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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.
11. The reason of the outward man says: How is it that God has not revealed the creation of the world unto man, that Moses and the children of God have written so little thereof, seeing it is the greatest and most principal work whereon the main depends? 2. Yes, dear reason, smell into your bosom, of what does it savour? Contemplate your mind, after what does it long? Likely, after the cunning delusions of the devil: Had the devil not known this ground, very like he had been yet an angel; had he not seen the magical birth in his high light, then he had not desired to be a selfish lord and maker in the essence. 3. Wherefore does God hide his children, which now receive the spirit of knowledge with the cross, and cast them into tribulation and mire of vanity? For certain, therefore, that they might play the tune of The Miserere, and continue in humility; and not sport in this life 1) with the light of nature; else, if they should espy and apprehend what the divine magic is, then they might also desire to imitate the devil, [and do] as Lucifer did: for which cause it is hidden from them. And neither Moses nor any other dare write clearer thereof; until the beginning of the creation beholds the end of the world in itself: And then it must stand open. 1 Text, Time.
24. And therefore let none blame us; for the time is come about that Moses puts away his veil from his eyes, which he hung before his face when he spoke with Israel. After the Lord had spoken with him, Moses desired to see it, in that he said, Lord, if I have found grace in your sight, let me see your face. But the Lord would not, and said, You shall see my back part, for none can see my face. 5. Now the eye of God was in Moses, and in the Saints; they have seen and spoken in the spirit of God, and yet had not the intuition of the spiritual birth in them; save at times only, when God would work wonders; as by Moses, when he did the wonders in Egypt: then the divine magic was open unto him, in manner and wise as in the creation. 6. And this was even the fall of Lucifer: that he would be a god of nature, and live in the transmutation. And this was even the idolatry of the heathen: in that they understood the magical birth they fell from the only God unto the magical birth of nature, and chose unto themselves idols out of the powers of nature. 7. For which cause the creation has remained so obscure; and God has with tribulation covered his children in whom the true light shone, that they have not been manifest unto themselves. Seeing Adam also, according to the same lust, did imagine to know and prove the magic, and would be as God;
3so that God permitted him, that he defiled his heavenly image with the vanity of nature, and made it wholly dark and earthly; as Lucifer also did, with the centre of nature, when he of an angel became a devil. 8. Therefore I will seriously warn the Reader that he use the magic aright, viz. in true faith and humility towards God; and not meddle with turba magna in a magical manner: unless it conduces to the honour of God, and to the salvation of mankind. 9. For we can say with truth, that the Verbum Fiat is yet a creating. Albeit it does not create stones and earth; yet it coagulates, forms and works still in the same property. All things are possible to nature as it was possible for it in the beginning to generate stones and earth, also the stars and four elements, and did produce them, or work them forth out of one only ground; so it is, still unto this day. By the strong desire (which is the magical ground) all things may be effected, if man use nature aright, in its order to the work. 10. All essences consist in the seven properties. Now he that knows the essence, he is able, by the same spirit of that essence, whence it is come to be an essence, to change it into another form, and likewise to introduce it into another essence; and so make of a good thing an evil, and of an evil thing a good.
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.
11. The reason of the outward man says: How is it that God has not revealed the creation of the world unto man, that Moses and the children of God have written so little thereof, seeing it is the greatest and most principal work whereon the main depends? 2. Yes, dear reason, smell into your bosom, of what does it savour? Contemplate your mind, after what does it long? Likely, after the cunning delusions of the devil: Had the devil not known this ground, very like he had been yet an angel; had he not seen the magical birth in his high light, then he had not desired to be a selfish lord and maker in the essence. 3. Wherefore does God hide his children, which now receive the spirit of knowledge with the cross, and cast them into tribulation and mire of vanity? For certain, therefore, that they might play the tune of The Miserere, and continue in humility; and not sport in this life 1) with the light of nature; else, if they should espy and apprehend what the divine magic is, then they might also desire to imitate the devil, [and do] as Lucifer did: for which cause it is hidden from them. And neither Moses nor any other dare write clearer thereof; until the beginning of the creation beholds the end of the world in itself: And then it must stand open. 1 Text, Time.
24. And therefore let none blame us; for the time is come about that Moses puts away his veil from his eyes, which he hung before his face when he spoke with Israel. After the Lord had spoken with him, Moses desired to see it, in that he said, Lord, if I have found grace in your sight, let me see your face. But the Lord would not, and said, You shall see my back part, for none can see my face. 5. Now the eye of God was in Moses, and in the Saints; they have seen and spoken in the spirit of God, and yet had not the intuition of the spiritual birth in them; save at times only, when God would work wonders; as by Moses, when he did the wonders in Egypt: then the divine magic was open unto him, in manner and wise as in the creation. 6. And this was even the fall of Lucifer: that he would be a god of nature, and live in the transmutation. And this was even the idolatry of the heathen: in that they understood the magical birth they fell from the only God unto the magical birth of nature, and chose unto themselves idols out of the powers of nature. 7. For which cause the creation has remained so obscure; and God has with tribulation covered his children in whom the true light shone, that they have not been manifest unto themselves. Seeing Adam also, according to the same lust, did imagine to know and prove the magic, and would be as God;
3so that God permitted him, that he defiled his heavenly image with the vanity of nature, and made it wholly dark and earthly; as Lucifer also did, with the centre of nature, when he of an angel became a devil. 8. Therefore I will seriously warn the Reader that he use the magic aright, viz. in true faith and humility towards God; and not meddle with turba magna in a magical manner: unless it conduces to the honour of God, and to the salvation of mankind. 9. For we can say with truth, that the Verbum Fiat is yet a creating. Albeit it does not create stones and earth; yet it coagulates, forms and works still in the same property. All things are possible to nature as it was possible for it in the beginning to generate stones and earth, also the stars and four elements, and did produce them, or work them forth out of one only ground; so it is, still unto this day. By the strong desire (which is the magical ground) all things may be effected, if man use nature aright, in its order to the work. 10. All essences consist in the seven properties. Now he that knows the essence, he is able, by the same spirit of that essence, whence it is come to be an essence, to change it into another form, and likewise to introduce it into another essence; and so make of a good thing an evil, and of an evil thing a good.
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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