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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.
115. She sits in high honour among men, and cries all hail to herself. This is she to whom you prostitute yourself; and forsake your God and his altar, Jesus Christ in you. Take pity on yourself; and behold the misery, how this whore has sat instead of the altar of God in your soul, and has taken your body and soul in possession, and rides upon you as upon her beast; she leads you with her reins, and you seest it not, you say likewise, It is right. O you evil beast, full of your whore's pride! how will the Lord throw you, together with the whore, to the ground, as is to be seen in the RevelationsW 1 Apocalypse. 16. The spirit here further sets down an excellent fair figure, showing how God manifested himself to Jacob, after he made the altar in Bethel, and called the place El-Bethel (Gen. xxxv. 7), viz. an angelical dwelling, where God conversed with Jacob in the form of an angel; as the high tongue renders it, that God spoke with him in vision in an angel's form, viz. in the angel's form of the future humanity of Christ, and signified to him, that he should no more be called Jacob, but Israel (Gen. xxxv. 10-12), that is, a great tree, or company of nations. Him has God thus blessed, that he should possess all this country; and he shall be so great that even kings should proceed out of his loins, whereby he signifies concerning the future kingdom, of Israel, and of Christ, how it would come to pass.
217. And when the Lord had spoken with Jacob, in that very place Jacob set up a pillar of stone (Gen. xxxv. 14); which signifies the temple of Christ, as also the temple at Jerusalem in a type prefiguring Christ, also the true Christian Church among the Christians, that from the word of the Lord men would build a place and pillar, where they would assemble and declare the wonders of the great God, and call upon him there, and offer up the drink-offering of prayer there. 18. And the spirit says further, So God went up from him, when he had spoken with him (Gen. xxxv. 13). That is, when he had appeared in a visible form, in the image and type of Christ, he withdrew and hid himself again in that royal place; from whence afterwards he would manifest and make himself visible in his seed in this figure in the humanity. 19. And Jacob called the place Bethel (Gen. xxxv. 15), viz. a humiliation 2 of the Deity in the humanity, so that the divine altar becomes manifest, where a man offers praise and thanksgiving to God. And the spirit by Jacob concerning this Bethel points at the future Bethlehem, where Christ should be born man; as this place, Bethel, was exceeding highly esteeemed by the patriarchs, which all points at
3the future Bethlehem, where the true altar, Christ, should be erected and built; upon which Jacob and his fathers and children had offered in the faith and prefiguring type, and under it God led them in the visible type from thenceforth, till the appointed time that this altar was erected at Bethlehem by the birth of Christ. 2 Or, condescension. 20. And the spirit in Moses speaks instantly very darkly thereof in this figure, and says, And they went from Bethel (Gen. xxxv. 16); whereby he points at the going forth from the figure of Christ, that men should go forth from this figure to the birth of Christ; and says, And it was a field-breadth from Ephrath, where Rachel brought forth; and she was in hard labour at the birth (Gen. xxxv. 16). 21. This field-breadth signifies the time that is between that and the altar of Christ, as Adam was gone a field-breadth from the altar of God, that is) out of the spiritual world into the earthly, where it goes very hard with Rachel, viz. with the human nature, as to the patriarch Benjamin. That is, to bring forth a Christian even the old Adam must die and perish in this birth, as Rachel died when she bare Benjamin. 22. Which Benjamin signifies, that when we erect God's altar in us, so that Christ dwells in us, then is Benjamin, that is our last man [or second Adam], born. Then dies the old mother who has generated the kingdom of nature in man, and the new spiritual man is manifested.
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.
115. She sits in high honour among men, and cries all hail to herself. This is she to whom you prostitute yourself; and forsake your God and his altar, Jesus Christ in you. Take pity on yourself; and behold the misery, how this whore has sat instead of the altar of God in your soul, and has taken your body and soul in possession, and rides upon you as upon her beast; she leads you with her reins, and you seest it not, you say likewise, It is right. O you evil beast, full of your whore's pride! how will the Lord throw you, together with the whore, to the ground, as is to be seen in the RevelationsW 1 Apocalypse. 16. The spirit here further sets down an excellent fair figure, showing how God manifested himself to Jacob, after he made the altar in Bethel, and called the place El-Bethel (Gen. xxxv. 7), viz. an angelical dwelling, where God conversed with Jacob in the form of an angel; as the high tongue renders it, that God spoke with him in vision in an angel's form, viz. in the angel's form of the future humanity of Christ, and signified to him, that he should no more be called Jacob, but Israel (Gen. xxxv. 10-12), that is, a great tree, or company of nations. Him has God thus blessed, that he should possess all this country; and he shall be so great that even kings should proceed out of his loins, whereby he signifies concerning the future kingdom, of Israel, and of Christ, how it would come to pass.
217. And when the Lord had spoken with Jacob, in that very place Jacob set up a pillar of stone (Gen. xxxv. 14); which signifies the temple of Christ, as also the temple at Jerusalem in a type prefiguring Christ, also the true Christian Church among the Christians, that from the word of the Lord men would build a place and pillar, where they would assemble and declare the wonders of the great God, and call upon him there, and offer up the drink-offering of prayer there. 18. And the spirit says further, So God went up from him, when he had spoken with him (Gen. xxxv. 13). That is, when he had appeared in a visible form, in the image and type of Christ, he withdrew and hid himself again in that royal place; from whence afterwards he would manifest and make himself visible in his seed in this figure in the humanity. 19. And Jacob called the place Bethel (Gen. xxxv. 15), viz. a humiliation 2 of the Deity in the humanity, so that the divine altar becomes manifest, where a man offers praise and thanksgiving to God. And the spirit by Jacob concerning this Bethel points at the future Bethlehem, where Christ should be born man; as this place, Bethel, was exceeding highly esteeemed by the patriarchs, which all points at
3the future Bethlehem, where the true altar, Christ, should be erected and built; upon which Jacob and his fathers and children had offered in the faith and prefiguring type, and under it God led them in the visible type from thenceforth, till the appointed time that this altar was erected at Bethlehem by the birth of Christ. 2 Or, condescension. 20. And the spirit in Moses speaks instantly very darkly thereof in this figure, and says, And they went from Bethel (Gen. xxxv. 16); whereby he points at the going forth from the figure of Christ, that men should go forth from this figure to the birth of Christ; and says, And it was a field-breadth from Ephrath, where Rachel brought forth; and she was in hard labour at the birth (Gen. xxxv. 16). 21. This field-breadth signifies the time that is between that and the altar of Christ, as Adam was gone a field-breadth from the altar of God, that is) out of the spiritual world into the earthly, where it goes very hard with Rachel, viz. with the human nature, as to the patriarch Benjamin. That is, to bring forth a Christian even the old Adam must die and perish in this birth, as Rachel died when she bare Benjamin. 22. Which Benjamin signifies, that when we erect God's altar in us, so that Christ dwells in us, then is Benjamin, that is our last man [or second Adam], born. Then dies the old mother who has generated the kingdom of nature in man, and the new spiritual man is manifested.
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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