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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.
16. Which formation is effected in the generating of the heavenly mercurial harmony, viz. after that manner as when the implanted word in man images or frames itself into a song of divine joyfulness, and sports in the holy pure element before God; in which modelling [framing, figuring or imaging] or holy desire the holy wisdom of God co-models, and becomes figured in wonders; whereby the eternal One becomes formable and distinct, viz. is known in different varieties. This is called sacrificing to God, in that manner as twigs and branches bear fair fruit to the tree, whereby the tree is known and manifested to be good: thus also the creaturely formed word, viz. man, should, to the eternal- speaking holy Word of God, which Word is the stock, generate or bear to the stock good fruit, viz. the praise of God. 7. This is as much as to say: Adam was the chiefest in the sacrifice, for he was the first out-spoken or expressed word that God spoke in his image, and was also the chiefest in the kingdom or government; for to him belonged the eternal dominion: he was created out of the eternal, in and to the eternal, he was the image of God, wherein the word of God according to time and eternity was imaged or framed.
28. Therefore now the spirit in the Covenant represents this before him by the stock of Israel, out of which the new tree should spring out of the old, and points at both the Adamical and also the new tree of regeneration, and speaks further concerning the first power in Adam and Jacob, viz. concerning the kingdom of nature, of the first image. 9. He was unstable or fickle therein as water, as we experience that in Adam and all natural men as Adam suddenly and unstably therein departed from his glory, both from the divine kingdom and also from the sacrifice of God, and entered into self-will, and forsook God's will, and brought himself from the divine formation into an earthly formation, with the desire and lust, whence he became bestial and evil. 10. Whence now the spirit in the Covenant says through Jacob: you shall not be the chiefest; that is, the first image shall not keep the government, neither in the dominion of the kingdom, viz. of the natural power and authority, nor in the sacrifice of God; but the second Adam, Christ, out of Judah, shall be he; and therefore, because you hast climbed up upon your father's couch, and there hast defiled my bed with your climbing up. This figure stands thus:
311. Adam had his Father's chaste marriage-bed in him, when his Eve was yet unmade. He was man and woman, and yet neither of them, but a true and right marriage-bed of God, wherein God's Word in his marriage in both tinctures, viz. of the fire and light, works in power; for he stood in the image of God, in which God wrought, as in the holy angels. The propagation stood in one single image. As God is in one eternal substance, so also was he, who was out of that same substance of all substances, created in one only image; for the spermatic nature and kind was in him the Verbum Fiat [the Word Fiat], which had formed him into the image of God, wherein the selflove lay, viz. in the perpetual conjunction of both properties of the only tincture, viz. the power of the holy magic fire and light, which is spiritual, and the true life. 12. In this image he was the chiefest in the sacrifice, and in the kingdom; for he could sacrifice to God both spiritually and creaturely, in that manner as a tree, without the interposition or supply from another, does itself bring forth its branches and fruit, and thrusts forth from itself the fair blossoms in a lovely smell and virtue, with fair colours according to its kind, and that, as God's Word had ejected and generated it out of itself: all this power lay also in him.
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.
16. Which formation is effected in the generating of the heavenly mercurial harmony, viz. after that manner as when the implanted word in man images or frames itself into a song of divine joyfulness, and sports in the holy pure element before God; in which modelling [framing, figuring or imaging] or holy desire the holy wisdom of God co-models, and becomes figured in wonders; whereby the eternal One becomes formable and distinct, viz. is known in different varieties. This is called sacrificing to God, in that manner as twigs and branches bear fair fruit to the tree, whereby the tree is known and manifested to be good: thus also the creaturely formed word, viz. man, should, to the eternal- speaking holy Word of God, which Word is the stock, generate or bear to the stock good fruit, viz. the praise of God. 7. This is as much as to say: Adam was the chiefest in the sacrifice, for he was the first out-spoken or expressed word that God spoke in his image, and was also the chiefest in the kingdom or government; for to him belonged the eternal dominion: he was created out of the eternal, in and to the eternal, he was the image of God, wherein the word of God according to time and eternity was imaged or framed.
28. Therefore now the spirit in the Covenant represents this before him by the stock of Israel, out of which the new tree should spring out of the old, and points at both the Adamical and also the new tree of regeneration, and speaks further concerning the first power in Adam and Jacob, viz. concerning the kingdom of nature, of the first image. 9. He was unstable or fickle therein as water, as we experience that in Adam and all natural men as Adam suddenly and unstably therein departed from his glory, both from the divine kingdom and also from the sacrifice of God, and entered into self-will, and forsook God's will, and brought himself from the divine formation into an earthly formation, with the desire and lust, whence he became bestial and evil. 10. Whence now the spirit in the Covenant says through Jacob: you shall not be the chiefest; that is, the first image shall not keep the government, neither in the dominion of the kingdom, viz. of the natural power and authority, nor in the sacrifice of God; but the second Adam, Christ, out of Judah, shall be he; and therefore, because you hast climbed up upon your father's couch, and there hast defiled my bed with your climbing up. This figure stands thus:
311. Adam had his Father's chaste marriage-bed in him, when his Eve was yet unmade. He was man and woman, and yet neither of them, but a true and right marriage-bed of God, wherein God's Word in his marriage in both tinctures, viz. of the fire and light, works in power; for he stood in the image of God, in which God wrought, as in the holy angels. The propagation stood in one single image. As God is in one eternal substance, so also was he, who was out of that same substance of all substances, created in one only image; for the spermatic nature and kind was in him the Verbum Fiat [the Word Fiat], which had formed him into the image of God, wherein the selflove lay, viz. in the perpetual conjunction of both properties of the only tincture, viz. the power of the holy magic fire and light, which is spiritual, and the true life. 12. In this image he was the chiefest in the sacrifice, and in the kingdom; for he could sacrifice to God both spiritually and creaturely, in that manner as a tree, without the interposition or supply from another, does itself bring forth its branches and fruit, and thrusts forth from itself the fair blossoms in a lovely smell and virtue, with fair colours according to its kind, and that, as God's Word had ejected and generated it out of itself: all this power lay also in him.
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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