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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.
1he knew that he would not stand, yet he appointed him the Saviour, who would bring him again into the first image, and therein establish him for ever. 22. Now it plainly appears that Adam stood in the divine image, and not in the bestial, for he knew the property of all creatures, and gave names to all creatures, from their essence, form and property. He understood the Language of Nature, viz. the manifested and formed Word in everyone's essence, for thence the name of every creature is arisen. 23. Now, seeing he knew how the word of power was formed in every creature, thereupon we cannot esteem him bestial; he was without doubt angelical; for none other man shall arise, but such a one as Adam was before his Eve. God created him perfect, but he stood not in the proba; whereupon it must now follow, that God suffered him to fall into the outward magic; and ordained him to the image of this world; and set him into the natural life, viz. into the corruption and the new birth [degeneration and regeneration]. For in heaven there is neither male nor female, but all one kind, in peculiar love, without further propagation, in an eternal confirmation. 24. This therefore does set forth unto us that Adam died in Paradise, as God said unto him, if you eatest of the Tree, thou diest: He died to the holy [heavenly] image, and lived to the awakened bestial image.
2For now, when Adam did awake from sleep, he was indeed still in Paradise, for the vanity in the flesh and soul did not yet actually and effectually work, and was yet dumb, still, and senseless, until they did eat of the forbidden fruit; and then the earthly dominion began to rise; then the vanity awakened, viz. all the forms of the life, each in its selfhood, and forsook severally their mutual harmony, and forthwith heat and cold fell upon them [Adam and Eve] ; for the outward [image or being] did assimulate [or ensource] with the inward, and the heavenly image at last quite disappeared; which in Adam's sleep, and also in this awakening, did yet live both in Adam and Eve, but in a very obscure and impotent manner. 25. Adam, in his perfection, while he was man and wife, and had the magical conception in him, did amuse himself on (or imagine after) the beasts, and introduced himself into bestial lust, to eat and generate according as the beasts do: And so, likewise, the Fiat took in the same lust, and formed him in his sleep even as the lust was; and every member was formed in its place to the conjunction of the beast-like copulation; for each desire has obtained its mouth to
3manifestation. Thus the image of God formed itself in the Verbum Fiat into such a beast as we are still to this day; and this same (was done) in itself; viz. man's own Fiat (viz. the first form of nature, which is the desire of God's manifestation), did effect it, and none other maker from without him. 26. We are not to conceive, that there was anything else upon Adam, which made his Eve out of him, or that formed them both to the outward natural life, save only the Verbum Fiat in them, their own very propriate, and not any alienate (or anything strange) from without them. As the first creation of Adam and all kinds of creatures was so brought to pass, the Verbum Fiat coagulated each ens, and the manifested word severed itself in the ens according to its property, and formed the creature according to its astrum and kind; where also, in every ens, the matrix was separated from the limbus, and formed into a male and female [into a he and she]. 27. The picturing of God as a man in making Adam, and afterwards standing over Adam as he sleeps, and making a woman out of him, is more idolatrous than real; and God has earnestly forbidden, in Moses, to make the likeness of any God. For he is no image, save only in the creatures, according to the expressed formed Word, both according to the creatures of eternity, and of time: he is no [such] maker, but a former of the properties, a creator, and not [such a] maker.
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.
1he knew that he would not stand, yet he appointed him the Saviour, who would bring him again into the first image, and therein establish him for ever. 22. Now it plainly appears that Adam stood in the divine image, and not in the bestial, for he knew the property of all creatures, and gave names to all creatures, from their essence, form and property. He understood the Language of Nature, viz. the manifested and formed Word in everyone's essence, for thence the name of every creature is arisen. 23. Now, seeing he knew how the word of power was formed in every creature, thereupon we cannot esteem him bestial; he was without doubt angelical; for none other man shall arise, but such a one as Adam was before his Eve. God created him perfect, but he stood not in the proba; whereupon it must now follow, that God suffered him to fall into the outward magic; and ordained him to the image of this world; and set him into the natural life, viz. into the corruption and the new birth [degeneration and regeneration]. For in heaven there is neither male nor female, but all one kind, in peculiar love, without further propagation, in an eternal confirmation. 24. This therefore does set forth unto us that Adam died in Paradise, as God said unto him, if you eatest of the Tree, thou diest: He died to the holy [heavenly] image, and lived to the awakened bestial image.
2For now, when Adam did awake from sleep, he was indeed still in Paradise, for the vanity in the flesh and soul did not yet actually and effectually work, and was yet dumb, still, and senseless, until they did eat of the forbidden fruit; and then the earthly dominion began to rise; then the vanity awakened, viz. all the forms of the life, each in its selfhood, and forsook severally their mutual harmony, and forthwith heat and cold fell upon them [Adam and Eve] ; for the outward [image or being] did assimulate [or ensource] with the inward, and the heavenly image at last quite disappeared; which in Adam's sleep, and also in this awakening, did yet live both in Adam and Eve, but in a very obscure and impotent manner. 25. Adam, in his perfection, while he was man and wife, and had the magical conception in him, did amuse himself on (or imagine after) the beasts, and introduced himself into bestial lust, to eat and generate according as the beasts do: And so, likewise, the Fiat took in the same lust, and formed him in his sleep even as the lust was; and every member was formed in its place to the conjunction of the beast-like copulation; for each desire has obtained its mouth to
3manifestation. Thus the image of God formed itself in the Verbum Fiat into such a beast as we are still to this day; and this same (was done) in itself; viz. man's own Fiat (viz. the first form of nature, which is the desire of God's manifestation), did effect it, and none other maker from without him. 26. We are not to conceive, that there was anything else upon Adam, which made his Eve out of him, or that formed them both to the outward natural life, save only the Verbum Fiat in them, their own very propriate, and not any alienate (or anything strange) from without them. As the first creation of Adam and all kinds of creatures was so brought to pass, the Verbum Fiat coagulated each ens, and the manifested word severed itself in the ens according to its property, and formed the creature according to its astrum and kind; where also, in every ens, the matrix was separated from the limbus, and formed into a male and female [into a he and she]. 27. The picturing of God as a man in making Adam, and afterwards standing over Adam as he sleeps, and making a woman out of him, is more idolatrous than real; and God has earnestly forbidden, in Moses, to make the likeness of any God. For he is no image, save only in the creatures, according to the expressed formed Word, both according to the creatures of eternity, and of time: he is no [such] maker, but a former of the properties, a creator, and not [such a] maker.
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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