have the temple of this ark within us.
337. Furthermore, it denotes how the figure of this ark, viz. the spiritual kingdom upon the earth, 1 would place itself upon the mountain of power, domination, and lordliness, and would rule with the mountain in the ark; and take upon itself to meddle with the worldly dominions and authority; and bring the mountain, viz. the power of the secular arm, above the ark: whereas the ark ought to stand upon the mountain, and Noah, with the Covenant, to remain in the ark, till the Lord bid him come forth, that is, till Christ deliver the ark to his Father. 1 Ecclesiastical, clergical priesthood. 38. And Moses says further, At the end of forty days, when the ark had set itself down, Noah sent forth a raven, to see whether the water was abated, hut the raven flew to and fro till the waters were dried upfront off the face of the earth (Gen. viii. 6, 7). The raven denotes the earthly man, and shows how that he would first put forth himself upon the mountain Ararat, that is, advance himself in his selfhood and earthly lust, and build up his kingdom in the second monarchy. 39. And though he came forth out of the ark, yet he would fly to, and again in, the kingdom of his selfhood, and not return into the ark, from whence he departed in Adam, and would be only a covetous muck- worm, and a greedy devourer of fleshly temporal pleasure in his own will;
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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