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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.
119. Moses sets down ten names from Noah to Abraham in the line of the Covenant, viz. Shem, Arphaxad, Salah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah, Abram: and he sets down very wonderfully that Terah begat three sons, viz. Nahor, Haran, and Abram. This is even a type of the three Principles, intimating how all three should be opened in this holy flaming line of the Covenant, through the holy fire, and be severed from vanity; and how the whole man should be born anew and formed to the image of God, through the holy fire in the Covenant. As indeed the names of the three brothers do represent and hold forth so much in the tongue of sense. If a man does but introduce the true mental understanding thereinto, then he sees it in the form of the composed spirits of the letters; which although we could well give a hint ot yet the unilluminated reader would not understand it; but to our school-fellows we need not decipher it, they have it already in the understanding. 20. By the ten forms of fire I understand first the formed word in the seven forms of nature, and the eighth, ninth and tenth forms are the inward world, which is unformed. The eighth number is the fire of the eternal nature of the divine manifestation, also the strength and omnipotence, which at the end of days shall purge the floor. The ninth number is the heavenly tincture of the fire and light; and the tenth number is the love-fire, viz. the triangle of the holy Trinity
2in the majesty: signified enough to those that are our school-fellows. It is explained at large in the Forty Questions of the Soul; even the philosophic discourse at the beginning and entrance of the same [Questions]. 21. Out of these ten properties of the names in the line of the Covenant the oracle, viz. the divine voice, was made manifest in Abraham; and therefore the spirit of the Lord commanded him to go from his own country, and from his kindred; for the voice of the divine manifestation with the Messiah, or Christ, should not come forth out of his kindred, viz. out of his own blood, but out of God. But yet in him lay the vessel, viz. the ens, in which the divine voice would manifest itself; and therefore, because another seed should be introduced into his own seed, viz. a heavenly ens (John iii.), he commanded him to go from his kindred and father's house.
322. For the possibility and ability to the divine manifestation did not stand in man's ens, but in God's; but man's ens must come thereunto, that so Adam's heavenly disappeared ens might be quickened in Christ's living ens, and in Christ arise from death. Therefore God said to Abraham, Get into a land, that I will show you. Here the spirit signifies that he should not see God in his father's country, that is, in the earthly man, but in the land which the Lord would show him, in his seed, which was another seed, out of the divine ens. In this strange seed he would bless his own seed, that is, tincture it with the divine tincture of the ninth number in the sacred Ternary, even with the tincture of the holy spiritual world. 23. For thus said the Lord to Abraham: Get out of your country, and from your kindred, and from your father's house, into a land that I will show you: And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing: I will bless them that bless you, and curse them that curse you (Gen. xii. I, 2).
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.
119. Moses sets down ten names from Noah to Abraham in the line of the Covenant, viz. Shem, Arphaxad, Salah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah, Abram: and he sets down very wonderfully that Terah begat three sons, viz. Nahor, Haran, and Abram. This is even a type of the three Principles, intimating how all three should be opened in this holy flaming line of the Covenant, through the holy fire, and be severed from vanity; and how the whole man should be born anew and formed to the image of God, through the holy fire in the Covenant. As indeed the names of the three brothers do represent and hold forth so much in the tongue of sense. If a man does but introduce the true mental understanding thereinto, then he sees it in the form of the composed spirits of the letters; which although we could well give a hint ot yet the unilluminated reader would not understand it; but to our school-fellows we need not decipher it, they have it already in the understanding. 20. By the ten forms of fire I understand first the formed word in the seven forms of nature, and the eighth, ninth and tenth forms are the inward world, which is unformed. The eighth number is the fire of the eternal nature of the divine manifestation, also the strength and omnipotence, which at the end of days shall purge the floor. The ninth number is the heavenly tincture of the fire and light; and the tenth number is the love-fire, viz. the triangle of the holy Trinity
2in the majesty: signified enough to those that are our school-fellows. It is explained at large in the Forty Questions of the Soul; even the philosophic discourse at the beginning and entrance of the same [Questions]. 21. Out of these ten properties of the names in the line of the Covenant the oracle, viz. the divine voice, was made manifest in Abraham; and therefore the spirit of the Lord commanded him to go from his own country, and from his kindred; for the voice of the divine manifestation with the Messiah, or Christ, should not come forth out of his kindred, viz. out of his own blood, but out of God. But yet in him lay the vessel, viz. the ens, in which the divine voice would manifest itself; and therefore, because another seed should be introduced into his own seed, viz. a heavenly ens (John iii.), he commanded him to go from his kindred and father's house.
322. For the possibility and ability to the divine manifestation did not stand in man's ens, but in God's; but man's ens must come thereunto, that so Adam's heavenly disappeared ens might be quickened in Christ's living ens, and in Christ arise from death. Therefore God said to Abraham, Get into a land, that I will show you. Here the spirit signifies that he should not see God in his father's country, that is, in the earthly man, but in the land which the Lord would show him, in his seed, which was another seed, out of the divine ens. In this strange seed he would bless his own seed, that is, tincture it with the divine tincture of the ninth number in the sacred Ternary, even with the tincture of the holy spiritual world. 23. For thus said the Lord to Abraham: Get out of your country, and from your kindred, and from your father's house, into a land that I will show you: And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing: I will bless them that bless you, and curse them that curse you (Gen. xii. I, 2).
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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