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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.
125. But this is now the greatest evil, that the ens in its centre is departed out of the likeness [and harmony] of the property into an elevation, viz. out of one only ens into many entities, into many properties; of which the devil, being a hierarch of the place of this world, and also the curse of God upon the earth, is [a] cause, which curse man stirred up and awakened. 26. For now, an evil ens, which is from the awakened property, does infuse itself into a good vessel, and corrupts the vessel whence the free will should draw from a good property; but the evil does mix itself into the good, and both come forth again in the formed word, into a substance; as an evil man does oftentimes stir up an evil word work in a good man, which he never before conceived [or purposed] in his will. 27. For the anger is become stirring [or quick] in the human ens, and adheres to the good ens, and the will of the fire-soul is free, it conceives [forms] as soon in the ens of anger as in the ens of love; nay, in many a one the love-ens is wholly impotent and as 'twere dead or extinct. He works only from the craftiness of the Serpent, fruit unto God's anger, and though his mouth does flatter in the Serpent's craft, and make a devout show of the holy Word, and sets forth itself as an angel, yet it is only the ens and form of the crafty Serpent in the light of the earthly nature, and the man deceives himself.
228. Therefore Christ says, unless that you be converted, and become as children, you cannot see the kingdom of God. The free will must wholly go out from the ens of the Serpent, and enter again, in the spirit of Christ, into its heavenly ens, which did disappear in Adam, and again awaken and stir up this ens in the hunger of its desire, that it also may be again awakened and born unto a living ens in the new regenerated Word in the humanity of Christ, and which did arise and powerfully quicken itself in the great love-property, in the man's property in the person of Christ: where also the free will becomes a new innocent child, and neither wills nor lets in the Serpent's craft, otherwise the free will cannot form and manifest God's holy Word in itself the free will must draw only out of the good ens, if it will work and live in the holy Word.
329. Now understand aright our writing concerning the Serpent's craft, and its adorned art and false virtue, [I say] understand our very profound and high meaning, opened out of the counsel of God, thus: The Serpent's ens and original was a virgin of heavenly pomp, a queen of heaven, and princess of the beings of God, apprehended and formed in the Fiat of the divine desire, through the fire in the light. In like manner the hierarch Lucifer was so, and prince Lucifer sat in heavenly pomp in the Serpent's ens, who had infected the ens out of which the Serpent was created, and therein awakened the dark-world's property, viz. the centre of the eternal nature, whence evil and good do take their original. But when the good did in the fire sever itself into the light, and the evil into the darkness, the Serpent's ens, which was good, was then infected, filled and possessed with the darkness; and from hence comes its craft. 30. For even such a craft the devil desired, which also took him in the eternal- speaking Word, in such a property, and confirmed him therein to eternity. For it is also a wonder in God how an evil could come to be out of a good, in order that the good might be known and manifest; and the creature might learn to fear before God, and hold still to the spirit of God; that he alone might act and work in the eternal-speaking Word, and make and do what he please with and by the creature.
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.
125. But this is now the greatest evil, that the ens in its centre is departed out of the likeness [and harmony] of the property into an elevation, viz. out of one only ens into many entities, into many properties; of which the devil, being a hierarch of the place of this world, and also the curse of God upon the earth, is [a] cause, which curse man stirred up and awakened. 26. For now, an evil ens, which is from the awakened property, does infuse itself into a good vessel, and corrupts the vessel whence the free will should draw from a good property; but the evil does mix itself into the good, and both come forth again in the formed word, into a substance; as an evil man does oftentimes stir up an evil word work in a good man, which he never before conceived [or purposed] in his will. 27. For the anger is become stirring [or quick] in the human ens, and adheres to the good ens, and the will of the fire-soul is free, it conceives [forms] as soon in the ens of anger as in the ens of love; nay, in many a one the love-ens is wholly impotent and as 'twere dead or extinct. He works only from the craftiness of the Serpent, fruit unto God's anger, and though his mouth does flatter in the Serpent's craft, and make a devout show of the holy Word, and sets forth itself as an angel, yet it is only the ens and form of the crafty Serpent in the light of the earthly nature, and the man deceives himself.
228. Therefore Christ says, unless that you be converted, and become as children, you cannot see the kingdom of God. The free will must wholly go out from the ens of the Serpent, and enter again, in the spirit of Christ, into its heavenly ens, which did disappear in Adam, and again awaken and stir up this ens in the hunger of its desire, that it also may be again awakened and born unto a living ens in the new regenerated Word in the humanity of Christ, and which did arise and powerfully quicken itself in the great love-property, in the man's property in the person of Christ: where also the free will becomes a new innocent child, and neither wills nor lets in the Serpent's craft, otherwise the free will cannot form and manifest God's holy Word in itself the free will must draw only out of the good ens, if it will work and live in the holy Word.
329. Now understand aright our writing concerning the Serpent's craft, and its adorned art and false virtue, [I say] understand our very profound and high meaning, opened out of the counsel of God, thus: The Serpent's ens and original was a virgin of heavenly pomp, a queen of heaven, and princess of the beings of God, apprehended and formed in the Fiat of the divine desire, through the fire in the light. In like manner the hierarch Lucifer was so, and prince Lucifer sat in heavenly pomp in the Serpent's ens, who had infected the ens out of which the Serpent was created, and therein awakened the dark-world's property, viz. the centre of the eternal nature, whence evil and good do take their original. But when the good did in the fire sever itself into the light, and the evil into the darkness, the Serpent's ens, which was good, was then infected, filled and possessed with the darkness; and from hence comes its craft. 30. For even such a craft the devil desired, which also took him in the eternal- speaking Word, in such a property, and confirmed him therein to eternity. For it is also a wonder in God how an evil could come to be out of a good, in order that the good might be known and manifest; and the creature might learn to fear before God, and hold still to the spirit of God; that he alone might act and work in the eternal-speaking Word, and make and do what he please with and by the creature.
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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