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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.
123. But now the poor captive soul lies in this gross beast, and is captivated in its own self-born will, viz. in the whore, and longs after God, from whom it proceeded and was inspired into the created image; and looks about on all sides, where its true native home of rest should be, and it finds that it is clothed and covered with this whore; and then it brings its desire into this whore's will, and seeks the place of God for rest; and then the whore's will takes the poor captivated soul's desire into itself and thereby does exalt and set up itself; it persuades itself that it, in the soul's desire, is the fair child of God which shall possess heaven, and gives out that it is holy, and sets forth itself as a god, which men must honour and adore. 24. And seeing this bastard, viz. the false will of selfhood, cannot see or behold the place of God, either what or where God is, then the false will goes on in the way of its property, and betakes itself unto, and appropriates to itself the manifested word of the letter, viz. the formed voice of God's children, who spoke from the living Word, and sets its contrived form of its own conceived ens into the literal word, and clothes itself externally with the literal word, stands
2forth with boldness and self-achieved confidence, and says, Here is the place of God; here is heaven; here is God manifest. But it is only a bastard, and is predestinated 1 to condemnation; for God has not created it; but it was born and brought forth out of the lust of the soul, when it did turn its face from God into the centre, and would taste and prove evil and good. 1 Note. -Predestination. 25. This harlot's brat sits upon the bestial monstrous man, and rides upon him as upon its horse, and is half devil, and half brute beast, which shall and must die, or else the soul will not be redeemed so as to see the face of God again. 26. This whore has taken its power and understanding out of nature, viz. out of the compaction of evil and good, that is, out of the dark and outward world, and has swallowed up [or availed] the precious image of God in itself; which, after God, was created out of the heavenly ens. 27. Here is the swineherd, as Christ said, who had consumed his father's inheritance with the swine. He means the poor soul, which has devoured, spent and consumed its heavenly goods in the heavenly ens with this whore of the evil self devilish-will; so that it stands in God's sight as a tattered patched swineherd, and keeps the fruit of the evil whore, viz. of the devil's fatted swine upon the earth, which are the wicked ones in their fruits. 28. Thus we understand what the Antichristian Babylonical
3whore in man is, which has arisen out of the divided properties, viz. out of Adam, in whom the properties departed out of their mutual and equal accord, each into its own desire and lust to selfness, whereby Adam became earthly and mortal; out of whom afterwards the tree of the multiplicity of tongues' and speeches did arise out of one only tongue. 29. Now know this: that the multitudes or variety of faiths are generated out of the divided tongues; so that almost every nation has brought itself into sundry, several and peculiar opinions of God's being and essence, and therein consists the confusion, viz. the mystery of the great Babylon; concerning which the spirit of God did prophesy and declare out of the prophetical root, both out of the line of Christ, how Christ should come to restore and remedy the poor captive soul, and regenerate its right true life, and also out of the turba magna, how this beast, together with the whore, should be cast from the face of God into the fiery furnace.
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.
123. But now the poor captive soul lies in this gross beast, and is captivated in its own self-born will, viz. in the whore, and longs after God, from whom it proceeded and was inspired into the created image; and looks about on all sides, where its true native home of rest should be, and it finds that it is clothed and covered with this whore; and then it brings its desire into this whore's will, and seeks the place of God for rest; and then the whore's will takes the poor captivated soul's desire into itself and thereby does exalt and set up itself; it persuades itself that it, in the soul's desire, is the fair child of God which shall possess heaven, and gives out that it is holy, and sets forth itself as a god, which men must honour and adore. 24. And seeing this bastard, viz. the false will of selfhood, cannot see or behold the place of God, either what or where God is, then the false will goes on in the way of its property, and betakes itself unto, and appropriates to itself the manifested word of the letter, viz. the formed voice of God's children, who spoke from the living Word, and sets its contrived form of its own conceived ens into the literal word, and clothes itself externally with the literal word, stands
2forth with boldness and self-achieved confidence, and says, Here is the place of God; here is heaven; here is God manifest. But it is only a bastard, and is predestinated 1 to condemnation; for God has not created it; but it was born and brought forth out of the lust of the soul, when it did turn its face from God into the centre, and would taste and prove evil and good. 1 Note. -Predestination. 25. This harlot's brat sits upon the bestial monstrous man, and rides upon him as upon its horse, and is half devil, and half brute beast, which shall and must die, or else the soul will not be redeemed so as to see the face of God again. 26. This whore has taken its power and understanding out of nature, viz. out of the compaction of evil and good, that is, out of the dark and outward world, and has swallowed up [or availed] the precious image of God in itself; which, after God, was created out of the heavenly ens. 27. Here is the swineherd, as Christ said, who had consumed his father's inheritance with the swine. He means the poor soul, which has devoured, spent and consumed its heavenly goods in the heavenly ens with this whore of the evil self devilish-will; so that it stands in God's sight as a tattered patched swineherd, and keeps the fruit of the evil whore, viz. of the devil's fatted swine upon the earth, which are the wicked ones in their fruits. 28. Thus we understand what the Antichristian Babylonical
3whore in man is, which has arisen out of the divided properties, viz. out of Adam, in whom the properties departed out of their mutual and equal accord, each into its own desire and lust to selfness, whereby Adam became earthly and mortal; out of whom afterwards the tree of the multiplicity of tongues' and speeches did arise out of one only tongue. 29. Now know this: that the multitudes or variety of faiths are generated out of the divided tongues; so that almost every nation has brought itself into sundry, several and peculiar opinions of God's being and essence, and therein consists the confusion, viz. the mystery of the great Babylon; concerning which the spirit of God did prophesy and declare out of the prophetical root, both out of the line of Christ, how Christ should come to restore and remedy the poor captive soul, and regenerate its right true life, and also out of the turba magna, how this beast, together with the whore, should be cast from the face of God into the fiery furnace.
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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