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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. Fifthly, it points at the forty days of Christ after his resurrection, when the two wives of Adam and Esau were again changed into a manly virgin, when this virgin, viz. Christ in our male and female property, did rightly stand out the forty days of Adam in Paradise, when he was tried; and therefore he set himself by divine might into the royal throne of ejected Lucifer, as a judge; and with these two wives in one virginity, and one only person or image, would rule over him,l as the causer of man's misery, seeing he was the great cause that Adam, viz. the image of God, did manifest, by his son of the new will, yet two wives in his virginity. 1 Viz. Lucifer. 25. This, the spirit in Moses and Esdras has mystically and secretly hinted at under an outward figure, showing how it should afterwards fall out. And although it is very likely that reason will not believe us, we care not for that, and it matters not much; seeing we have not disclosed this for its sake, but for the sake of the understanding children. However, we know very well in what vision we write [we know from what spirit's illumination and knowledge we have set down some glances of the great mysteries signified by this short divine history of Moses]. The Fifty-Fifth Chapter Showing what we are to understand by Isaac's blessing Jacob, unknowingly, when he was old and ready to die [Gen. xxvii.] THE GATES OF THE GREAT MYSTERIES OF THE WHOLE BIBLE
21. WHEN reason reads this history of the twenty-seventh chapter of Genesis it has a twofold conjecture upon the same: one is as if Rebecca [only] loved Jacob more than Esau, and therefore brought him by craft to obtain the blessing of his father; and again it conceives, that indeed it was from the appointment and providence of God, because Esau was not worthy of the blessing, and therefore it will take upon it wholly to condemn Esau, whereupon also it has set the predestination; and yet it understands nothing at all of this wonderful figure. 2. Now, if we would rightly understand and interpret this figure, then we must set here in the figure the patriarch Isaac, in God the Father's stead, who alone can bless, who also blessed Isaac in Abraham's seed, that Isaac should again bless his seed in the Covenant's line. 3. And Esau was set in the place of the depraved nature, viz. in the kingdom of the corrupt nature in man's property, apprehended in the anger of God. 4. And Jacob we set in the new birth, in the humanity of Christ, which God the Father blessed instead of the depraved Adam, when he brought forth a new generation out of our humanity in this line. 5. And we see here how Adam has fooled away and lost the blessing and divine unction, and how he was rejected in the earthly image, from God; and how he has lost his right of the divine unction; as here Esau [had lost] the first birth, and also the blessing. The inward spiritual figure stands thus:
36. Isaac was old, and expected to die, and called Esau his first-born son, that he might bless him with the blessing of Abraham, and bade him go take some venison, and dress it for him, that he might eat gladly thereof, that his soul might be refreshed, and the blessing of the Lord might put forth itself in him, that he might bless Esau. And Esau went and did as his father would have him, that so he might he blessed (Gen. xxvii. 1-4). This, in the inward understanding in the figure, is thus: 7. When Isaac was ready to die, the blessing in God the Father's property moved itself in him, and would bless the natural seed of the Adamical nature, viz. the kingdom of nature, in Esau: for Isaac longed after venison, viz. after the kingdom of nature in the bestial property, viz. after the depraved Adamical man, as to the first creation. 8. For the Father's blessing would cast itself upon Adam, in whose stead Esau stood; but the heavenly ens was extinct in the first Adam, and therefore the natural man might not be helped and remedied only with a blessing; but there must be another serious earnestness: the blessing must become a substance, viz. man, in the kingdom of nature; of which [substantial blessing] the kingdom of nature was not capable, in its own power and might: as here Esau, in his kingdom of nature, was not capable of the Father's blessing.
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. Fifthly, it points at the forty days of Christ after his resurrection, when the two wives of Adam and Esau were again changed into a manly virgin, when this virgin, viz. Christ in our male and female property, did rightly stand out the forty days of Adam in Paradise, when he was tried; and therefore he set himself by divine might into the royal throne of ejected Lucifer, as a judge; and with these two wives in one virginity, and one only person or image, would rule over him,l as the causer of man's misery, seeing he was the great cause that Adam, viz. the image of God, did manifest, by his son of the new will, yet two wives in his virginity. 1 Viz. Lucifer. 25. This, the spirit in Moses and Esdras has mystically and secretly hinted at under an outward figure, showing how it should afterwards fall out. And although it is very likely that reason will not believe us, we care not for that, and it matters not much; seeing we have not disclosed this for its sake, but for the sake of the understanding children. However, we know very well in what vision we write [we know from what spirit's illumination and knowledge we have set down some glances of the great mysteries signified by this short divine history of Moses]. The Fifty-Fifth Chapter Showing what we are to understand by Isaac's blessing Jacob, unknowingly, when he was old and ready to die [Gen. xxvii.] THE GATES OF THE GREAT MYSTERIES OF THE WHOLE BIBLE
21. WHEN reason reads this history of the twenty-seventh chapter of Genesis it has a twofold conjecture upon the same: one is as if Rebecca [only] loved Jacob more than Esau, and therefore brought him by craft to obtain the blessing of his father; and again it conceives, that indeed it was from the appointment and providence of God, because Esau was not worthy of the blessing, and therefore it will take upon it wholly to condemn Esau, whereupon also it has set the predestination; and yet it understands nothing at all of this wonderful figure. 2. Now, if we would rightly understand and interpret this figure, then we must set here in the figure the patriarch Isaac, in God the Father's stead, who alone can bless, who also blessed Isaac in Abraham's seed, that Isaac should again bless his seed in the Covenant's line. 3. And Esau was set in the place of the depraved nature, viz. in the kingdom of the corrupt nature in man's property, apprehended in the anger of God. 4. And Jacob we set in the new birth, in the humanity of Christ, which God the Father blessed instead of the depraved Adam, when he brought forth a new generation out of our humanity in this line. 5. And we see here how Adam has fooled away and lost the blessing and divine unction, and how he was rejected in the earthly image, from God; and how he has lost his right of the divine unction; as here Esau [had lost] the first birth, and also the blessing. The inward spiritual figure stands thus:
36. Isaac was old, and expected to die, and called Esau his first-born son, that he might bless him with the blessing of Abraham, and bade him go take some venison, and dress it for him, that he might eat gladly thereof, that his soul might be refreshed, and the blessing of the Lord might put forth itself in him, that he might bless Esau. And Esau went and did as his father would have him, that so he might he blessed (Gen. xxvii. 1-4). This, in the inward understanding in the figure, is thus: 7. When Isaac was ready to die, the blessing in God the Father's property moved itself in him, and would bless the natural seed of the Adamical nature, viz. the kingdom of nature, in Esau: for Isaac longed after venison, viz. after the kingdom of nature in the bestial property, viz. after the depraved Adamical man, as to the first creation. 8. For the Father's blessing would cast itself upon Adam, in whose stead Esau stood; but the heavenly ens was extinct in the first Adam, and therefore the natural man might not be helped and remedied only with a blessing; but there must be another serious earnestness: the blessing must become a substance, viz. man, in the kingdom of nature; of which [substantial blessing] the kingdom of nature was not capable, in its own power and might: as here Esau, in his kingdom of nature, was not capable of the Father's blessing.
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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