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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.
128. The creating is the Fiat which amasses [or forms], and the Word in the power of the amassed [or conceived being] gives the distinction according to the ens. As the ens is, in the generation of the spirit, so a thing is formed; for the body or substance of all things is nothing else but a signature or mansion according to the spirit. As the birth is in the ens, where the spirit forms itself; so is likewise the body of all kinds of creatures, both in animals and vegetables. As we plainly see, that the first Creator, who has moved himself and brought himself into a creatural manifestation, has left in all creatures a power to their self-multiplication or increasing, propagation, and procreation; and incorporated the Fiat in them as a maker, for their own propriety [or most innate instinct]. The Twentieth Chapter Of the Lamentable and Miserable Fall and Corruption of Man 1. Now when Adam did awake from sleep he saw his wife Eve standing before him, and took her unto him, for he knew that she was his own, that she was his matrix; and [he] cast the property of his desire upon her, as he had done before when he loved himself: So now also the fiery tincture of Adam's soul entered into the spirit's or light's tincture in Eve.
22. But they both stood yet in Paradise, in the garden in Eden, and knew neither evil nor good; for they lived yet in joy and delight, in the kingdom of heaven; and it was Eve's first longing to eat of good and evil: for Adam's desire had introduced and imprinted it into the magical image, while it was yet in Adam's essence; as a child receives a mark [or impress] in the womb, which the mother imprints on it. 3. Thus also Adam had impressed the false desire into his essence, whence the woman was made; therefore the woman so soon lusted after the vanity; as to this day, mere earthly lust of the flesh is found in most of them. So soon as this sex comes but to any years, the selfish lust [and will] does predominantly appear in pride and glistering shows of fleshly desires; and they soon long after the forbidden tree, contrary to the virgin-like modesty, chastity and angelical humility. 4. The abomination which Adam introduced into his matrix is so exceeding strong in them, that they are as 't were in naked shame before the image of God, which [image] God himself created in Adam. Therefore they must be subject to the man, in that they are the cause that the vanity was enkindled, to which the devil also was a strong promoter.
35. For when he saw Eve, he then knew his insinuated desire in her, which he had introduced into Adam; the same did show forth and discover itself in Eve's lust. Therefore the devil came now in a strange form, viz. in the Serpent's essence, which was the most subtle beast, and laid himself on the Tree of Temptation towards Eve, that the introduced concupiscence in Eve, which the devil had also infected, did amuse itself upon the outward Serpent, and so one lust took another; whereupon Eve did strongly imagine and long after the forbidden fruit, which the devil persuaded her to eat; and then her eyes should be opened, and she be as God, and know evil and good. 6. Which indeed was true: this knowledge did stick in the fruit, for the essences were discordant and unlike therein; but he told her not that the enmity would awaken in the essences of her body, and that heat and cold, moreover sickness and death, would force into her. Herein he was silent, and fairly coloured it over, and drew her in by collusion; as if God had withheld some great thing from them, which she might find as a treasure; so craftily did he deceive Eve. 7. And when she yielded to discourse with the Serpent she was taken in the voice; for the devil infected the same with false delight, until he persuaded her she should be wise if she did eat thereof.
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.
128. The creating is the Fiat which amasses [or forms], and the Word in the power of the amassed [or conceived being] gives the distinction according to the ens. As the ens is, in the generation of the spirit, so a thing is formed; for the body or substance of all things is nothing else but a signature or mansion according to the spirit. As the birth is in the ens, where the spirit forms itself; so is likewise the body of all kinds of creatures, both in animals and vegetables. As we plainly see, that the first Creator, who has moved himself and brought himself into a creatural manifestation, has left in all creatures a power to their self-multiplication or increasing, propagation, and procreation; and incorporated the Fiat in them as a maker, for their own propriety [or most innate instinct]. The Twentieth Chapter Of the Lamentable and Miserable Fall and Corruption of Man 1. Now when Adam did awake from sleep he saw his wife Eve standing before him, and took her unto him, for he knew that she was his own, that she was his matrix; and [he] cast the property of his desire upon her, as he had done before when he loved himself: So now also the fiery tincture of Adam's soul entered into the spirit's or light's tincture in Eve.
22. But they both stood yet in Paradise, in the garden in Eden, and knew neither evil nor good; for they lived yet in joy and delight, in the kingdom of heaven; and it was Eve's first longing to eat of good and evil: for Adam's desire had introduced and imprinted it into the magical image, while it was yet in Adam's essence; as a child receives a mark [or impress] in the womb, which the mother imprints on it. 3. Thus also Adam had impressed the false desire into his essence, whence the woman was made; therefore the woman so soon lusted after the vanity; as to this day, mere earthly lust of the flesh is found in most of them. So soon as this sex comes but to any years, the selfish lust [and will] does predominantly appear in pride and glistering shows of fleshly desires; and they soon long after the forbidden tree, contrary to the virgin-like modesty, chastity and angelical humility. 4. The abomination which Adam introduced into his matrix is so exceeding strong in them, that they are as 't were in naked shame before the image of God, which [image] God himself created in Adam. Therefore they must be subject to the man, in that they are the cause that the vanity was enkindled, to which the devil also was a strong promoter.
35. For when he saw Eve, he then knew his insinuated desire in her, which he had introduced into Adam; the same did show forth and discover itself in Eve's lust. Therefore the devil came now in a strange form, viz. in the Serpent's essence, which was the most subtle beast, and laid himself on the Tree of Temptation towards Eve, that the introduced concupiscence in Eve, which the devil had also infected, did amuse itself upon the outward Serpent, and so one lust took another; whereupon Eve did strongly imagine and long after the forbidden fruit, which the devil persuaded her to eat; and then her eyes should be opened, and she be as God, and know evil and good. 6. Which indeed was true: this knowledge did stick in the fruit, for the essences were discordant and unlike therein; but he told her not that the enmity would awaken in the essences of her body, and that heat and cold, moreover sickness and death, would force into her. Herein he was silent, and fairly coloured it over, and drew her in by collusion; as if God had withheld some great thing from them, which she might find as a treasure; so craftily did he deceive Eve. 7. And when she yielded to discourse with the Serpent she was taken in the voice; for the devil infected the same with false delight, until he persuaded her she should be wise if she did eat thereof.
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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