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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.
114. The chiefest piece in this figure is, that the spirit of Moses does point at the twofold life; how this world has a twofold life and essence, which he intimates by the twofold cave wherein Abraham would have his burying place. To signify that his twofold humanity, viz. one out of the divine ens, out of the eternity and [the] heavenly spiritual essentiality; and the other which is out of the time, even out of this world's being and substance, should be buried and put into an eternal sepulchre, where the substance of the twofold body shall lie in its original mother; and leave the own-will in this eternal grave in death, that so the Spirit of God might alone live, rule and will in the spirit of the creature, viz; in the soul: and the life of man might be only his instrument, wherewith he might work and will how and what he please. 15. For so it must be, that the human will might be brought again into the only will of the Deity, and [the] eternity; for, in the beginning, when God breathed the soul into the flesh, it was in the eternal living Word (John i), and God's Spirit did form it into a likeness of the Deity, viz. into a creatural soul. Which soul had turned itself away from the only eternal Word of God into a selfhood, that so it might be manifest in evil and good, and rule in the unlikeness or distemperature.
216. This unlikeness or distemperature should be buried or put again into the likeness or temperature, viz. into the essence out of which the soul and body did arise. That is, each essence's property should return again into its mother: and the mother is a twofold cave, viz. the inward spiritual and divine kingdom, and the outward visible, sensible, palpable kingdom of the external world, wherein Abraham would have his burying place. 17. For the outward kingdom remains for ever, for it is produced out of the eternal, as a model, platform or visible image of the inward spiritual kingdom. But the dominion in the stars and four elements does not remain for ever in such ownhood or propriety; but only one element [remains], wherein the four are understood, but in equal accord and harmony, in just and equal weight, number and measure, in one only love-will; where the ascending, domineering, stirring might of the divided figure, four elements, does no longer rule, but the soft, meek and still humility, in a pleasant, lovely, delightful air 1 [or still, harmonious sound] . 1 Musical air.
318. The compacted property of the Word, in the soul of the outward world, viz. in the ownhood or selfness of the third Principle, does cease; the outward spirit of the world is changed into the inward, that the inward might rule and govern wholly through the outward (which at present the great motion of the enkindled might of the dark world does withhold), and carry in its dominion; in which [dark world's property, which is now so predominant] the devil is an aspiring, assaulting prince. And all things work and tend to the Great Severation; that so the properties of the three Principles might each become creatural in themselves, to which end the eternity has brought itself into a Fiat, or desire, to the formation of the essence, viz. of the Grand Mystery;l that thus one might be manifest in the other; the evil in the good, and the good in the evil; and each thing might have its own seat and habitation. 1 Mysterii Magni. The Fiftieth Chapter Of Abraham's sending forth his Servant to take a wife for his Son Isaac: what we are to understand under this figure
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.
114. The chiefest piece in this figure is, that the spirit of Moses does point at the twofold life; how this world has a twofold life and essence, which he intimates by the twofold cave wherein Abraham would have his burying place. To signify that his twofold humanity, viz. one out of the divine ens, out of the eternity and [the] heavenly spiritual essentiality; and the other which is out of the time, even out of this world's being and substance, should be buried and put into an eternal sepulchre, where the substance of the twofold body shall lie in its original mother; and leave the own-will in this eternal grave in death, that so the Spirit of God might alone live, rule and will in the spirit of the creature, viz; in the soul: and the life of man might be only his instrument, wherewith he might work and will how and what he please. 15. For so it must be, that the human will might be brought again into the only will of the Deity, and [the] eternity; for, in the beginning, when God breathed the soul into the flesh, it was in the eternal living Word (John i), and God's Spirit did form it into a likeness of the Deity, viz. into a creatural soul. Which soul had turned itself away from the only eternal Word of God into a selfhood, that so it might be manifest in evil and good, and rule in the unlikeness or distemperature.
216. This unlikeness or distemperature should be buried or put again into the likeness or temperature, viz. into the essence out of which the soul and body did arise. That is, each essence's property should return again into its mother: and the mother is a twofold cave, viz. the inward spiritual and divine kingdom, and the outward visible, sensible, palpable kingdom of the external world, wherein Abraham would have his burying place. 17. For the outward kingdom remains for ever, for it is produced out of the eternal, as a model, platform or visible image of the inward spiritual kingdom. But the dominion in the stars and four elements does not remain for ever in such ownhood or propriety; but only one element [remains], wherein the four are understood, but in equal accord and harmony, in just and equal weight, number and measure, in one only love-will; where the ascending, domineering, stirring might of the divided figure, four elements, does no longer rule, but the soft, meek and still humility, in a pleasant, lovely, delightful air 1 [or still, harmonious sound] . 1 Musical air.
318. The compacted property of the Word, in the soul of the outward world, viz. in the ownhood or selfness of the third Principle, does cease; the outward spirit of the world is changed into the inward, that the inward might rule and govern wholly through the outward (which at present the great motion of the enkindled might of the dark world does withhold), and carry in its dominion; in which [dark world's property, which is now so predominant] the devil is an aspiring, assaulting prince. And all things work and tend to the Great Severation; that so the properties of the three Principles might each become creatural in themselves, to which end the eternity has brought itself into a Fiat, or desire, to the formation of the essence, viz. of the Grand Mystery;l that thus one might be manifest in the other; the evil in the good, and the good in the evil; and each thing might have its own seat and habitation. 1 Mysterii Magni. The Fiftieth Chapter Of Abraham's sending forth his Servant to take a wife for his Son Isaac: what we are to understand under this figure
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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