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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.
113. But the self will was unstable and fickle therein, and brought itself into a bestial property, into false and wicked lust and desire, and climbed with the bestial lust and desire into this holy marriage-bed of God. Into which lust Satan brought it, viz. the ground of the dark world according to the imaging or representation of fancy, as also the devil with the holding forth of the monstrous bestial property, together with the subtlety and wit of the Serpent, viz. of the ground of the first Principle. So that the self-will plunged itself therein, and was infected therewith, and made its power of imaging or thinking, according to soul and body, monstrous, whence the bestial imagination in Adam awaked and began. 14. And here he climbed up upon his Father's, viz. upon God's, marriage-bed, and defiled it with bestial, as also devilish, false and wicked, imaginations. Which lust he introduced into God's concubine, viz. into the heavenly sperm or seed of the heavenly world's substance. Upon which God's spirit, viz. the holy Word in this heavenly substance, departed from him. That is, the self-will of man rent itself off from the will of the Word; and now it was unstable in the devil's poison, and lost the kingdom and the priesthood, viz. the princely throne, and was thereupon weak and blind as to God, and fell down into sleep, and lay, between God and the kingdom of this world, in impotency and weakness.
215. Now thus says Moses, And God suffered or caused him to fall into a deep sleep, and framed a wife out of him (Gen. ii. 21, 22), and brought her to him, and gave him a bestial marriage-bed for a heavenly: where he may now copulate in self lust, which, in the presence of heaven, is but a defiled marriage-bed, but is born withal under God's mercy in divine patience, seeing that the vessel of this marriage-bed must consume, rot and die. And Christ has given in himself in this marriage-bed into the middle, as a Mediator and Redeemer from this monstrous image, which he will regenerate anew in himself. 16. This powerful type or image the spirit of God also represents by Reuben, who was Jacob's first virtue and power, wherein the desire of Reuben also modelled itself in the Adamical image, and went back and lay with his father's concubine, and in falsehood and wickedness copulated with her: as the free will of the soul in Adam copulated with God's concubine in him, by false and wicked lust, and became a breaker of wedlock to God, as Reuben did.
317. And for the sake of this has Adam, viz. the first power of the natural man, in all men, lost the kingly priesthood, so that the natural man in his own power and virtue can no more of fer sacrifice to God; also he understands nothing more of God's word or kingdom, It is foolishness unto him (I Cor. ii. 14), and he cannot apprehend it any more: for he stands in a poisonous monstrous image, which in this Adamical property cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and has lost the kingdom of God, and is now but a figure or similitude of this world and of hell; a monster [instead] of the image of God, and shall no more be the chief in the sacrifice and kingdom, but Christ in the new birth in him has attained the kingdom in the sacrifice and government. 18. The natural man, viz. the first power and virtue, must be servant, and layoff the monstrous whorish image, and be new born again: the soul, through the spirit of Christ, and the body, through the putrefaction of the earth, from which, at the end of the day [Last judgement Day] he shall be severed and be formed again into the image of God. II and III THE TESTAMENT of SIMEON AND LEVI
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.
113. But the self will was unstable and fickle therein, and brought itself into a bestial property, into false and wicked lust and desire, and climbed with the bestial lust and desire into this holy marriage-bed of God. Into which lust Satan brought it, viz. the ground of the dark world according to the imaging or representation of fancy, as also the devil with the holding forth of the monstrous bestial property, together with the subtlety and wit of the Serpent, viz. of the ground of the first Principle. So that the self-will plunged itself therein, and was infected therewith, and made its power of imaging or thinking, according to soul and body, monstrous, whence the bestial imagination in Adam awaked and began. 14. And here he climbed up upon his Father's, viz. upon God's, marriage-bed, and defiled it with bestial, as also devilish, false and wicked, imaginations. Which lust he introduced into God's concubine, viz. into the heavenly sperm or seed of the heavenly world's substance. Upon which God's spirit, viz. the holy Word in this heavenly substance, departed from him. That is, the self-will of man rent itself off from the will of the Word; and now it was unstable in the devil's poison, and lost the kingdom and the priesthood, viz. the princely throne, and was thereupon weak and blind as to God, and fell down into sleep, and lay, between God and the kingdom of this world, in impotency and weakness.
215. Now thus says Moses, And God suffered or caused him to fall into a deep sleep, and framed a wife out of him (Gen. ii. 21, 22), and brought her to him, and gave him a bestial marriage-bed for a heavenly: where he may now copulate in self lust, which, in the presence of heaven, is but a defiled marriage-bed, but is born withal under God's mercy in divine patience, seeing that the vessel of this marriage-bed must consume, rot and die. And Christ has given in himself in this marriage-bed into the middle, as a Mediator and Redeemer from this monstrous image, which he will regenerate anew in himself. 16. This powerful type or image the spirit of God also represents by Reuben, who was Jacob's first virtue and power, wherein the desire of Reuben also modelled itself in the Adamical image, and went back and lay with his father's concubine, and in falsehood and wickedness copulated with her: as the free will of the soul in Adam copulated with God's concubine in him, by false and wicked lust, and became a breaker of wedlock to God, as Reuben did.
317. And for the sake of this has Adam, viz. the first power of the natural man, in all men, lost the kingly priesthood, so that the natural man in his own power and virtue can no more of fer sacrifice to God; also he understands nothing more of God's word or kingdom, It is foolishness unto him (I Cor. ii. 14), and he cannot apprehend it any more: for he stands in a poisonous monstrous image, which in this Adamical property cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and has lost the kingdom of God, and is now but a figure or similitude of this world and of hell; a monster [instead] of the image of God, and shall no more be the chief in the sacrifice and kingdom, but Christ in the new birth in him has attained the kingdom in the sacrifice and government. 18. The natural man, viz. the first power and virtue, must be servant, and layoff the monstrous whorish image, and be new born again: the soul, through the spirit of Christ, and the body, through the putrefaction of the earth, from which, at the end of the day [Last judgement Day] he shall be severed and be formed again into the image of God. II and III THE TESTAMENT of SIMEON AND LEVI
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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