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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.
14. This tower, on which the tongues were divided, and where the great city, Babel, stood, is a figure of the fallen earthly man who is entered into selfhood, and has made the formed word of God in him unto an idol; for the nature of the tower was even this, viz. that it should there stand as a great wonder, which men had made in their own contriving fancy, whereupon they would ascend up to God; and signifies that man has lost the right understanding of God, and his habitation and essence. 5. Man had compacted [or framed] his understanding, through the desire of self-elevation and exaltation into the sensual tongue, and contrived or conceived the same into a selfly propriety, in which conception or comprehension the spirit of the mental tongue of the five vowels was departed from him.
26. Not that we are to conceive, that this spirit was departed from its creature; only the free will of man had, in the formed word of the consonants 1 (wherein the spirit of the five vowels, viz. the unformed Spirit of God, did manifest itself) brought itself forth, as a peculiar god, out of the resignation to the unformed Spirit, into a self-fullness and self-willed weening and fancy; the type whereof was the tower, where the men of Babel would come and climb up to God in their own conceived will and thoughts. They themselves were gone forth from the Spirit of God, and would through their own power and ability take the kingdom of God to themselves in selfhood; they would enter with their own will, self -born in evil and good, into the property of God's holiness. This denotes and declares the divided tongues, where every property had brought itself forth out of the universal sensual tongue into a selfishness and a peculiar selfly understanding, so that they did not any longer understand one another; where the understanding was compacted and brought into a propriety out of and according to the three alphabets. 1 Or speechless, dumb letters. 7. This compacted formed tongue the Holy Ghost did open on the day of Pentecost in St Peter's sermon, where Peter, from the opened sensual tongue, spoke in one language all languages; and this was also Adam's language, whence he gave names to all creatures.
38. Thus understand us aright, what Babel and the tower of Babel does typify and point out. The city Babel is the Ham-like man, who builds this city upon the earth; the tower is his self-chosen god, and divine worship. All reason-taught, from the school of this world, are the master-builders of this tower. All those who have set up themselves to be teachers, and are chosen thereunto by man, without God's spirit, they are the master- workmen at this tower, and the idol of the world, none excepted; they carve and frame altogether only stone and wood for this tower. 9. For the name Nimrod shows us very clearly, also in its own sense of the formed word, that it is a self-contrived, formed, amassed and compacted lust, which did advance itself on high as a selfly god; the type whereof was the tower. God suffered them in their confounded understanding to set forth the figure of their property, as a type of what man would be in the presence of 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.
14. This tower, on which the tongues were divided, and where the great city, Babel, stood, is a figure of the fallen earthly man who is entered into selfhood, and has made the formed word of God in him unto an idol; for the nature of the tower was even this, viz. that it should there stand as a great wonder, which men had made in their own contriving fancy, whereupon they would ascend up to God; and signifies that man has lost the right understanding of God, and his habitation and essence. 5. Man had compacted [or framed] his understanding, through the desire of self-elevation and exaltation into the sensual tongue, and contrived or conceived the same into a selfly propriety, in which conception or comprehension the spirit of the mental tongue of the five vowels was departed from him.
26. Not that we are to conceive, that this spirit was departed from its creature; only the free will of man had, in the formed word of the consonants 1 (wherein the spirit of the five vowels, viz. the unformed Spirit of God, did manifest itself) brought itself forth, as a peculiar god, out of the resignation to the unformed Spirit, into a self-fullness and self-willed weening and fancy; the type whereof was the tower, where the men of Babel would come and climb up to God in their own conceived will and thoughts. They themselves were gone forth from the Spirit of God, and would through their own power and ability take the kingdom of God to themselves in selfhood; they would enter with their own will, self -born in evil and good, into the property of God's holiness. This denotes and declares the divided tongues, where every property had brought itself forth out of the universal sensual tongue into a selfishness and a peculiar selfly understanding, so that they did not any longer understand one another; where the understanding was compacted and brought into a propriety out of and according to the three alphabets. 1 Or speechless, dumb letters. 7. This compacted formed tongue the Holy Ghost did open on the day of Pentecost in St Peter's sermon, where Peter, from the opened sensual tongue, spoke in one language all languages; and this was also Adam's language, whence he gave names to all creatures.
38. Thus understand us aright, what Babel and the tower of Babel does typify and point out. The city Babel is the Ham-like man, who builds this city upon the earth; the tower is his self-chosen god, and divine worship. All reason-taught, from the school of this world, are the master-builders of this tower. All those who have set up themselves to be teachers, and are chosen thereunto by man, without God's spirit, they are the master- workmen at this tower, and the idol of the world, none excepted; they carve and frame altogether only stone and wood for this tower. 9. For the name Nimrod shows us very clearly, also in its own sense of the formed word, that it is a self-contrived, formed, amassed and compacted lust, which did advance itself on high as a selfly god; the type whereof was the tower. God suffered them in their confounded understanding to set forth the figure of their property, as a type of what man would be in the presence of 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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