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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.
161. For in God, so far as he is called God, there is no purpose nor beginning to will: he is himself the will of the profundity, viz. One, alone. And he himself wills nothing but good, and therefore he is himself also that same good will, or willing of good: for the good that he wills is the birth of his power, viz. his Son. 62. God wills in himself nothing but to manifest his own good, that he himself is; and that could not be done if the only good power did not introduce itself with the exhalation, into the desire to nature, and into a severation, viz. into the science; for if the good did remain alone, there would be no knowledge or skill. 63. But now the good, viz. God in himself; makes not evil or separation, but the science, viz. the Fiat, or the desire to severation, brings itself into nature and creature; and from the science springs evil and good, and not from God, or in God, in his Trinity. 64. For there is no decree: but there is a consultation therein. And then there must also be a cause of that consultation therein. And then again, there must be a cause of that also; and so there must be something before God, or after God, wherefore he so consults and determines. 65. But he is himself the profundity, and the One; and is one only will, that is, himself; and that is only good; for one only thing cannot be opposite to itself, for it is but one, and has no quarrel with any thing.
266. Therefore it is the folly of reason, that they speak of compulsion and inevitable necessity, and understand not the Mysterium Magnum.l Or that they say, God of his purpose wills the evil desire or will, which he has hardened that it should not attain the grace. 1 The Great Mystery. 67. 1 show to this blind reason a thistle to consider of which the sun for a whole day touches, and gives it light and power: yet it remains a thistle. So also the wicked will: the divine sun shines to it the day of its whole life: but its ground is an ens of a thistle. 68. Otherwise, if God did of purpose harden it, the righteousness could have no judgement therein: for that which does what it must do lives according to the will of its Lord. But if God wills not that which is wicked, as in Ps. v. 4, then the evil comes out of the root; and in the root of knowledge out of nature's ground to the creature, and by accident. And for that cause has God manifested his will, and given his Law and Gospel; that is, has manifested his threatenings and his grace, that a day of separation might be kept with righteousness, and that no creature might have excuse.
369. And the history says further, after Esau had received the present of Jacob, he spoke unto his brother Jacob, saying, Let us take our journey, and go forward, I will go with you. But Jacob said to him, My lord, you know that I have with me tender children, and, moreover, cattle that are great with young, and sucking calves: if they be overdriven for one day the whole flock would die. Let my lord pass over before his servant, and I will follow on softly, as the cattle and the children are able to go, until I come to my lord into Seir (Gen. xxxiii. 12-14). This text appears to be only an outward history, but the spirit has also its inward figure under it, for Jacob stands in that figure of Christ. And the figure is thus:
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.
161. For in God, so far as he is called God, there is no purpose nor beginning to will: he is himself the will of the profundity, viz. One, alone. And he himself wills nothing but good, and therefore he is himself also that same good will, or willing of good: for the good that he wills is the birth of his power, viz. his Son. 62. God wills in himself nothing but to manifest his own good, that he himself is; and that could not be done if the only good power did not introduce itself with the exhalation, into the desire to nature, and into a severation, viz. into the science; for if the good did remain alone, there would be no knowledge or skill. 63. But now the good, viz. God in himself; makes not evil or separation, but the science, viz. the Fiat, or the desire to severation, brings itself into nature and creature; and from the science springs evil and good, and not from God, or in God, in his Trinity. 64. For there is no decree: but there is a consultation therein. And then there must also be a cause of that consultation therein. And then again, there must be a cause of that also; and so there must be something before God, or after God, wherefore he so consults and determines. 65. But he is himself the profundity, and the One; and is one only will, that is, himself; and that is only good; for one only thing cannot be opposite to itself, for it is but one, and has no quarrel with any thing.
266. Therefore it is the folly of reason, that they speak of compulsion and inevitable necessity, and understand not the Mysterium Magnum.l Or that they say, God of his purpose wills the evil desire or will, which he has hardened that it should not attain the grace. 1 The Great Mystery. 67. 1 show to this blind reason a thistle to consider of which the sun for a whole day touches, and gives it light and power: yet it remains a thistle. So also the wicked will: the divine sun shines to it the day of its whole life: but its ground is an ens of a thistle. 68. Otherwise, if God did of purpose harden it, the righteousness could have no judgement therein: for that which does what it must do lives according to the will of its Lord. But if God wills not that which is wicked, as in Ps. v. 4, then the evil comes out of the root; and in the root of knowledge out of nature's ground to the creature, and by accident. And for that cause has God manifested his will, and given his Law and Gospel; that is, has manifested his threatenings and his grace, that a day of separation might be kept with righteousness, and that no creature might have excuse.
369. And the history says further, after Esau had received the present of Jacob, he spoke unto his brother Jacob, saying, Let us take our journey, and go forward, I will go with you. But Jacob said to him, My lord, you know that I have with me tender children, and, moreover, cattle that are great with young, and sucking calves: if they be overdriven for one day the whole flock would die. Let my lord pass over before his servant, and I will follow on softly, as the cattle and the children are able to go, until I come to my lord into Seir (Gen. xxxiii. 12-14). This text appears to be only an outward history, but the spirit has also its inward figure under it, for Jacob stands in that figure of Christ. And the figure is thus:
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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