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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. Paradise was nothing else but the seventh day's property. The heavenly essentiality of the second Principle is couched or shut up in the earth, the curse of God has hidden it; it budded (in the beginning of the world) through the earthly essentiality, as the eternity is in the time, and the divine power is through all things; and yet is neither comprehended nor understood of any earthly thing in selfhood. 5. But in Paradise the essence of the divine world penetrated the essence of time, as the sun penetrates the fruit upon a tree, and effectually works it into a pleasantness, that it is lovely to look upon and good to eat: the like also we are to understand of the garden in Eden. 6. The word Eden [expounded according to the Language of nature] is nothing else but what Moses says of the earth: that it was void and empty; that is, it should not manifest its might according to the wrath of vanity, it should be still, as a mother to bring forth. For the internal would rule through the external, as the spiritual world through time, [and] heaven through the earth. The earth was empty without fruit; but the heaven was its husband, which made it fruitful, and bore fruit by it until the curse, where heaven did hide [disappear or withdraw] itself from the earth.
27. The whole world would have been a mere Paradise, if Lucifer had not corrupted it, who was in the beginning of his creation a hierarch in the place of this world. But seeing God knew well that Adam would fall, therefore Paradise sprang forth and budded only in one certain place, to introduce and confirm man therein; whom (albeit God saw that he would again depart thence), he would again introduce thereinto by Christ, and establish him anew in Christ, to eternity in Paradise. 8. For Lucifer poisoned the first Paradise with his false and wicked desire, therefore God promised to regenerate it anew in Christ; for the seventh day, which God appointed for rest, is nothing else but Paradise regenerate anew in the spirit of Christ, in the human property, wherein the poor soul shall rest eternally from the source of the six days'-works, viz. of the six properties of the life. 9. Also it is the seventh time or manifestation of God, in which the Mystery of God's kingdom shall be finished, when it shall be again pure in the place of this world; when heaven shall be again manifest in the world, and the devil driven out with his wickedness: [Text: evil essence ] whereinto no unclean thing shall any more enter; for this world, in which Adam was, before his Eve, must again return, as it was before the curse, in which righteousness shall rule: but the vanity shall be purged away through the fire of God's anger, and given to the dark world.
310. But that Moses said, the Tree of Life stood in the midst of the Garden, and presently next after sets down, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Here lies the veil before his eyes, that the earthly sinful man cannot behold him; for he is not worthy of it; for his earthliness in the curse of the bestial vanity shall not inherit Paradise. 11. The precious pearl lies in [the knowledge of] the difference of the two Trees: and yet it is but only one, but manifest in two kingdoms. For the Tree of Life stands wholly in the midst of the Garden; for it stands in two Principles, in the midst, viz. in the holy world, between the eternal dark world of God's anger, where God is an angry zealous God and a consuming fire, and the outward visible world. 12. The holy power of God in the Tree was the middle-most kingdom, and Paradise was the outermost kingdom; for the middlemost penetrated the outermost, and manifested itself with the outward. This was the knowledge of the Good, which Adam should have as little known, in its original, as the Evil: he was created for an instrument of God, with whom God would manifest his wonders in figures; he should keep only a child-like mind, and be resigned unto God. 13. Now the Tree of the Knowledge of Evil was the dark world, which also was manifest on this Tree; likewise the vanity, as now [At this day] it is;
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. Paradise was nothing else but the seventh day's property. The heavenly essentiality of the second Principle is couched or shut up in the earth, the curse of God has hidden it; it budded (in the beginning of the world) through the earthly essentiality, as the eternity is in the time, and the divine power is through all things; and yet is neither comprehended nor understood of any earthly thing in selfhood. 5. But in Paradise the essence of the divine world penetrated the essence of time, as the sun penetrates the fruit upon a tree, and effectually works it into a pleasantness, that it is lovely to look upon and good to eat: the like also we are to understand of the garden in Eden. 6. The word Eden [expounded according to the Language of nature] is nothing else but what Moses says of the earth: that it was void and empty; that is, it should not manifest its might according to the wrath of vanity, it should be still, as a mother to bring forth. For the internal would rule through the external, as the spiritual world through time, [and] heaven through the earth. The earth was empty without fruit; but the heaven was its husband, which made it fruitful, and bore fruit by it until the curse, where heaven did hide [disappear or withdraw] itself from the earth.
27. The whole world would have been a mere Paradise, if Lucifer had not corrupted it, who was in the beginning of his creation a hierarch in the place of this world. But seeing God knew well that Adam would fall, therefore Paradise sprang forth and budded only in one certain place, to introduce and confirm man therein; whom (albeit God saw that he would again depart thence), he would again introduce thereinto by Christ, and establish him anew in Christ, to eternity in Paradise. 8. For Lucifer poisoned the first Paradise with his false and wicked desire, therefore God promised to regenerate it anew in Christ; for the seventh day, which God appointed for rest, is nothing else but Paradise regenerate anew in the spirit of Christ, in the human property, wherein the poor soul shall rest eternally from the source of the six days'-works, viz. of the six properties of the life. 9. Also it is the seventh time or manifestation of God, in which the Mystery of God's kingdom shall be finished, when it shall be again pure in the place of this world; when heaven shall be again manifest in the world, and the devil driven out with his wickedness: [Text: evil essence ] whereinto no unclean thing shall any more enter; for this world, in which Adam was, before his Eve, must again return, as it was before the curse, in which righteousness shall rule: but the vanity shall be purged away through the fire of God's anger, and given to the dark world.
310. But that Moses said, the Tree of Life stood in the midst of the Garden, and presently next after sets down, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Here lies the veil before his eyes, that the earthly sinful man cannot behold him; for he is not worthy of it; for his earthliness in the curse of the bestial vanity shall not inherit Paradise. 11. The precious pearl lies in [the knowledge of] the difference of the two Trees: and yet it is but only one, but manifest in two kingdoms. For the Tree of Life stands wholly in the midst of the Garden; for it stands in two Principles, in the midst, viz. in the holy world, between the eternal dark world of God's anger, where God is an angry zealous God and a consuming fire, and the outward visible world. 12. The holy power of God in the Tree was the middle-most kingdom, and Paradise was the outermost kingdom; for the middlemost penetrated the outermost, and manifested itself with the outward. This was the knowledge of the Good, which Adam should have as little known, in its original, as the Evil: he was created for an instrument of God, with whom God would manifest his wonders in figures; he should keep only a child-like mind, and be resigned unto God. 13. Now the Tree of the Knowledge of Evil was the dark world, which also was manifest on this Tree; likewise the vanity, as now [At this day] it is;
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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