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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.
18. Eve is the right magical child, for she is the matrix in which the love-desire stood in Adam, viz. the magical impregnation and birth; she was Adam's paradisical rose-garden in peculiar love, wherein he loved himself; for the amassing [or conceiving] of the magical impregnation, or incarnation, or divine formation of propagation, was [or did stand] in the conjunction of both tinctures. 9. And, after the eating of the apple, God said unto them, The woman's seed shall bruise the Serpent's head. The ground and corner-stone lies here in this matrix; for the woman's matrix wherein the divine formation stood, was, as to the right life, heavenly, being out of the heavenly essentiality, wherein consisted the right paradise. 10. But Adam with his imagination brought earthliness and vanity thereinto, viz. self-will; and then the holy part, viz. Venus's desire, which was the divine centre in the humanity, viz. the manifested loveword in the image of God, did disappear in this matrix; therefore Eve, from this strange will introduced into the matrix, brought forth at first a self-willed proud murderer; for Adam, with his false imagination, had introduced this vanity, so also the devil's desire [thereinto].
211. But the divine love- will would not forsake this disappeared angelical matrix; and gave himself by promise thereinto with the dear and precious name of Jesus, who should again awaken it in the holiness's property; and bruise the head of the devil's insinuated desire and false rebellious will; that is, destroy, and take away the might of its life, and introduce it again, through divine love, into the first life. And even in this holy matrix, which the word and power of God did again awaken in the sweet name [of] Jesus in the seed of Mary in the bound of the Covenant, the Serpent's poison in the soul and flesh was destroyed. 12. And this is the seed of the woman: dear brethren, observe it, it is highly known. The aim of the Covenant of Promise was pight [or set] into this matrix: but Eve was not the same child; for the part of the heavenly matrix stood disappeared in her; but [yet it was] in the Covenant of God, as the dry rod of Aaron (which budded forth afresh) did typify unto us.
313. She was indeed the whole matrix of Adam, but the holy part was shut up in her; and [there] lived only the outward part of the outward world with evil and good, viz. the matrix of the third Principle, which had indeed a halfsoul-like property, but [captivated] in the prison of God's anger. The holy Covenant of love rested in the disappeared part, in the midst of the awakened anger; from which Covenant the prophetical spirit in the Old Testament spoke, and prophesied of the future opening (or manifestation) in the Covenant. 14. The greatest Mystery is to be understood in the formation of Eve; for a man must very entirely and intimately understand and apprehend the birth of nature, and the original of man, if he will see the ground; for she is the half Adam; not taken only and wholly out of Adam's flesh, but out of his essence, out of the female part: she is Adam's matrix. 15. The woman received no more from Adam's flesh and bones, save the rib in his side, and the half cross in the head, which was the life's birth-cross, whereon Christ destroyed death. The matrix of the heavenly part was in Adam, magical, that is, moving in the essence; but the outward part of the outward world was made fleshy; and both were mutually bound [or espoused] to one another; as the time with the eternity. The holy part was in heaven, and [was] the heaven itself; and the outward fleshy part was in the outward world in Matrice Mundi [matrix of the third principle] .
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.
18. Eve is the right magical child, for she is the matrix in which the love-desire stood in Adam, viz. the magical impregnation and birth; she was Adam's paradisical rose-garden in peculiar love, wherein he loved himself; for the amassing [or conceiving] of the magical impregnation, or incarnation, or divine formation of propagation, was [or did stand] in the conjunction of both tinctures. 9. And, after the eating of the apple, God said unto them, The woman's seed shall bruise the Serpent's head. The ground and corner-stone lies here in this matrix; for the woman's matrix wherein the divine formation stood, was, as to the right life, heavenly, being out of the heavenly essentiality, wherein consisted the right paradise. 10. But Adam with his imagination brought earthliness and vanity thereinto, viz. self-will; and then the holy part, viz. Venus's desire, which was the divine centre in the humanity, viz. the manifested loveword in the image of God, did disappear in this matrix; therefore Eve, from this strange will introduced into the matrix, brought forth at first a self-willed proud murderer; for Adam, with his false imagination, had introduced this vanity, so also the devil's desire [thereinto].
211. But the divine love- will would not forsake this disappeared angelical matrix; and gave himself by promise thereinto with the dear and precious name of Jesus, who should again awaken it in the holiness's property; and bruise the head of the devil's insinuated desire and false rebellious will; that is, destroy, and take away the might of its life, and introduce it again, through divine love, into the first life. And even in this holy matrix, which the word and power of God did again awaken in the sweet name [of] Jesus in the seed of Mary in the bound of the Covenant, the Serpent's poison in the soul and flesh was destroyed. 12. And this is the seed of the woman: dear brethren, observe it, it is highly known. The aim of the Covenant of Promise was pight [or set] into this matrix: but Eve was not the same child; for the part of the heavenly matrix stood disappeared in her; but [yet it was] in the Covenant of God, as the dry rod of Aaron (which budded forth afresh) did typify unto us.
313. She was indeed the whole matrix of Adam, but the holy part was shut up in her; and [there] lived only the outward part of the outward world with evil and good, viz. the matrix of the third Principle, which had indeed a halfsoul-like property, but [captivated] in the prison of God's anger. The holy Covenant of love rested in the disappeared part, in the midst of the awakened anger; from which Covenant the prophetical spirit in the Old Testament spoke, and prophesied of the future opening (or manifestation) in the Covenant. 14. The greatest Mystery is to be understood in the formation of Eve; for a man must very entirely and intimately understand and apprehend the birth of nature, and the original of man, if he will see the ground; for she is the half Adam; not taken only and wholly out of Adam's flesh, but out of his essence, out of the female part: she is Adam's matrix. 15. The woman received no more from Adam's flesh and bones, save the rib in his side, and the half cross in the head, which was the life's birth-cross, whereon Christ destroyed death. The matrix of the heavenly part was in Adam, magical, that is, moving in the essence; but the outward part of the outward world was made fleshy; and both were mutually bound [or espoused] to one another; as the time with the eternity. The holy part was in heaven, and [was] the heaven itself; and the outward fleshy part was in the outward world in Matrice Mundi [matrix of the third principle] .
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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