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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.
124. Not that we are to think or understand that Jacob was wholly conceived of the ens of faith, but as well of the Adamical sinful nature as Esau; only, the kingdom of grace in the Covenant set forth its figure in the ens of faith in him; and in Esau the kingdom of nature, viz. the right corrupt Adamical nature did set forth its figure; not as a separation, sundry partition or rejection, but to signify that Christ should be conceived and born with his holy divine ens in the Adamical corrupt nature, and destroy death and the stronghold of sin, together with the self-raised desire to ownhood and propriety in self; and mortify the same with the love-desire in the divine ens, and ruinate the devil's rampant fort of prey, which he has built up to himself therein; and change the wrath of God according to the eternal nature, in the centre of the dark fiery- world's property, into divine love and joy, and tincture the Adamical nature with the holy tincture of the love-fire. 25. Therefore the corrupt Adamical nature in its type was represented in the womb in Esau, with the type of Christ in Jacob; and they both must be formed of one seed, to signify that Christ should give in himself to our corrupt nature, and redeem our corrupted right Adamical nature from corruption, and introduce it into his own holy nature in himself.
226. Also God did represent in Esau the figure of his wrath, and [of] the devil's might, who had possessed the kingdom of nature in man; and shows how he would fight, and exercise great enmity against the ens of faith and the kingdom of grace, which should deprive him of his strength. 27. Reason says, Wherefore should God permit the devil to fight against the kingdom of his grace? Hear and hearken, you very blind and altogether ignorant reason: Learn the A B C in the centre, how God's love, and the kingdom of grace and mercy, would not, nor could not, be manifest without strife and enmity; and then you have here no further question: Go forward into the centre of this book, and you findest the ground. 28. And when the strife between the two kingdoms began in these children in the womb, so that they strove or spurned against each other, Rebecca became discontented and troubled at it, and said, If it should be thus with me, wherefore am I with child? And she went to enquire of the Lord. And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in your womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from your bowels; and one people shall be stronger than the other; and the greater shall serve the lesser (Gen. xxv. 22,23).
329. These two nations, which were conceived of one seed in Rebecca, are on one part the man of the Adamical selfish nature in selfness, viz. the original of man; and on the other part the new spiritual man, regenerated of the kingdom of grace in the Covenant. These came out of one seed: one out of the Adamical nature alone, and he was the greater [or elder], viz. the first man which God created in his image, which became corrupt and died as to God; the other came indeed out of the same Adamical nature, but the kingdom of grace in the ens of faith had given in itself unto it as a conqueror, and this was, as to the Adamical nature, the lesser [or younger], but God was manifest in him; therefore the greater (viz. the first Adamical man in Esau's line) should serve and be subject to the lesser (who was the least according to the human property, but the greatest in God).
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.
124. Not that we are to think or understand that Jacob was wholly conceived of the ens of faith, but as well of the Adamical sinful nature as Esau; only, the kingdom of grace in the Covenant set forth its figure in the ens of faith in him; and in Esau the kingdom of nature, viz. the right corrupt Adamical nature did set forth its figure; not as a separation, sundry partition or rejection, but to signify that Christ should be conceived and born with his holy divine ens in the Adamical corrupt nature, and destroy death and the stronghold of sin, together with the self-raised desire to ownhood and propriety in self; and mortify the same with the love-desire in the divine ens, and ruinate the devil's rampant fort of prey, which he has built up to himself therein; and change the wrath of God according to the eternal nature, in the centre of the dark fiery- world's property, into divine love and joy, and tincture the Adamical nature with the holy tincture of the love-fire. 25. Therefore the corrupt Adamical nature in its type was represented in the womb in Esau, with the type of Christ in Jacob; and they both must be formed of one seed, to signify that Christ should give in himself to our corrupt nature, and redeem our corrupted right Adamical nature from corruption, and introduce it into his own holy nature in himself.
226. Also God did represent in Esau the figure of his wrath, and [of] the devil's might, who had possessed the kingdom of nature in man; and shows how he would fight, and exercise great enmity against the ens of faith and the kingdom of grace, which should deprive him of his strength. 27. Reason says, Wherefore should God permit the devil to fight against the kingdom of his grace? Hear and hearken, you very blind and altogether ignorant reason: Learn the A B C in the centre, how God's love, and the kingdom of grace and mercy, would not, nor could not, be manifest without strife and enmity; and then you have here no further question: Go forward into the centre of this book, and you findest the ground. 28. And when the strife between the two kingdoms began in these children in the womb, so that they strove or spurned against each other, Rebecca became discontented and troubled at it, and said, If it should be thus with me, wherefore am I with child? And she went to enquire of the Lord. And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in your womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from your bowels; and one people shall be stronger than the other; and the greater shall serve the lesser (Gen. xxv. 22,23).
329. These two nations, which were conceived of one seed in Rebecca, are on one part the man of the Adamical selfish nature in selfness, viz. the original of man; and on the other part the new spiritual man, regenerated of the kingdom of grace in the Covenant. These came out of one seed: one out of the Adamical nature alone, and he was the greater [or elder], viz. the first man which God created in his image, which became corrupt and died as to God; the other came indeed out of the same Adamical nature, but the kingdom of grace in the ens of faith had given in itself unto it as a conqueror, and this was, as to the Adamical nature, the lesser [or younger], but God was manifest in him; therefore the greater (viz. the first Adamical man in Esau's line) should serve and be subject to the lesser (who was the least according to the human property, but the greatest in God).
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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