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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.
1[Sun-evening, or the evening of the sun. In our English, Saturday] ; but it is rightly called Sonnaabend [The Evening of reconciliation: or Saving-day] , wherein God's love does appease and atone the anger; as, when the six properties in the operate do enkindle themselves in the impression in the wrath's property, they are atoned and reconciled in the seventh property, viz. in the manifested holy power of God in the love-desire; (which holy power manifests itself in the fifth and sixth property, and does encircle the operate of all the rest as a holy heaven) and so are introduced into one only essence, wherein they rest, as in the Word of the Lord [Text, im Verbo Domini] ; which has introduced itself with the seven properties into nature and essence; and thereof Moses speaks rightly, God rested on the seventh day from all his works, and hallowed the seventh day. 24. Understand it here aright: God rested with his formed Word (which he first introduces into darkness and fire, viz. into the first Principle, according to which he is called a consuming fire), in the second Principle, viz. in the formed holy Word, where he educes himself through the fire in the light in the love-desire, viz. in the holy Fiat: and rests eternally with his manifested Word therein. His rest therein is a dominion of joy, where the anguish-source of God's wrath, of the eternal nature, is changed into a divine kingdom of joy.
225. And this rest is the holy heaven in the natural heaven, where time works in itself; and sets forth its operate for the day of rest, viz. the day of separation, where, at the end of the days of this world, the evil shall be separated from the good, and each thing shall possess its own heaven, viz. the property of its original [or sourcive] spirit, whence it was generated. 26. But in this time God's love and anger must mutually work in one another, and manifest the wonders of God, both according to the fire- [world] and light- world, and the Verbum Domini rests in the seventh manifestation of the properties, and shines with its power and virtue into the operation of the six days, viz. into the six properties; and affords aid and help to every life. 27. In the seventh property all things are brought into their end, viz. into the first day of the beginning of all essences. For the seventh day, viz. the seventh property of the eternal nature, is the transparent glassy sea before the throne of the Ancient, in the Revelation of St. John 's, whence, as out of the Grand Mystery [Ex Mysterio Magno], this world was created into sundry peculiar heavens and forms, and formed in the Verbum Fiat. The seventh day was from eternity without and beyond all time, for it is the formed Word of the divine understanding; in it the eternal wisdom of God is manifest, viz. the powers and wonders of the divine understanding, in which the Deity works. The Seventeenth Chapter
3Of Paradise 1. Moses said, that when God had made man, that he planted a garden in Eden, and there he put man, to till and keep the same: and caused all manner of fruits to grow, pleasant for the sight and good for food: and planted the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the midst (Gen. ii. 8, 9). 2. Here lies the veil before the face of Moses, in that he had a bright shining countenance, that sinful Israel cannot look him in the face. For the man of vanity is not worthy to know what Paradise is; and albeit it be given us to know it according to the hidden man, yet, by this description, we shall remain as dumb to the beast; but yet be sufficiently understood by our fellow- scholars. 3. The Garden Eden was a place upon the earth, where man was tempted; and the Paradise was in heaven; and yet was in the Garden Eden. For as Adam, before his Eve [was made out of him], before his sleep, was as to his inward man in heaven, and as to the outward upon the earth; and as the inward holy man penetrated the outward, as a fire through-heats an iron, so also the heavenly power out of the pure element penetrated the four elements, and sprang forth through the earth, and bore fruits, which were heavenly and earthly, and were qualified [sweetly tempered] of the divine power; and the vanity in the fruit was held as it were swallowed up, as the day hides the night, and holds it captive in itself; that it is not known and manifest.
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.
1[Sun-evening, or the evening of the sun. In our English, Saturday] ; but it is rightly called Sonnaabend [The Evening of reconciliation: or Saving-day] , wherein God's love does appease and atone the anger; as, when the six properties in the operate do enkindle themselves in the impression in the wrath's property, they are atoned and reconciled in the seventh property, viz. in the manifested holy power of God in the love-desire; (which holy power manifests itself in the fifth and sixth property, and does encircle the operate of all the rest as a holy heaven) and so are introduced into one only essence, wherein they rest, as in the Word of the Lord [Text, im Verbo Domini] ; which has introduced itself with the seven properties into nature and essence; and thereof Moses speaks rightly, God rested on the seventh day from all his works, and hallowed the seventh day. 24. Understand it here aright: God rested with his formed Word (which he first introduces into darkness and fire, viz. into the first Principle, according to which he is called a consuming fire), in the second Principle, viz. in the formed holy Word, where he educes himself through the fire in the light in the love-desire, viz. in the holy Fiat: and rests eternally with his manifested Word therein. His rest therein is a dominion of joy, where the anguish-source of God's wrath, of the eternal nature, is changed into a divine kingdom of joy.
225. And this rest is the holy heaven in the natural heaven, where time works in itself; and sets forth its operate for the day of rest, viz. the day of separation, where, at the end of the days of this world, the evil shall be separated from the good, and each thing shall possess its own heaven, viz. the property of its original [or sourcive] spirit, whence it was generated. 26. But in this time God's love and anger must mutually work in one another, and manifest the wonders of God, both according to the fire- [world] and light- world, and the Verbum Domini rests in the seventh manifestation of the properties, and shines with its power and virtue into the operation of the six days, viz. into the six properties; and affords aid and help to every life. 27. In the seventh property all things are brought into their end, viz. into the first day of the beginning of all essences. For the seventh day, viz. the seventh property of the eternal nature, is the transparent glassy sea before the throne of the Ancient, in the Revelation of St. John 's, whence, as out of the Grand Mystery [Ex Mysterio Magno], this world was created into sundry peculiar heavens and forms, and formed in the Verbum Fiat. The seventh day was from eternity without and beyond all time, for it is the formed Word of the divine understanding; in it the eternal wisdom of God is manifest, viz. the powers and wonders of the divine understanding, in which the Deity works. The Seventeenth Chapter
3Of Paradise 1. Moses said, that when God had made man, that he planted a garden in Eden, and there he put man, to till and keep the same: and caused all manner of fruits to grow, pleasant for the sight and good for food: and planted the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the midst (Gen. ii. 8, 9). 2. Here lies the veil before the face of Moses, in that he had a bright shining countenance, that sinful Israel cannot look him in the face. For the man of vanity is not worthy to know what Paradise is; and albeit it be given us to know it according to the hidden man, yet, by this description, we shall remain as dumb to the beast; but yet be sufficiently understood by our fellow- scholars. 3. The Garden Eden was a place upon the earth, where man was tempted; and the Paradise was in heaven; and yet was in the Garden Eden. For as Adam, before his Eve [was made out of him], before his sleep, was as to his inward man in heaven, and as to the outward upon the earth; and as the inward holy man penetrated the outward, as a fire through-heats an iron, so also the heavenly power out of the pure element penetrated the four elements, and sprang forth through the earth, and bore fruits, which were heavenly and earthly, and were qualified [sweetly tempered] of the divine power; and the vanity in the fruit was held as it were swallowed up, as the day hides the night, and holds it captive in itself; that it is not known and manifest.
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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