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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.
1children of God, and goes along with them in the searching even into the depths of the Deity (1 Cor. ii. 10). And when it comes thus far, then man is in a quiet old age, and then all things stand in order in him, viz. nature in the morning,3 in the Father's property, and Christ in the evening,4 in the humility. And then man has enough of the outward evil sinful life; he longs continually to enter with his essence into the cave of Machpelah,5 viz. into the eternal mother, as it is before mentioned. 1 Text, beginning. 2 Text, morning. 3 East. 4 West. 5 That is, the twofold pit, as the Dutch translation has it. 55. And when he has brought his life's forms into the divine order, as here Abraham had set all things into order, then he gives up himself wholly and fully in one essence into the eternal generatress, and with his own will he resigns up himself into mortification and death, and is wholly tired and weary of the life of self and so rests in his God. The Fifty-Second Chapter Of the History of Isaac, and also of the Birth of Esau and Jacob, and what has been acted concerning them; the meaning thereof is hinted to us in this Chapter
21. MOSES says, After the death of Abraham God blessed his son Isaac,and he dwelt by the well of the living and seeing 1 (Gen. xxv. 11). Reason understands this externally of a place where Isaac dwelt, but the spirit looks upon the figure of the life's form, showing how the human nature and creature has dwelt by the wellspring of the divine ens in the Covenant, which Abraham laid hold of in faith; viz. the soul of Isaac dwelt by the wellspring of the holy Trinity, in which the soul received its light, and saw, and knew the will of God; out of which wellspring the highest love of the Deity did manifest itself to the soul, and out of which fountain, afterwards, in the fullness of time, the holy name Jesus, out of Jehova, did manifest itself and espoused itself for a bride unto the soul. 1 Lahai-roi. 2. The soul of Isaac dwelt by this fountain of the living and seeing, until the same fountain afterwards did pour forth, and open itself in the humanity of Christ in the soul. And then afterwards the soul dwelt in the fountain, when it was exalted in Christ's person to the right hand of God; and then the fountain of God did spring forth through the soul, where then it received the divine might as a prince of God, or as an image or express likeness of God, or as a formed word of the voice of God, through which voice God was made known and manifest.
33. So likewise our soul, when it forsakes the earthly will of its assumed self; and apprehends the ens of Christ in the Covenant, and turns itself to God, then it dwells also by the fountain of the living and seeing, that is, by God's eye, which he has again with Christ manifested and opened in the humanity. Indeed our soul does not in this time of the earthly cottage dwell in the wellspring of God, as if it did apprehend the wellspring in self; but like as the sun throughshines the glass, and yet the glass is not turned to be sun, but it dwells by the lustre and virtue of the sun, and suffers the sun to work and shine through it: even so is the soul in this time. 4. And further yet, As the sun does give its tincture into the metalline ens, and the metalline ens gives its desire into the sun's tincture, so that out of them both the fair and precious gold is generated, so likewise it is to be understood concerning the soul. The Deity inhabites 1 the soul, but the soul comprehends not the same, as to its creatural power; but the eye or light of God, with the holy lovetincture from the light's lustre, gives itself into the desire of the soul. 5. For the desire of the soul is the Fiat,2 which takes the power of the holy love-tincture into itself; and makes it essential; so that the divine tincture, proceeding from the desire of the true love- spring (viz. from the fountain of the living and seeing), and the soul's believing desire, do become one essence.
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.
1children of God, and goes along with them in the searching even into the depths of the Deity (1 Cor. ii. 10). And when it comes thus far, then man is in a quiet old age, and then all things stand in order in him, viz. nature in the morning,3 in the Father's property, and Christ in the evening,4 in the humility. And then man has enough of the outward evil sinful life; he longs continually to enter with his essence into the cave of Machpelah,5 viz. into the eternal mother, as it is before mentioned. 1 Text, beginning. 2 Text, morning. 3 East. 4 West. 5 That is, the twofold pit, as the Dutch translation has it. 55. And when he has brought his life's forms into the divine order, as here Abraham had set all things into order, then he gives up himself wholly and fully in one essence into the eternal generatress, and with his own will he resigns up himself into mortification and death, and is wholly tired and weary of the life of self and so rests in his God. The Fifty-Second Chapter Of the History of Isaac, and also of the Birth of Esau and Jacob, and what has been acted concerning them; the meaning thereof is hinted to us in this Chapter
21. MOSES says, After the death of Abraham God blessed his son Isaac,and he dwelt by the well of the living and seeing 1 (Gen. xxv. 11). Reason understands this externally of a place where Isaac dwelt, but the spirit looks upon the figure of the life's form, showing how the human nature and creature has dwelt by the wellspring of the divine ens in the Covenant, which Abraham laid hold of in faith; viz. the soul of Isaac dwelt by the wellspring of the holy Trinity, in which the soul received its light, and saw, and knew the will of God; out of which wellspring the highest love of the Deity did manifest itself to the soul, and out of which fountain, afterwards, in the fullness of time, the holy name Jesus, out of Jehova, did manifest itself and espoused itself for a bride unto the soul. 1 Lahai-roi. 2. The soul of Isaac dwelt by this fountain of the living and seeing, until the same fountain afterwards did pour forth, and open itself in the humanity of Christ in the soul. And then afterwards the soul dwelt in the fountain, when it was exalted in Christ's person to the right hand of God; and then the fountain of God did spring forth through the soul, where then it received the divine might as a prince of God, or as an image or express likeness of God, or as a formed word of the voice of God, through which voice God was made known and manifest.
33. So likewise our soul, when it forsakes the earthly will of its assumed self; and apprehends the ens of Christ in the Covenant, and turns itself to God, then it dwells also by the fountain of the living and seeing, that is, by God's eye, which he has again with Christ manifested and opened in the humanity. Indeed our soul does not in this time of the earthly cottage dwell in the wellspring of God, as if it did apprehend the wellspring in self; but like as the sun throughshines the glass, and yet the glass is not turned to be sun, but it dwells by the lustre and virtue of the sun, and suffers the sun to work and shine through it: even so is the soul in this time. 4. And further yet, As the sun does give its tincture into the metalline ens, and the metalline ens gives its desire into the sun's tincture, so that out of them both the fair and precious gold is generated, so likewise it is to be understood concerning the soul. The Deity inhabites 1 the soul, but the soul comprehends not the same, as to its creatural power; but the eye or light of God, with the holy lovetincture from the light's lustre, gives itself into the desire of the soul. 5. For the desire of the soul is the Fiat,2 which takes the power of the holy love-tincture into itself; and makes it essential; so that the divine tincture, proceeding from the desire of the true love- spring (viz. from the fountain of the living and seeing), and the soul's believing desire, do become one essence.
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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