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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.
14. When Noah offered, then the Lord (that is, God manifested in the offering by the unmanifest holy name JEHOVAH, through JESUS) did smell the holy disappeared humanity in Adam; that is, he did taste in the lubet or good pleasure of his wisdom how the same should be again manifest in the holy name Jesus. And then he blessed Noah and his children, and said, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear and dread of you be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air; even upon all that creeps upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hands they are all delivered. Every living thing shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. But the flesh with the life thereof, I that is, with the blood thereof, you shall not eat. For I will require the blood of your lives, of every beast will I require the same; and at the hand of every man will I require the life of man, seeing that he is his brother; and whosoever sheds man 's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for God created man in his own image. And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply, and be industrious upon the earth, that you may increase abundantly (Gen. ix. 1-7).
25. When God blessed Noah and his children through the offering proceeding from the Covenant, and bade them be fruitful, he gave them again the whole world, with all its hosts, in possession; all whatsoever that lives and moves should be subservient to them, and be their own. And he gave it them all in common, he made there no difference between Noah and his children, no lord 2 nor servant, but he made them all alike, none noble or ignoble. But like as many branches and twigs grow out of one tree, and yet all together are but one only tree, so also he established the human tree upon the earth, and gave them all beasts, fishes and fowls in common, with no distinction, restriction or prohibition, save only that they should not eat their life in the blood, lest they should become monstrous in their life with the bestial life. 3 1 Or which yet lives in the blood. 2 Master. 3 Or with the eating the life of the beasts. 6. God commanded them to rule over all the beasts and creatures, but in this place he gave them no peculiar domination or ruling power over one another. For all domination, lordly rule and authority, whereby one man rules over another, does arise out of Ararat, that is, from or through the order of nature, according to its properties, according to the constellations, and outward dominion of the princes under the constellations or astrum.
37. The true image of God has no other dominion in its members than the body has in its members, or the tree in its branches. But the bestial image from the stars and four elements makes itself a dominion and government, according to its mother, whence it takes its rise, and wherein it lives. 8. Also all laws and external ordinances which God has appointed man, do all belong unto the order of nature, viz. unto the expressed formed Word. The same, God has given man for a property, that he should rule therein with the inward spiritual man of understanding, according to the wisdom of God, and make himself [laws and] order (according to the spirit of wisdom). 9. Over which orders and ordinances of men, which they make unto themselves, he [viz. the Lord] has set himself as judge, and thereupon has appointed the Lastjudgement, to separate wrong from right. And whatsoever proceeds not from truth, righteousness and love, against that the judgement of God is set; for it is generated or hatched through the false spirits of darkness in turba magna, and introduced into the human property as a false lust and subtlety; and is a stranger or bastard wisdom, which shall not inherit the kingdom of God. 1
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.
14. When Noah offered, then the Lord (that is, God manifested in the offering by the unmanifest holy name JEHOVAH, through JESUS) did smell the holy disappeared humanity in Adam; that is, he did taste in the lubet or good pleasure of his wisdom how the same should be again manifest in the holy name Jesus. And then he blessed Noah and his children, and said, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear and dread of you be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air; even upon all that creeps upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hands they are all delivered. Every living thing shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. But the flesh with the life thereof, I that is, with the blood thereof, you shall not eat. For I will require the blood of your lives, of every beast will I require the same; and at the hand of every man will I require the life of man, seeing that he is his brother; and whosoever sheds man 's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for God created man in his own image. And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply, and be industrious upon the earth, that you may increase abundantly (Gen. ix. 1-7).
25. When God blessed Noah and his children through the offering proceeding from the Covenant, and bade them be fruitful, he gave them again the whole world, with all its hosts, in possession; all whatsoever that lives and moves should be subservient to them, and be their own. And he gave it them all in common, he made there no difference between Noah and his children, no lord 2 nor servant, but he made them all alike, none noble or ignoble. But like as many branches and twigs grow out of one tree, and yet all together are but one only tree, so also he established the human tree upon the earth, and gave them all beasts, fishes and fowls in common, with no distinction, restriction or prohibition, save only that they should not eat their life in the blood, lest they should become monstrous in their life with the bestial life. 3 1 Or which yet lives in the blood. 2 Master. 3 Or with the eating the life of the beasts. 6. God commanded them to rule over all the beasts and creatures, but in this place he gave them no peculiar domination or ruling power over one another. For all domination, lordly rule and authority, whereby one man rules over another, does arise out of Ararat, that is, from or through the order of nature, according to its properties, according to the constellations, and outward dominion of the princes under the constellations or astrum.
37. The true image of God has no other dominion in its members than the body has in its members, or the tree in its branches. But the bestial image from the stars and four elements makes itself a dominion and government, according to its mother, whence it takes its rise, and wherein it lives. 8. Also all laws and external ordinances which God has appointed man, do all belong unto the order of nature, viz. unto the expressed formed Word. The same, God has given man for a property, that he should rule therein with the inward spiritual man of understanding, according to the wisdom of God, and make himself [laws and] order (according to the spirit of wisdom). 9. Over which orders and ordinances of men, which they make unto themselves, he [viz. the Lord] has set himself as judge, and thereupon has appointed the Lastjudgement, to separate wrong from right. And whatsoever proceeds not from truth, righteousness and love, against that the judgement of God is set; for it is generated or hatched through the false spirits of darkness in turba magna, and introduced into the human property as a false lust and subtlety; and is a stranger or bastard wisdom, which shall not inherit the kingdom of God. 1
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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