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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.
1by themselves? That is, God the Father made an allusion, through the essence of the soul in this figure, with Christ's figure in Abraham, and said, What mean your seven properties of our divine nature by themselves? Wherefore, seeing you should regenerate mankind, and dwell in them, will you also set forth your seven properties of our divine nature in a distinct human person? And Christ answered in the figure of Abraham, you shall take seven lambs from my hand, that they may he an eternal testimony unto me, that I have digged this well. That is to say, Christ speaks to his Father in man's person, you shall take the figure or the image of my seven properties of the human creature for an everlasting testimony, that I, in my suffering and death, have again digged the well-spring of eternal life in the human property; that man's new-digged fountain of life is mine.
220. And the spirit in Moses speaks wholly under a veil; therefore, or from hence, the place was called Beer-sheba: this is, the very precious place where God the Father and his Son in the humanity sware both of them together. The place was called Beer-sheba, viz. a bruising of death by the will of him that lives and sees in the disappeared humanity, where, in Christ's humanity (which he assumed from us men), death was bruised, and broken in pieces; and the wellspring of love did flow forth again out of the living God in our bruised humanity of the heavenly part into the soul's creatural fountain. Now the spirit of Moses speaks here very pregnantly, that the place was called Beer-sheba, where the testimony of this oath (viz. a fountain of grace) was established. 21. And the place of God at Beer-sheba is shown to us poor men, where God the Father has made an everlasting Covenant with us in Christ Jesus, viz. in the penitent contrite soul. When the poor soul in this precious Covenant and oath does wholly give up itself to repentance, with a broken and contrite heart; then the oath of God in the Covenant of Jesus Christ stands open to it in Beer-sheba, viz. in the soul's contrition; where God in Christ Jesus has sworn that he will not destroy the poor soul, and its children and grand-children; nor do any hurt to this land of the soul, viz. to the body of the humanity.
322. Thus now we ought steadfastly to trust our dear Immanuel, Jesus Christ, who has sworn a precious oath to his Father, in our soul's property, that he will not turn away his mercy and love from us. We should but come to him in Beer-sheba, and receive the oath as our own; that is, with contrite penitent hearts. 23. And Moses says further: When this was done, then Abimelech arose, and Phichol his field-captain, and they returned into the land of the Philistines. That is to say, when God the Father had given over the humanity to his Son, Jesus Christ, with this Covenant and oath, then he went with his regiment [or host], viz. with Phichol, that is, with the outward nature, again into the land of the Philistines; that is, into the dominion or regiment of the outward and inward nature, which is Philistrean [ Philistineal], that is, inclined to good and evil. This denotes that the poor soul, although it has taken on it the Covenant and oath of God, and sworn with Christ to God, yet it must in this lifetime dwell in the earthly body, viz. under the heathenish Philistrean [ Philistine] essence of the flesh; which is a constant adversary to this King Abimelech, viz. to the poor soul, and only forsakes the Covenant and oath; and brings itself in its Philistrean [Philistine], selfish, lustful concupiscence and desires, into selfhood, as into its own land.
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.
1by themselves? That is, God the Father made an allusion, through the essence of the soul in this figure, with Christ's figure in Abraham, and said, What mean your seven properties of our divine nature by themselves? Wherefore, seeing you should regenerate mankind, and dwell in them, will you also set forth your seven properties of our divine nature in a distinct human person? And Christ answered in the figure of Abraham, you shall take seven lambs from my hand, that they may he an eternal testimony unto me, that I have digged this well. That is to say, Christ speaks to his Father in man's person, you shall take the figure or the image of my seven properties of the human creature for an everlasting testimony, that I, in my suffering and death, have again digged the well-spring of eternal life in the human property; that man's new-digged fountain of life is mine.
220. And the spirit in Moses speaks wholly under a veil; therefore, or from hence, the place was called Beer-sheba: this is, the very precious place where God the Father and his Son in the humanity sware both of them together. The place was called Beer-sheba, viz. a bruising of death by the will of him that lives and sees in the disappeared humanity, where, in Christ's humanity (which he assumed from us men), death was bruised, and broken in pieces; and the wellspring of love did flow forth again out of the living God in our bruised humanity of the heavenly part into the soul's creatural fountain. Now the spirit of Moses speaks here very pregnantly, that the place was called Beer-sheba, where the testimony of this oath (viz. a fountain of grace) was established. 21. And the place of God at Beer-sheba is shown to us poor men, where God the Father has made an everlasting Covenant with us in Christ Jesus, viz. in the penitent contrite soul. When the poor soul in this precious Covenant and oath does wholly give up itself to repentance, with a broken and contrite heart; then the oath of God in the Covenant of Jesus Christ stands open to it in Beer-sheba, viz. in the soul's contrition; where God in Christ Jesus has sworn that he will not destroy the poor soul, and its children and grand-children; nor do any hurt to this land of the soul, viz. to the body of the humanity.
322. Thus now we ought steadfastly to trust our dear Immanuel, Jesus Christ, who has sworn a precious oath to his Father, in our soul's property, that he will not turn away his mercy and love from us. We should but come to him in Beer-sheba, and receive the oath as our own; that is, with contrite penitent hearts. 23. And Moses says further: When this was done, then Abimelech arose, and Phichol his field-captain, and they returned into the land of the Philistines. That is to say, when God the Father had given over the humanity to his Son, Jesus Christ, with this Covenant and oath, then he went with his regiment [or host], viz. with Phichol, that is, with the outward nature, again into the land of the Philistines; that is, into the dominion or regiment of the outward and inward nature, which is Philistrean [ Philistineal], that is, inclined to good and evil. This denotes that the poor soul, although it has taken on it the Covenant and oath of God, and sworn with Christ to God, yet it must in this lifetime dwell in the earthly body, viz. under the heathenish Philistrean [ Philistine] essence of the flesh; which is a constant adversary to this King Abimelech, viz. to the poor soul, and only forsakes the Covenant and oath; and brings itself in its Philistrean [Philistine], selfish, lustful concupiscence and desires, into selfhood, as into its own land.
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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