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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.
132. All spiritual whoredom proceeds from hence: that Christ's ministers possess worldly power and authority; and so one plays the hypocrite with another; the inferior that is without power and authority plays the hypocrite with the potent, that he may advance him also, and bring him to honour and [plenty, to deliciousness and] fat days; whereby the spirit of zeal declines and falls to the ground, and the truth is turned into a lie, and the spirit of zeal of the mouth is stopped with power, and man is honoured in God's stead. 33. This history, relating how Simeon and Lev; went into the city to Hamor and his children and people, and slew all the males in this city (Gen. xxxiv. 25), may well be understood to be a figure, whereby the spirit signifies that he declares in the figure concerning the future time, and is so written as a figure. 34. Also the history is clear, that Hamor and his son Shechem, and all the males of the whole city, were circumcised and became Jews,l and then presently were slain by these two brethren, Simeon and Levi (Gen. xxxiv. 24-26), which indeed is a hard figure to be understood, seeing reason questions whether it were so done or no, that two men should slay a whole city. But seeing it is a figure, and was done even by Simeon and Levi, viz. by the stock and root of the Levitical priesthood, and signifies the future Christendom: This therefore is to be understood under it: 1 Or, Israelites.
235. These two brethren required first, and proposed, that if they would be circumcised, and receive their Law, they would give them their sister; and afterwards, as it came to pass, they slew them all, both the innocent and the guilty. This is that which Christ said to the Pharisees: Woe unto you, Pharisees! you compass sea and land to make a proselyte, and when he is one, you make him twofold more a child of hell than yourselves (Matt, xxiii. 15). 36. This also may be said of the Christian Levites, they persuade people to be baptised, and called Christians; and when that is done they stick their murdering sword into their hearts, that they learn to slay other people with words, which are not called after their name, and are not of their opinion. They curse and damn them, and they give occasion that one brother persecutes another, slanders, condemns, hates, and becomes his malicious enemy, and yet understands not wherefore. Here it is rightly said, These Levites have promised me their sister to wife, so that I am become a Christian, and now they slay me with false doctrine, and not only me but all my generation, who hear them and receive their blasphemy for divine truth; and believe them that it is right, that one man should thus judge and condemn another, which yet Christ has earnestly forbidden. And thereby now that man judges himself since he does that himself which he judges in another.
337. Thus is the murdering sword stuck into many innocent hearts, so that they are guiltlessly slain by the Levites. But seeing Simeon and Levi are placed together, and Jacob also, when he was at his end, prophesied concerning them, and puts them together, calling them murdering swords, it has this signification: that they will not only slay them with the sword of the mouth, but they would also set themselves up in worldly power and authority, and for the truth's sake kill their bodies, and would do it even to them which are under the circumcision, or under the Gospel, whom first they had persuaded to be circumcised, or to be baptised. 38. As it is also come to pass among the Christians, when men have first persuaded them unto baptism; afterwards, when they have for a while seen their abominations, that they live worse than the heathen, and will not in all things give their consent and approbation, then they begin persecution with fire and sword, and slay them, with their innocent children, both in soul and body, which is powerfully prefigured in this type of Simeon and Levi; else that were a grievous gross murder of the children of the saints, for them to persuade people to their faith, and give them their promise, and then afterwards, under such hypocrisy, to slay all, both innocent and guilty, when they had so deeply humbled themselves before them.
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.
132. All spiritual whoredom proceeds from hence: that Christ's ministers possess worldly power and authority; and so one plays the hypocrite with another; the inferior that is without power and authority plays the hypocrite with the potent, that he may advance him also, and bring him to honour and [plenty, to deliciousness and] fat days; whereby the spirit of zeal declines and falls to the ground, and the truth is turned into a lie, and the spirit of zeal of the mouth is stopped with power, and man is honoured in God's stead. 33. This history, relating how Simeon and Lev; went into the city to Hamor and his children and people, and slew all the males in this city (Gen. xxxiv. 25), may well be understood to be a figure, whereby the spirit signifies that he declares in the figure concerning the future time, and is so written as a figure. 34. Also the history is clear, that Hamor and his son Shechem, and all the males of the whole city, were circumcised and became Jews,l and then presently were slain by these two brethren, Simeon and Levi (Gen. xxxiv. 24-26), which indeed is a hard figure to be understood, seeing reason questions whether it were so done or no, that two men should slay a whole city. But seeing it is a figure, and was done even by Simeon and Levi, viz. by the stock and root of the Levitical priesthood, and signifies the future Christendom: This therefore is to be understood under it: 1 Or, Israelites.
235. These two brethren required first, and proposed, that if they would be circumcised, and receive their Law, they would give them their sister; and afterwards, as it came to pass, they slew them all, both the innocent and the guilty. This is that which Christ said to the Pharisees: Woe unto you, Pharisees! you compass sea and land to make a proselyte, and when he is one, you make him twofold more a child of hell than yourselves (Matt, xxiii. 15). 36. This also may be said of the Christian Levites, they persuade people to be baptised, and called Christians; and when that is done they stick their murdering sword into their hearts, that they learn to slay other people with words, which are not called after their name, and are not of their opinion. They curse and damn them, and they give occasion that one brother persecutes another, slanders, condemns, hates, and becomes his malicious enemy, and yet understands not wherefore. Here it is rightly said, These Levites have promised me their sister to wife, so that I am become a Christian, and now they slay me with false doctrine, and not only me but all my generation, who hear them and receive their blasphemy for divine truth; and believe them that it is right, that one man should thus judge and condemn another, which yet Christ has earnestly forbidden. And thereby now that man judges himself since he does that himself which he judges in another.
337. Thus is the murdering sword stuck into many innocent hearts, so that they are guiltlessly slain by the Levites. But seeing Simeon and Levi are placed together, and Jacob also, when he was at his end, prophesied concerning them, and puts them together, calling them murdering swords, it has this signification: that they will not only slay them with the sword of the mouth, but they would also set themselves up in worldly power and authority, and for the truth's sake kill their bodies, and would do it even to them which are under the circumcision, or under the Gospel, whom first they had persuaded to be circumcised, or to be baptised. 38. As it is also come to pass among the Christians, when men have first persuaded them unto baptism; afterwards, when they have for a while seen their abominations, that they live worse than the heathen, and will not in all things give their consent and approbation, then they begin persecution with fire and sword, and slay them, with their innocent children, both in soul and body, which is powerfully prefigured in this type of Simeon and Levi; else that were a grievous gross murder of the children of the saints, for them to persuade people to their faith, and give them their promise, and then afterwards, under such hypocrisy, to slay all, both innocent and guilty, when they had so deeply humbled themselves before them.
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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