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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.
1forth in the natural tincture in the light's property. But the Adamical soul is from the fire's property, from whence the light receives its original and manifestation; so that the light's property in Christ assumed the fire's property, viz. the Adamical soul; and the inward hidden [divine and heavenly being] which was sealed up and quite faded as to the light's life, in Adam, did again open and put forth itself afresh. 60. Therefore, seeing a Christian is under Christ, and in Christ becomes again manifest in God, the figure of Christ is represented here in this figure in the number of 30, and that of a Christian in the number of 20: for a Christian is sold into the hands of men to suffer; but Christ must not only suffer in the hands of men, but give himself up also to the wrath of God, whereupon he sweat blood. 61. And this whole history of Joseph does excellently decipher to us how a Christian stands in his figure before God and the world: for the whole acts 1 of Joseph do point out how Adam comes to be a Christian; how he must in the process of Christ be put into Christ's figure, and become an image of Christ; and how God does in Christ's process exalt him again in the kingdom of Christ, and sets him at the right hand of God: as Joseph was set at the right hand of King Pharaoh after that he had continued in the process of Christ, and was brought through it. 1 Or, history. The Sixty-Fifth Chapter
2Of Judah and Tamar: being a Mystical Figure of Adam and Christ, in which the New Birth is excellently prefigured [Gen. xxxviii.] 1. WHEN we consider the history of Joseph according to outward reason, then reason demands, wherefore Joseph's history is not set down together in the Bible without any interruption, whereas one act followed so upon another. Why does Moses put this typical figure of Judah and Tamar between? But ifwe look upon, examine and consider this history of Judah and Tamar, and likewise the figure of Joseph, with a right understanding, we find and see that the Holy Ghost has of set purpose so ordered and disposed them in their right and true order. 2. For Joseph represents a true Christian, showing how he must behave himself before God, and the world, and how he is put in the
3process and figure of Christ. But this history of Judah and Tamar is a figure of a Christian's growth out of Adam's image, according to the humanity in the kingdom of nature; showing how he must spring forth out of the first Adamical image, and how this same Adamical image is evil and must die, which the anger of God kills; and yet that the first right must stand; that a Christian, according to the human nature and property, is only the Adamical image, and no new or strange thing; and how Christ manifests himself in this Adamical evil image, and kills the evil; and yet during the time of this life outwardly it hangs to a Christian: this the spirit here powerfully prefigures. 3. Here we see a powerful figure in Judah, in whom stood the line of Christ in the order of the genealogy, out of which Christ was to be manifested: This Judah went away from his brethren, and applied himself to a man of Odollam [Adullam], called Hirah. And there Judah saw a Canaanitish man 's daughter, called Shuah; and he took her and went in unto her, so she conceived and bare a son, and he called his name Er. And she conceived again and bare a son, whose name she called Onan. And she conceived once more and bare another son, whose name she called Shelah; and she was at Chezib when she
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.
1forth in the natural tincture in the light's property. But the Adamical soul is from the fire's property, from whence the light receives its original and manifestation; so that the light's property in Christ assumed the fire's property, viz. the Adamical soul; and the inward hidden [divine and heavenly being] which was sealed up and quite faded as to the light's life, in Adam, did again open and put forth itself afresh. 60. Therefore, seeing a Christian is under Christ, and in Christ becomes again manifest in God, the figure of Christ is represented here in this figure in the number of 30, and that of a Christian in the number of 20: for a Christian is sold into the hands of men to suffer; but Christ must not only suffer in the hands of men, but give himself up also to the wrath of God, whereupon he sweat blood. 61. And this whole history of Joseph does excellently decipher to us how a Christian stands in his figure before God and the world: for the whole acts 1 of Joseph do point out how Adam comes to be a Christian; how he must in the process of Christ be put into Christ's figure, and become an image of Christ; and how God does in Christ's process exalt him again in the kingdom of Christ, and sets him at the right hand of God: as Joseph was set at the right hand of King Pharaoh after that he had continued in the process of Christ, and was brought through it. 1 Or, history. The Sixty-Fifth Chapter
2Of Judah and Tamar: being a Mystical Figure of Adam and Christ, in which the New Birth is excellently prefigured [Gen. xxxviii.] 1. WHEN we consider the history of Joseph according to outward reason, then reason demands, wherefore Joseph's history is not set down together in the Bible without any interruption, whereas one act followed so upon another. Why does Moses put this typical figure of Judah and Tamar between? But ifwe look upon, examine and consider this history of Judah and Tamar, and likewise the figure of Joseph, with a right understanding, we find and see that the Holy Ghost has of set purpose so ordered and disposed them in their right and true order. 2. For Joseph represents a true Christian, showing how he must behave himself before God, and the world, and how he is put in the
3process and figure of Christ. But this history of Judah and Tamar is a figure of a Christian's growth out of Adam's image, according to the humanity in the kingdom of nature; showing how he must spring forth out of the first Adamical image, and how this same Adamical image is evil and must die, which the anger of God kills; and yet that the first right must stand; that a Christian, according to the human nature and property, is only the Adamical image, and no new or strange thing; and how Christ manifests himself in this Adamical evil image, and kills the evil; and yet during the time of this life outwardly it hangs to a Christian: this the spirit here powerfully prefigures. 3. Here we see a powerful figure in Judah, in whom stood the line of Christ in the order of the genealogy, out of which Christ was to be manifested: This Judah went away from his brethren, and applied himself to a man of Odollam [Adullam], called Hirah. And there Judah saw a Canaanitish man 's daughter, called Shuah; and he took her and went in unto her, so she conceived and bare a son, and he called his name Er. And she conceived again and bare a son, whose name she called Onan. And she conceived once more and bare another son, whose name she called Shelah; and she was at Chezib when she
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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