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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.
126. Both these take the heavenly garment, and go backwards to the Father; and though they cannot see how they go, yet they go in faith, trusting on God's mercy, and turn away their eyes from the shame, vanity and false will. For in this place going backwards and covering the shame signifies nothing else but to convert the selfhood naturally going forwards in its own will and way, and go back again into the ONE, out of which the free will departed and came into the monster, or shame. 27. Noah's drunkenness signifies, that when Adam entered with his lust and desire into this world's property, he became drunk in the bestial property; and therein he uncovered his shame, that is, he disclosed and made bare therein the bestial lust. Now, when this was done, he stood before God in great shame; and then the bestial spirit in this monster of false lust and poisonful concupiscence brake forth, and reviled the precious heavenly image, and made itself master. 28. And thus Christ must, in our soul, and in our disappeared and again revived noble Sophia, cover the shame of our father Adam and his children; for he would therefore not be born of the seed of man; but out of the heavenly, disappeared ens, and brought his living ens of the holy world thereinto; that so he might cover with his heavenly ens our monstrous shame 1 of the soul's property, which Adam's lust had uncovered. 1 Text, seed.
229. The corrupt nature which had opened itself now in Paradise, went along in all men; and though the image of God was again regenerate in the spirit of the saints, as in a figurative form until the fulfilling of Christ in the flesh, yet the monstrous image was propagated all along in all in the earthly property. 30. But seeing the first earthly world of the human property was drowned in the flood, and there the first monarchies ceased, the same figure did forthwith represent itself again in Noah and his three sons. So that now the spirit does here signify from the very stock and root of the human property, how it should afterwards be, viz. the tree of man would in its properties introduce itself into boughs and branches; that is, spread forth itself into distinct nations and governments; and that they would not all know the only God according to the light of his grace; and how that God would represent unto them the light of grace in the generation of Shem. 31. For Noah says, Blessed be the God of Shem, and let Japheth dwell in Shem's tents. By the God of Shem he means the holy Word in the Covenant, intimating how the same would manifest itself. And then the Japhites or Gentiles, which lived in the light of nature, should come to the light of grace manifested from the generation of Shem ;
3and enter into Shem's tents, and dwell therein. This did point at the Gentiles, who before knew only of the light of nature, but when the Word did manifest itself in the person of Christ, with the gracious light of the Gospel, they came into the light of grace. 32. And even here Ham, viz. the fleshly lust-spirit, must be in its own property and selfhood a servant among the children of light, for the children of God do compel him to servitude and keep him under, and take away his reviling scorning will. For the spirit of Ham, which Noah cursed, does intimate how this Ham's spirit would be great upon the earth, and go on only in its own proud monstrous and bestial knowledge, and scoff at the children of the light, account them fools, because they hope upon something else, which they do not outwardly see. 33. Thus the spirit in Noah points out unto us three sorts of men; first it signifies the children of faith, who nakedly and merely look upon the hidden light of God's grace, and have the same shining in their hearts. 34. The other would look upon the light of nature and reason, and would endeavour to fathom and search out the hidden light by the strength of reason, and that they would therefore contend, dispute, wrangle and jangle, and bring forth many wonderful strange monsters and conceits out of the light of nature, and set them up for gods, or God's light, as it has so come to pass among the Christians and Gentiles.
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.
126. Both these take the heavenly garment, and go backwards to the Father; and though they cannot see how they go, yet they go in faith, trusting on God's mercy, and turn away their eyes from the shame, vanity and false will. For in this place going backwards and covering the shame signifies nothing else but to convert the selfhood naturally going forwards in its own will and way, and go back again into the ONE, out of which the free will departed and came into the monster, or shame. 27. Noah's drunkenness signifies, that when Adam entered with his lust and desire into this world's property, he became drunk in the bestial property; and therein he uncovered his shame, that is, he disclosed and made bare therein the bestial lust. Now, when this was done, he stood before God in great shame; and then the bestial spirit in this monster of false lust and poisonful concupiscence brake forth, and reviled the precious heavenly image, and made itself master. 28. And thus Christ must, in our soul, and in our disappeared and again revived noble Sophia, cover the shame of our father Adam and his children; for he would therefore not be born of the seed of man; but out of the heavenly, disappeared ens, and brought his living ens of the holy world thereinto; that so he might cover with his heavenly ens our monstrous shame 1 of the soul's property, which Adam's lust had uncovered. 1 Text, seed.
229. The corrupt nature which had opened itself now in Paradise, went along in all men; and though the image of God was again regenerate in the spirit of the saints, as in a figurative form until the fulfilling of Christ in the flesh, yet the monstrous image was propagated all along in all in the earthly property. 30. But seeing the first earthly world of the human property was drowned in the flood, and there the first monarchies ceased, the same figure did forthwith represent itself again in Noah and his three sons. So that now the spirit does here signify from the very stock and root of the human property, how it should afterwards be, viz. the tree of man would in its properties introduce itself into boughs and branches; that is, spread forth itself into distinct nations and governments; and that they would not all know the only God according to the light of his grace; and how that God would represent unto them the light of grace in the generation of Shem. 31. For Noah says, Blessed be the God of Shem, and let Japheth dwell in Shem's tents. By the God of Shem he means the holy Word in the Covenant, intimating how the same would manifest itself. And then the Japhites or Gentiles, which lived in the light of nature, should come to the light of grace manifested from the generation of Shem ;
3and enter into Shem's tents, and dwell therein. This did point at the Gentiles, who before knew only of the light of nature, but when the Word did manifest itself in the person of Christ, with the gracious light of the Gospel, they came into the light of grace. 32. And even here Ham, viz. the fleshly lust-spirit, must be in its own property and selfhood a servant among the children of light, for the children of God do compel him to servitude and keep him under, and take away his reviling scorning will. For the spirit of Ham, which Noah cursed, does intimate how this Ham's spirit would be great upon the earth, and go on only in its own proud monstrous and bestial knowledge, and scoff at the children of the light, account them fools, because they hope upon something else, which they do not outwardly see. 33. Thus the spirit in Noah points out unto us three sorts of men; first it signifies the children of faith, who nakedly and merely look upon the hidden light of God's grace, and have the same shining in their hearts. 34. The other would look upon the light of nature and reason, and would endeavour to fathom and search out the hidden light by the strength of reason, and that they would therefore contend, dispute, wrangle and jangle, and bring forth many wonderful strange monsters and conceits out of the light of nature, and set them up for gods, or God's light, as it has so come to pass among the Christians and Gentiles.
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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