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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.
1And yet it does diffuse its power through the light of nature, but not so powerfully as in the beginning, for the curse is the cause of its withdrawing; indeed there is no total departing, but yet it is nothing now as [compared with what it was] before the sin of the second created prince, Adam. 1 Out of which power or virtue in the light's property. 2 Receive or perceive. 3 Sprang. 17. Thus in the first motion of the Verbum Fiat the heaven (that is, the circle, so far as the Verbum Fiat reached itself forth to the creation) was amassed or enclosed; and the earth was amassed with the Verbum Fiat, and created to the planetic orb. Thus by the separation, viz. of the light and darkness, and by the expelling of prince Lucifer, we are to understand the creation of the first day. 18. Now the first day with the manifested Word did convey itself through the other five days, even into the day of rest; where the beginning enters again into the end, and the end again into the beginning. For the first motion of the Word, where the light of nature has enkindled itself in the essence, is the joy of the creation or creature; which did open itself with the other days through all the properties of nature, where each property may be called a heaven: for it has and brings also its peculiar operation and efficacy along in itself into the rest, 1) and each day one property did move and manifest itself; wherein a peculiar sundry work was manifested and revealed.
21 Understand, into the rest of the properties or days. 19. The second day we call Monday, and therefore, because the moon rules the first hour of the day: and it is very likely that the ancient wise men have understood somewhat thereof in the light of nature, which they have kept secret and mystical, rather deciphering it by figures than clearly explaining it. And it is to be seen in the names of the seven planets, that they have for certain understood the same; in that they have given them names according to the seven properties of nature, which do so wholly agree and accord, as well with the creation as [with] nature, that methinks they have in part understood the ground of the creation aright, seeing the names of the planets have their rise and derivation so fully and punctually out of the language of Nature. But the reason why it has not been made clear, plain and manifest is (as before mentioned) because of the false magic, that it might remain hidden unto the artists of juggling and collusion in nature, by reason of the great abuse. Wherefore we also shall still let it so remain, and yet hint enough to the understanding of our school-fellows. 20. Now of the second day Moses writes thus: And God said, Let there be a firmament between the waters, and let it divide between the waters.
3Then God made the firmament, and divided the water under the firmament from the water above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven. And out of the evening and morning was the second day (Gen. i. 6-8) 21. Moses said, that out of the evening and morning was the second day, that is, out of the manifestation of the first, the second manifestation proceeded and brake forth; and said further, that on the second day God created the firmament of heaven, and separated the waters; the water under the firmament from the water above the firmament. Here now lies the hidden veil, wherein we have hitherto been pointed and directed unto a heaven situate afar off above the stars, without the place of this world. So very blind is reason as to God that it understands nothing of him; and does not consider that the Scripture says of God: Am not I he which fills all things: and, that time and place cannot divide him. Much less is it understood what the water above the firmament is, which they will flatly hold to be a place afar distant, viz. above the stars, whither also we have been shown into heaven.
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.
1And yet it does diffuse its power through the light of nature, but not so powerfully as in the beginning, for the curse is the cause of its withdrawing; indeed there is no total departing, but yet it is nothing now as [compared with what it was] before the sin of the second created prince, Adam. 1 Out of which power or virtue in the light's property. 2 Receive or perceive. 3 Sprang. 17. Thus in the first motion of the Verbum Fiat the heaven (that is, the circle, so far as the Verbum Fiat reached itself forth to the creation) was amassed or enclosed; and the earth was amassed with the Verbum Fiat, and created to the planetic orb. Thus by the separation, viz. of the light and darkness, and by the expelling of prince Lucifer, we are to understand the creation of the first day. 18. Now the first day with the manifested Word did convey itself through the other five days, even into the day of rest; where the beginning enters again into the end, and the end again into the beginning. For the first motion of the Word, where the light of nature has enkindled itself in the essence, is the joy of the creation or creature; which did open itself with the other days through all the properties of nature, where each property may be called a heaven: for it has and brings also its peculiar operation and efficacy along in itself into the rest, 1) and each day one property did move and manifest itself; wherein a peculiar sundry work was manifested and revealed.
21 Understand, into the rest of the properties or days. 19. The second day we call Monday, and therefore, because the moon rules the first hour of the day: and it is very likely that the ancient wise men have understood somewhat thereof in the light of nature, which they have kept secret and mystical, rather deciphering it by figures than clearly explaining it. And it is to be seen in the names of the seven planets, that they have for certain understood the same; in that they have given them names according to the seven properties of nature, which do so wholly agree and accord, as well with the creation as [with] nature, that methinks they have in part understood the ground of the creation aright, seeing the names of the planets have their rise and derivation so fully and punctually out of the language of Nature. But the reason why it has not been made clear, plain and manifest is (as before mentioned) because of the false magic, that it might remain hidden unto the artists of juggling and collusion in nature, by reason of the great abuse. Wherefore we also shall still let it so remain, and yet hint enough to the understanding of our school-fellows. 20. Now of the second day Moses writes thus: And God said, Let there be a firmament between the waters, and let it divide between the waters.
3Then God made the firmament, and divided the water under the firmament from the water above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven. And out of the evening and morning was the second day (Gen. i. 6-8) 21. Moses said, that out of the evening and morning was the second day, that is, out of the manifestation of the first, the second manifestation proceeded and brake forth; and said further, that on the second day God created the firmament of heaven, and separated the waters; the water under the firmament from the water above the firmament. Here now lies the hidden veil, wherein we have hitherto been pointed and directed unto a heaven situate afar off above the stars, without the place of this world. So very blind is reason as to God that it understands nothing of him; and does not consider that the Scripture says of God: Am not I he which fills all things: and, that time and place cannot divide him. Much less is it understood what the water above the firmament is, which they will flatly hold to be a place afar distant, viz. above the stars, whither also we have been shown into heaven.
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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