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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.
13. And hence man had his rise, and became a living soul, both out of the heavenly spiritual ens, and out of the temporal ens of the earth and four elements; both out of the constellation or astrum of the divine magic, and [out of the] natural magic; a complete, perfect likeness of God; a delightful tree of the life of divine wisdom and contemplation, engrafted into the Paradise of God, viz. into heaven, and into the time of this world, standing in both; fit to regenerate 4 and form his like out of himself: like as out of one tree many twigs, 1 Or Tree of Mankind. 2 Gen. x. 3 Grain, kernel, pippin. 4 Generate again, or propagate. boughs, branches and fruits do grow; where every fruit has a grain, kernel or pippin in it, fit to produce a new stock and tree: The like we are also to understand concerning the tree of mankind. 4. The inward spiritual ens grew in its power in Adam's life, until the outward earthly natural [one] overcame him by the infectious persuasion of the devil; and then the natural ens put itself forcibly forth in the powers of the wonders of nature; and brought forth its branches and boughs out of the essence of nature.
25. And though the holy ens of the heavenly world's essence and being did disappear in Adam by his infection and poisonful imagination, yet the Word of divine power did give itself again thereinto by Covenant; so that this ens of the heavenly world was propagated all along in this tree, until the time of its now springing forth in the ens of Mary, where the Covenant was accomplished [stood at its aim and limit]. 6. Adam's spiritual holy stem grew until his fall, and there it stood still; and then the Word freely gave itself by the Covenant thereinto, as into a disappeared [expired] ens, to regenerate it again in its true entity; and the outward natural stem obtained the power and the selfgrowing life, in the fall, where then the elements, each of them in its property, became sensible and full of its own self-full power and operation, and grew so unto the flood, especially before the flood, in its boughs and branches, and did show itself as a full-grown tree, according to all the properties in evil and good. 7. But the powers had not as yet unfolded and explicated themselves therein, for all men had only one language; the languages were not made manifest out of the properties before the flood.
38. They indeed understood the Language of Nature, viz. the formed word in its difference; but this difference or distinct variety was not as yet formed and framed into tongues, until the stock of the human tree, did, after the flood, bring its power into the branches. Whereupon the tree of mankind began to bloom and blossom forth out of the properties of the powers of the formed natural word, viz. out of the blessing, wherewith God blessed Noah and his children, viz. the branches of the tree, and bade them be fruitful, and fill and replenish the earth, and gave them the Covenant of grace. 9. For in Cain this tree was cursed, but in Noah it was again blessed, that the properties of the formed natural word should put forth themselves with the tongues through the property of nature, as a wonder of many words or gods in the only living Word.
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.
13. And hence man had his rise, and became a living soul, both out of the heavenly spiritual ens, and out of the temporal ens of the earth and four elements; both out of the constellation or astrum of the divine magic, and [out of the] natural magic; a complete, perfect likeness of God; a delightful tree of the life of divine wisdom and contemplation, engrafted into the Paradise of God, viz. into heaven, and into the time of this world, standing in both; fit to regenerate 4 and form his like out of himself: like as out of one tree many twigs, 1 Or Tree of Mankind. 2 Gen. x. 3 Grain, kernel, pippin. 4 Generate again, or propagate. boughs, branches and fruits do grow; where every fruit has a grain, kernel or pippin in it, fit to produce a new stock and tree: The like we are also to understand concerning the tree of mankind. 4. The inward spiritual ens grew in its power in Adam's life, until the outward earthly natural [one] overcame him by the infectious persuasion of the devil; and then the natural ens put itself forcibly forth in the powers of the wonders of nature; and brought forth its branches and boughs out of the essence of nature.
25. And though the holy ens of the heavenly world's essence and being did disappear in Adam by his infection and poisonful imagination, yet the Word of divine power did give itself again thereinto by Covenant; so that this ens of the heavenly world was propagated all along in this tree, until the time of its now springing forth in the ens of Mary, where the Covenant was accomplished [stood at its aim and limit]. 6. Adam's spiritual holy stem grew until his fall, and there it stood still; and then the Word freely gave itself by the Covenant thereinto, as into a disappeared [expired] ens, to regenerate it again in its true entity; and the outward natural stem obtained the power and the selfgrowing life, in the fall, where then the elements, each of them in its property, became sensible and full of its own self-full power and operation, and grew so unto the flood, especially before the flood, in its boughs and branches, and did show itself as a full-grown tree, according to all the properties in evil and good. 7. But the powers had not as yet unfolded and explicated themselves therein, for all men had only one language; the languages were not made manifest out of the properties before the flood.
38. They indeed understood the Language of Nature, viz. the formed word in its difference; but this difference or distinct variety was not as yet formed and framed into tongues, until the stock of the human tree, did, after the flood, bring its power into the branches. Whereupon the tree of mankind began to bloom and blossom forth out of the properties of the powers of the formed natural word, viz. out of the blessing, wherewith God blessed Noah and his children, viz. the branches of the tree, and bade them be fruitful, and fill and replenish the earth, and gave them the Covenant of grace. 9. For in Cain this tree was cursed, but in Noah it was again blessed, that the properties of the formed natural word should put forth themselves with the tongues through the property of nature, as a wonder of many words or gods in the only living Word.
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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