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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.
140. But understand it well: if a good will does conceive [ Or form itself] in a good ens, and yet the evil desire doth adhere to it, and wills to poison the good; if then [I say] the good conceived will overcomes the evil, and casts it out, that the evil cannot also be formed or received into the compaction or substance; it is no sin. And though the evil desire which adheres to the good be sin, yet if the good will does not close with it and bring it into substance, but rejects it out of the good will, as an evil, then the sinful desire cannot come into essence, and the good will has not hereby wrought any evil, if it has not consented to the craft of the Serpent. 41. Every sin is born of the strange ens, if the free will departs from the ens, wherein God has created it. The sin which is conceived in the will in false desire, and brought to essence in the ens of the will, so that man would fain do wickedly or unjustly if he could but bring his intent to pass, is also great in the sight of God; but ifit proceeds so far as to hurt and injure anyone by word or deed, then the sin is double; for it is formed in its own ens, and forms itself also in that whereinto it introduces the false word, so far as the false word in its speaking finds a place of rest to work [and bring forth its evil fruit] .
242. And therefore the holy word shall judge the false; as also at the end of this time the holy word shall cast out from itself all false idol opinions, and all whatsoever that has been formed in the Serpent's ens, and give them to the dark world. 43. All those that take or conceive the word in them, in their devilish and serpentine ens, and use it against God's children, in whom the holy ens is manifest, and do stir up also an offence [or occasion of stumbling] in the children of God, that the free will in them does also conceive itself in the Serpent's ens, viz. in anger and averseness, where always the holy ens does likewise form itself, and the spirit of zeal arises: these false authors, beginners and causers do all sin against the Holy Ghost. 44. For they do extremely despite and defy Him, that He must even proceed forth, through the anger of the children of God, whereby He is stirred up, and of tentimes shows Himself in the turba of the children of God, and falls upon the neck of the wicked. As may be seen by Elias, and Moses, and also by Elisha, who cursed the boys, that the bears came out and tore them to pieces, for thus the sword of God comes forth through the mouth of the saints. If the Holy Spirit be extremely displeased, and set into a fiery zeal, then He awakens turba magna, which draws the sword against a wicked people and devours them.
345. Thus understand it in its full scope and meaning: Man has God's Word in himself; which created him; understand, the Word has imprinted and formed itselfwith the creating, both in its holiness and also in the anger; and that also in [or out of] the outward world, for the limus of the earth, or the earth itself; was amassed and compacted through the Word, so that the formed Word, which took its beginning in the divine desire, viz. in the Fiat, is an exhalation forth-breathed from the spirit of God out of love and anger: therefore it is evil and good, but the evil was hidden, and as it were wholly swallowed up in the light, as the night in the day. 46. But the sinful desire in Lucifer and Adam has awakened the anger, so that it is become manifest essentially. Now the gates of the formed Word, both in love and anger, do stand open in the earth, and also in the limus of the earth, viz. in man, and also in the free will of man; whatsoever he does now form and amass in his free will, that [same] he has made, be it either evil or good. 47. But now the evil shall, in the judgement of God, be separated from the good; and in what part [either of the evil or the good] the human understanding, viz. the soul, shall be found, thereinto it must enter, with all whatsoever it has done, as into its own made habitation. And therefore Christ says, their works shall follow them, and be
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.
140. But understand it well: if a good will does conceive [ Or form itself] in a good ens, and yet the evil desire doth adhere to it, and wills to poison the good; if then [I say] the good conceived will overcomes the evil, and casts it out, that the evil cannot also be formed or received into the compaction or substance; it is no sin. And though the evil desire which adheres to the good be sin, yet if the good will does not close with it and bring it into substance, but rejects it out of the good will, as an evil, then the sinful desire cannot come into essence, and the good will has not hereby wrought any evil, if it has not consented to the craft of the Serpent. 41. Every sin is born of the strange ens, if the free will departs from the ens, wherein God has created it. The sin which is conceived in the will in false desire, and brought to essence in the ens of the will, so that man would fain do wickedly or unjustly if he could but bring his intent to pass, is also great in the sight of God; but ifit proceeds so far as to hurt and injure anyone by word or deed, then the sin is double; for it is formed in its own ens, and forms itself also in that whereinto it introduces the false word, so far as the false word in its speaking finds a place of rest to work [and bring forth its evil fruit] .
242. And therefore the holy word shall judge the false; as also at the end of this time the holy word shall cast out from itself all false idol opinions, and all whatsoever that has been formed in the Serpent's ens, and give them to the dark world. 43. All those that take or conceive the word in them, in their devilish and serpentine ens, and use it against God's children, in whom the holy ens is manifest, and do stir up also an offence [or occasion of stumbling] in the children of God, that the free will in them does also conceive itself in the Serpent's ens, viz. in anger and averseness, where always the holy ens does likewise form itself, and the spirit of zeal arises: these false authors, beginners and causers do all sin against the Holy Ghost. 44. For they do extremely despite and defy Him, that He must even proceed forth, through the anger of the children of God, whereby He is stirred up, and of tentimes shows Himself in the turba of the children of God, and falls upon the neck of the wicked. As may be seen by Elias, and Moses, and also by Elisha, who cursed the boys, that the bears came out and tore them to pieces, for thus the sword of God comes forth through the mouth of the saints. If the Holy Spirit be extremely displeased, and set into a fiery zeal, then He awakens turba magna, which draws the sword against a wicked people and devours them.
345. Thus understand it in its full scope and meaning: Man has God's Word in himself; which created him; understand, the Word has imprinted and formed itselfwith the creating, both in its holiness and also in the anger; and that also in [or out of] the outward world, for the limus of the earth, or the earth itself; was amassed and compacted through the Word, so that the formed Word, which took its beginning in the divine desire, viz. in the Fiat, is an exhalation forth-breathed from the spirit of God out of love and anger: therefore it is evil and good, but the evil was hidden, and as it were wholly swallowed up in the light, as the night in the day. 46. But the sinful desire in Lucifer and Adam has awakened the anger, so that it is become manifest essentially. Now the gates of the formed Word, both in love and anger, do stand open in the earth, and also in the limus of the earth, viz. in man, and also in the free will of man; whatsoever he does now form and amass in his free will, that [same] he has made, be it either evil or good. 47. But now the evil shall, in the judgement of God, be separated from the good; and in what part [either of the evil or the good] the human understanding, viz. the soul, shall be found, thereinto it must enter, with all whatsoever it has done, as into its own made habitation. And therefore Christ says, their works shall follow them, and be
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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