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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.
1compare one with the other. It is thus: Our soul, before the beginning of the human soul's 1 creature, was an ens of the Word of God, in the Word (John i), and yet it was inspired or inspoken from the speaking Word of God into the human image in a natural and creaturely life, and formed in an image of the eternal speaking Word. This creaturely life of the soul turned itself in Adam away from the divine speaking, into an own will and speaking, and was in this respect broken off from the most unsearchable substance, and separated from God. 1 Soulish. 24. Into this separated word, viz. into the soul, the only eternal divine speaking Word gave itself in again, and turned the will of the soul again into the eternal One, viz. into God's eternal speaking. Therefore the soul is indeed from the eternal Word; but Christ, viz. the highest love of the Deity, did not take a new soul out of the eternal speaking, but [he took] our soul, viz. the word which was once spoken or formed in Adam, viz. our human soul, into his lovespeaking in the grace and union of the Deity. 25. God spoke again, into our poor fallen soul in Paradise, immediately after the fall, the Covenant and root of his highest love and grace, through the Word, as a centre of grace to conception, and to the new regeneration.
226. And in Abraham he manifested the Covenant, which Abraham laid hold on with his desire, and received it after a spiritual manner, as an ens to the tree, but it lay without substance in man, only as a spiritual form and model or idea of the powerful Word. 27. Which Word, in its spiritual figure in the Virgin Mary, was at the limit, viz. at the end of the spiritual form, where that same spiritual form of the Word of God was comprehended in a substantial ens; and therewith also in like manner our human substance as to the soul was comprised in the image of the Word, and as to the substance of the body in a human form; 1 and was a self-subsisting God-man. 28. This comprised spiritual image, which was the seed of faith which Abraham laid hold on in the faith, was invested on Isaac, and from Isaac on Jacob; and to Jacob God said, Through you and your seed shall all the people of the earth be blessed (v. 14); viz. through this seed of faith which Jacob had received from his father Isaac in this line of the Covenant; which line of faith had incorporated itself in the human property according to the inward ground of the second Principle, viz. in that image of the heavenly world's substance which was extinguished in Adam. 29. In which incorporated ground the limit of God's Covenant remained, in a spiritual form till Mary, and was propagated from
3man to man, as from Adam and Eve along to Mary; and there the Word of the divine power was moved, and essentially assumed our human flesh and blood, together with the soul, and quickened the extinguished heavenly ens in the seed of Mary as to our part; which manifestation penetrated and pressed also into Mary's heavenly substantiality, so that she became living as to that heavenly virginity which disappeared in Eve: and in this living virginity, viz. in Adam's heavenly matrix, God became man. 30. And this is the blessing of Mary above all other women (Luke i. 42), that she is the first from Adam in whom the heavenly matrix became opened, in which the dry rod of Aaron rightly budded, viz. the kingdom of God. She is the first in whom the hidden virtue was manifested, for in her the limit of the Covenant in the spiritual image or type was at an end; and in her it was fulfilled with 2 our humanity. 1 Frame, or formation, building. 2 In, or by. 31. Nevertheless she is truly the daughter of Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, both as to the humanity and as to the Covenant of the spiritual figure; and in her conception, when the inward incorporated image or type of the inspired or inspoken Covenant of grace, which was laid hold on in the faith, did assume our human property, then was the kingdom of Christ manifested in the flesh.
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.
1compare one with the other. It is thus: Our soul, before the beginning of the human soul's 1 creature, was an ens of the Word of God, in the Word (John i), and yet it was inspired or inspoken from the speaking Word of God into the human image in a natural and creaturely life, and formed in an image of the eternal speaking Word. This creaturely life of the soul turned itself in Adam away from the divine speaking, into an own will and speaking, and was in this respect broken off from the most unsearchable substance, and separated from God. 1 Soulish. 24. Into this separated word, viz. into the soul, the only eternal divine speaking Word gave itself in again, and turned the will of the soul again into the eternal One, viz. into God's eternal speaking. Therefore the soul is indeed from the eternal Word; but Christ, viz. the highest love of the Deity, did not take a new soul out of the eternal speaking, but [he took] our soul, viz. the word which was once spoken or formed in Adam, viz. our human soul, into his lovespeaking in the grace and union of the Deity. 25. God spoke again, into our poor fallen soul in Paradise, immediately after the fall, the Covenant and root of his highest love and grace, through the Word, as a centre of grace to conception, and to the new regeneration.
226. And in Abraham he manifested the Covenant, which Abraham laid hold on with his desire, and received it after a spiritual manner, as an ens to the tree, but it lay without substance in man, only as a spiritual form and model or idea of the powerful Word. 27. Which Word, in its spiritual figure in the Virgin Mary, was at the limit, viz. at the end of the spiritual form, where that same spiritual form of the Word of God was comprehended in a substantial ens; and therewith also in like manner our human substance as to the soul was comprised in the image of the Word, and as to the substance of the body in a human form; 1 and was a self-subsisting God-man. 28. This comprised spiritual image, which was the seed of faith which Abraham laid hold on in the faith, was invested on Isaac, and from Isaac on Jacob; and to Jacob God said, Through you and your seed shall all the people of the earth be blessed (v. 14); viz. through this seed of faith which Jacob had received from his father Isaac in this line of the Covenant; which line of faith had incorporated itself in the human property according to the inward ground of the second Principle, viz. in that image of the heavenly world's substance which was extinguished in Adam. 29. In which incorporated ground the limit of God's Covenant remained, in a spiritual form till Mary, and was propagated from
3man to man, as from Adam and Eve along to Mary; and there the Word of the divine power was moved, and essentially assumed our human flesh and blood, together with the soul, and quickened the extinguished heavenly ens in the seed of Mary as to our part; which manifestation penetrated and pressed also into Mary's heavenly substantiality, so that she became living as to that heavenly virginity which disappeared in Eve: and in this living virginity, viz. in Adam's heavenly matrix, God became man. 30. And this is the blessing of Mary above all other women (Luke i. 42), that she is the first from Adam in whom the heavenly matrix became opened, in which the dry rod of Aaron rightly budded, viz. the kingdom of God. She is the first in whom the hidden virtue was manifested, for in her the limit of the Covenant in the spiritual image or type was at an end; and in her it was fulfilled with 2 our humanity. 1 Frame, or formation, building. 2 In, or by. 31. Nevertheless she is truly the daughter of Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, both as to the humanity and as to the Covenant of the spiritual figure; and in her conception, when the inward incorporated image or type of the inspired or inspoken Covenant of grace, which was laid hold on in the faith, did assume our human property, then was the kingdom of Christ manifested in the flesh.
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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