Fetching
One moment.
Fetching
One moment.
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.
113. Which indeed lies in all men; but no man can receive or see the kingdom of God, unless he become the child of the Covenant, so that he forsake the natural forth-proceeded will, and put on the will of Christ in the Covenant; so that his will in the Covenant be born anew in Christ; and then he is a branch on the vine of Christ (John xv. 5), and receives Christ's spirit, will, and life; and becomes, as to the Covenant, Christus [or one anointed]. And thus Christ then dwells in Adam, and Adam in Christ; and this is that which the spirit of Moses does represent in this figure. 14. But that Abraham did send the children of his Adamical nature away out of his house with gifts, and did not keep them with him as sojourners, betokens that the external man will, while it is in this life, live in the will of self upon the earth, and that it cannot wholly put off the same according to the earthly man; but this same earthly self-will is cast out of the holiness of God, viz. from the kingdom of heaven.
215. And although the free gift of the Covenant lies hid in him, yet the outward earthly man is cast out from Paradise and the Covenant of God, and shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven, but he only shall inherit it who is born of the free gift of the Covenant. Not Adam, but Christ in his members; not the Serpent's ens, and the selfish, rebellious, Ishmaelitish, scoffing, false will, but the will of the Covenant in Ishmael's circumcision, where the mocker is cut off from the Covenant; and Ishmael then becomes Isaac's brother. 16. The own, self-made, gross, earthly Adam, who by his own lust has made himself a beast, and received and taken in the devil's desire and will, into the selfly assumed beast, the same cannot be or remain in the image of Christ. He is cast out from thence, and walks in the world of vanity, and his own lust, so that he is not capable of the free gift in the Covenant. 17. But the right Adamical man, which God made out of the matrix of the earth, out of which the earth had its original, in the same is the Covenant and the free gift; even as a tincture in the gross lead, which does swallow up in itself the grossness, viz. the gross Saturn in its own desire, and mortifies the Saturnine will, and advances or sublimes its own (understand the tincture's will and propriety) in the lead, whereby the lead is changed into gold.
318. Thus likewise we are to understand, that the gross Saturnine self-will, proceeding from the dark world's property in man, cannot dwell in God's house: it is without, in the corrupt world; God has cast it forth out of Paradise; as Abraham cast out his natural Adamical children from Isaac's goods. So also our earthly man as to its assumed grossness and ownhood is not at all fit for, or profitable unto, the kingdom of heaven. It is only the axe wherewith the carpenter builds in this life time, in heaven he has no need of this axe, for he shall not need build him a house for his propriety, but Christ, viz. the formed Word of God, is his house. 19. For as Abraham cast out of his house the sons of his concubines with gifts, so likewise the Adamical man is cast out from God, whom Christ, viz. the Father's free gift, receives again unto himself. For when Christ was come into our humanity God suffered him to be hung upon the cross, and be put to death; but received him again in his free favour, and set him at the right hand of the power of God in heaven, and our humanity also with and in him; but the human self-will must die on the cross.
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.
113. Which indeed lies in all men; but no man can receive or see the kingdom of God, unless he become the child of the Covenant, so that he forsake the natural forth-proceeded will, and put on the will of Christ in the Covenant; so that his will in the Covenant be born anew in Christ; and then he is a branch on the vine of Christ (John xv. 5), and receives Christ's spirit, will, and life; and becomes, as to the Covenant, Christus [or one anointed]. And thus Christ then dwells in Adam, and Adam in Christ; and this is that which the spirit of Moses does represent in this figure. 14. But that Abraham did send the children of his Adamical nature away out of his house with gifts, and did not keep them with him as sojourners, betokens that the external man will, while it is in this life, live in the will of self upon the earth, and that it cannot wholly put off the same according to the earthly man; but this same earthly self-will is cast out of the holiness of God, viz. from the kingdom of heaven.
215. And although the free gift of the Covenant lies hid in him, yet the outward earthly man is cast out from Paradise and the Covenant of God, and shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven, but he only shall inherit it who is born of the free gift of the Covenant. Not Adam, but Christ in his members; not the Serpent's ens, and the selfish, rebellious, Ishmaelitish, scoffing, false will, but the will of the Covenant in Ishmael's circumcision, where the mocker is cut off from the Covenant; and Ishmael then becomes Isaac's brother. 16. The own, self-made, gross, earthly Adam, who by his own lust has made himself a beast, and received and taken in the devil's desire and will, into the selfly assumed beast, the same cannot be or remain in the image of Christ. He is cast out from thence, and walks in the world of vanity, and his own lust, so that he is not capable of the free gift in the Covenant. 17. But the right Adamical man, which God made out of the matrix of the earth, out of which the earth had its original, in the same is the Covenant and the free gift; even as a tincture in the gross lead, which does swallow up in itself the grossness, viz. the gross Saturn in its own desire, and mortifies the Saturnine will, and advances or sublimes its own (understand the tincture's will and propriety) in the lead, whereby the lead is changed into gold.
318. Thus likewise we are to understand, that the gross Saturnine self-will, proceeding from the dark world's property in man, cannot dwell in God's house: it is without, in the corrupt world; God has cast it forth out of Paradise; as Abraham cast out his natural Adamical children from Isaac's goods. So also our earthly man as to its assumed grossness and ownhood is not at all fit for, or profitable unto, the kingdom of heaven. It is only the axe wherewith the carpenter builds in this life time, in heaven he has no need of this axe, for he shall not need build him a house for his propriety, but Christ, viz. the formed Word of God, is his house. 19. For as Abraham cast out of his house the sons of his concubines with gifts, so likewise the Adamical man is cast out from God, whom Christ, viz. the Father's free gift, receives again unto himself. For when Christ was come into our humanity God suffered him to be hung upon the cross, and be put to death; but received him again in his free favour, and set him at the right hand of the power of God in heaven, and our humanity also with and in him; but the human self-will must die on the cross.
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.
No commentary for this page.