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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.
1for the heavenly tincture was captivated in the earthly desire; for the outward desire impressed into it its essence out of the vanity, whereby the man was darkened, and lost his clear pure steady [ constant, permanent] eyes and sight, which was from the divine essence, from whence before he had his sight [or seeing]. 34. Now Moses said, that the Lord God said, it is not good that this man should be alone, we will make an help meet for him. When God had created all creatures, with the whole creatural host, Moses said, and God beheld all things which he had made, and lot it was very good; and confirmed all to its propagation. But here he said of man, it is not good that he should be alone, for he saw his miserable fall, that he could not magically propagate himself; and said, we will make an help for him. The Nineteenth Chapter Of the building (framing) of the Woman; showing how Man was ordained to the outward Natural Life 1. AND Moses says, God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept: and he took one of the ribs of his side, and built a woman thereof, and closed up the place with flesh (Gen. ii. 21). Moses says, the woman was made of a rib out of Adam's side: who will understand this, without divine light? But here lies the veil before the brightness of Moses' face, by reason of the unworthiness of the bestial man.
22. For we find that the woman was taken and formed in the Fiat out of Adam's essence, both in body and soul. But the rib betokens Adam's dissolution or breaking, viz. that this body should, and would, be dissolved; for in the place of this rib Longinus's spear must afterwards, when Christ was crucified, enter into the same, and tincture and heal the breach in the wrath of God with heavenly blood. 3. Now when Adam's hunger was set after the earthliness, it did, by its magnetic power, impress into his fair image the vanity of evil and good; whereupon the heavenly image of the angelical world's essence did disappear; as if a man should insinuate some strange matter into a burning and light-shining candle, whereby it should become dark, and at last wholly extinguish. So it went also with Adam, for he brought his will and desire from God into selfhood and vanity, and broke himself off from God, viz. from the divine harmony. 4. Even then he forthwith sank down into a swoon, into sleep, viz. into an unability, which signifies the death: for the image of God, which is immutable, does not sleep. Whatsoever is eternal has no time in it; but by the sleep the time was manifest in man, for he slept in the angelical world, and awaked to the outward world. 5. His sleep is [signifies] the rest of Christ in the grave, where the new regenerate life in Christ's humanity must enter into Adam's
3sleep, and awaken it again to the eternal life, and bring it out of time into the eternal being. 6. But the breaking [or dividing] of Adam's essence, when the woman was taken out of him, is the breaking or bruising of Christ's body on the cross, from the sixth hour unto the ninth; for so long was the Fiat in Adam's sleep in the separating of the man and woman; for in such a space of time the woman was completely finished [or brought forth] out of Adam into a female [person or] image. 7. And when Christ on the cross had again accomplished this redemption of our virgin-like image from the divided sex of male and female, and tinctured it with his heavenly blood in the divine love, he said, It is finished: for before, he stood in Adam's thirst. As Adam did thirst after the vanity, so Christ did now fill or satiate this thirst of vanity with the holy divine love-thirst, and turned about the will of the soul, that it might again introduce its thirst into God. And when this was brought to pass, he said, now, it is finished and converted. Christ turned back Adam in his sleep from the vanity, and from the man and woman, again into the angelical image. Great and wonderful are these Mysteries, which the world cannot apprehend; for it is as blind in them, as a man that is horn blind, is, to behold this world; but he that regards and finds them has great joy therein.
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.
1for the heavenly tincture was captivated in the earthly desire; for the outward desire impressed into it its essence out of the vanity, whereby the man was darkened, and lost his clear pure steady [ constant, permanent] eyes and sight, which was from the divine essence, from whence before he had his sight [or seeing]. 34. Now Moses said, that the Lord God said, it is not good that this man should be alone, we will make an help meet for him. When God had created all creatures, with the whole creatural host, Moses said, and God beheld all things which he had made, and lot it was very good; and confirmed all to its propagation. But here he said of man, it is not good that he should be alone, for he saw his miserable fall, that he could not magically propagate himself; and said, we will make an help for him. The Nineteenth Chapter Of the building (framing) of the Woman; showing how Man was ordained to the outward Natural Life 1. AND Moses says, God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept: and he took one of the ribs of his side, and built a woman thereof, and closed up the place with flesh (Gen. ii. 21). Moses says, the woman was made of a rib out of Adam's side: who will understand this, without divine light? But here lies the veil before the brightness of Moses' face, by reason of the unworthiness of the bestial man.
22. For we find that the woman was taken and formed in the Fiat out of Adam's essence, both in body and soul. But the rib betokens Adam's dissolution or breaking, viz. that this body should, and would, be dissolved; for in the place of this rib Longinus's spear must afterwards, when Christ was crucified, enter into the same, and tincture and heal the breach in the wrath of God with heavenly blood. 3. Now when Adam's hunger was set after the earthliness, it did, by its magnetic power, impress into his fair image the vanity of evil and good; whereupon the heavenly image of the angelical world's essence did disappear; as if a man should insinuate some strange matter into a burning and light-shining candle, whereby it should become dark, and at last wholly extinguish. So it went also with Adam, for he brought his will and desire from God into selfhood and vanity, and broke himself off from God, viz. from the divine harmony. 4. Even then he forthwith sank down into a swoon, into sleep, viz. into an unability, which signifies the death: for the image of God, which is immutable, does not sleep. Whatsoever is eternal has no time in it; but by the sleep the time was manifest in man, for he slept in the angelical world, and awaked to the outward world. 5. His sleep is [signifies] the rest of Christ in the grave, where the new regenerate life in Christ's humanity must enter into Adam's
3sleep, and awaken it again to the eternal life, and bring it out of time into the eternal being. 6. But the breaking [or dividing] of Adam's essence, when the woman was taken out of him, is the breaking or bruising of Christ's body on the cross, from the sixth hour unto the ninth; for so long was the Fiat in Adam's sleep in the separating of the man and woman; for in such a space of time the woman was completely finished [or brought forth] out of Adam into a female [person or] image. 7. And when Christ on the cross had again accomplished this redemption of our virgin-like image from the divided sex of male and female, and tinctured it with his heavenly blood in the divine love, he said, It is finished: for before, he stood in Adam's thirst. As Adam did thirst after the vanity, so Christ did now fill or satiate this thirst of vanity with the holy divine love-thirst, and turned about the will of the soul, that it might again introduce its thirst into God. And when this was brought to pass, he said, now, it is finished and converted. Christ turned back Adam in his sleep from the vanity, and from the man and woman, again into the angelical image. Great and wonderful are these Mysteries, which the world cannot apprehend; for it is as blind in them, as a man that is horn blind, is, to behold this world; but he that regards and finds them has great joy therein.
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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