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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.
133. This lecherous Eve sticks yet to the children of God in flesh and blood, and it is the animal soul, viz. the mortal spirit, full of evil lust and impurity, whereinto the devil has yet stuck his Serpent's sting; for which cause the body must die, and rot; also this bestial spirit must be destroyed,2 and go quite into its mother again, out of which it proceeded in the beginning. 1 Or, image. 2 Or, corrupt. 34. In this whore the devil assaults the noble virgin child daily, viz. the chaste Joseph in Christ's spirit, encompassed with heavenly spiritual corporeity, viz. with Christ's flesh and blood. This virgin child is the woman in the Apocalypse, that stands upon the moon (Rev. xii. I), viz. upon this earthly whore, and has twelve stars in the crown upon her head, which woman the dragon in the earthly whore would continually devour, when she brings forth the holy child, viz. the noble Joseph, viz. the chaste and divine purity, which causes woe to the dragon in flesh and blood, that it must resign its kingdom, and in that respect pours forth the great deluge 1 of earthliness upon her, to slay the child together with its mother.
235. But the earth comes to help this woman (Rev. xii. 16), that is, the earthly desire in flesh and blood opens its throat wide and swallows this dragon's flood into itself, seeing it is its like, that it may not hurt the virgin child; as Potiphar's wife's unchaste dragon's whorish floods and streams did not hurt Joseph, in that he fled from her and did not yield his will to her. 36. And this is first the most powerful proba or trial of the children of God; that as soon as they attain the new birth, then the devil comes and stirs up the fleshly whore in flesh and blood, and all false and wicked desires and imaginations, and then injects and frames in this whore the honour and glory of the world; also riches and the pleasure of this life; also he models and represents the great misery and desolation, wherein the poor soul, in this world, must stand in shame and scorn; also the great unworthiness of the soul; also he represents covetousness, to think all temporal good things and necessaries will fail, and so it should come into great misery.
337. To the potent and rich the devil models and represents, in this their fleshly serpentine whore, their nobility and highness, their great honour, might and power; also voluptuous eating and drinking [of dainty fare], and how they may acquire it with power and subtle policy; also he represents unchastity and wantonness; and to think, that if they should walk in humility and lowliness they should lose the respect and reputation of the world: for who would fear and honour them, if they did not put themselves forward with ostentation? 38. All these are the words of Potiphar's whore in flesh and blood, which the devil stirs up in the Serpent's insinuated poison, with his imagination, wherewith he plagues the poor imprisoned soul in flesh and blood, and provokes it to such and the like unchastity and sins. And this whore in the flesh says continually to the soul, Lie with me, copulate with me, you will be blessed, happy, and saved well enough, use your lust with me. And this she does daily, that she might bring Joseph into lust, viz. the new child, that the soul might bite at that bait, and defile the new child, and its fair crown. 1 Flood or water- stream.
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.
133. This lecherous Eve sticks yet to the children of God in flesh and blood, and it is the animal soul, viz. the mortal spirit, full of evil lust and impurity, whereinto the devil has yet stuck his Serpent's sting; for which cause the body must die, and rot; also this bestial spirit must be destroyed,2 and go quite into its mother again, out of which it proceeded in the beginning. 1 Or, image. 2 Or, corrupt. 34. In this whore the devil assaults the noble virgin child daily, viz. the chaste Joseph in Christ's spirit, encompassed with heavenly spiritual corporeity, viz. with Christ's flesh and blood. This virgin child is the woman in the Apocalypse, that stands upon the moon (Rev. xii. I), viz. upon this earthly whore, and has twelve stars in the crown upon her head, which woman the dragon in the earthly whore would continually devour, when she brings forth the holy child, viz. the noble Joseph, viz. the chaste and divine purity, which causes woe to the dragon in flesh and blood, that it must resign its kingdom, and in that respect pours forth the great deluge 1 of earthliness upon her, to slay the child together with its mother.
235. But the earth comes to help this woman (Rev. xii. 16), that is, the earthly desire in flesh and blood opens its throat wide and swallows this dragon's flood into itself, seeing it is its like, that it may not hurt the virgin child; as Potiphar's wife's unchaste dragon's whorish floods and streams did not hurt Joseph, in that he fled from her and did not yield his will to her. 36. And this is first the most powerful proba or trial of the children of God; that as soon as they attain the new birth, then the devil comes and stirs up the fleshly whore in flesh and blood, and all false and wicked desires and imaginations, and then injects and frames in this whore the honour and glory of the world; also riches and the pleasure of this life; also he models and represents the great misery and desolation, wherein the poor soul, in this world, must stand in shame and scorn; also the great unworthiness of the soul; also he represents covetousness, to think all temporal good things and necessaries will fail, and so it should come into great misery.
337. To the potent and rich the devil models and represents, in this their fleshly serpentine whore, their nobility and highness, their great honour, might and power; also voluptuous eating and drinking [of dainty fare], and how they may acquire it with power and subtle policy; also he represents unchastity and wantonness; and to think, that if they should walk in humility and lowliness they should lose the respect and reputation of the world: for who would fear and honour them, if they did not put themselves forward with ostentation? 38. All these are the words of Potiphar's whore in flesh and blood, which the devil stirs up in the Serpent's insinuated poison, with his imagination, wherewith he plagues the poor imprisoned soul in flesh and blood, and provokes it to such and the like unchastity and sins. And this whore in the flesh says continually to the soul, Lie with me, copulate with me, you will be blessed, happy, and saved well enough, use your lust with me. And this she does daily, that she might bring Joseph into lust, viz. the new child, that the soul might bite at that bait, and defile the new child, and its fair crown. 1 Flood or water- stream.
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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