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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.
126. The seven heads of the beast are the seven properties of nature, which are departed from the temperature, and have attained seven heads, viz. a sevenfold will, whence the life is come to be in strife, misery, sickness and corruption; and the whore upon this beast is the soul, which is defiled as a whore, and enters before God with this whore's image, and plays the hypocrite in his presence. 27. But the will of the seven-headed beast gives its power and strength to the whore, viz. to the soul, so that the soul sticks full of murder, pride, whorish lust, and self-honour; and in this Church and den of murder God's honour will not be. 28. This figure and magic exposition concerning Simeon and Levi prefigures to us the spiritual, and the worldly, dominion. First, in every man, whereby he governs himself both in spiritual and in natural things; and secondly, the management and authority of spiritual and of worldly offices, both in the Church and in worldly matters; whatsoever rules therein in Adamical self-power, without the new regeneration, that bears this image in it, viz. the murdering sword, where men condemn and slay one another with words. 29. All scurrilous, slanderous, libellous books, wherein men reproach and kill one another with words for the sake of the divine gift and knowledge, are the murderous swords of Simeon and Levi. Also all unrighteous sentences of worldly judgement are the same, and God's honour and will is not therein.
230. The spirit takes them both together in one figure, because both these offices govern the Adamical nature. They govern the world, viz. the formed outspoken word of God, [and] to them is given the power and authority of the kingdom of nature: but they shall give an account of this governme'nt. for the judgement of God is set in this figure, and the Apocalypse (Rev. xix. 20) casts the falsehood and wickedness of this image down into the fiery lake that burns with brimstone, and seals up the beast and the whore in eternity, and gives the kingdom, the power and authority, together with the priesthood, to Christ, and [to] his children born of him. 31. The spirit of Moses says, In their anger they have slain a man, and in their self-will they have destroyed oxen (Gen. xlix. 6). The man signifies the inward spiritual man, viz. the true image of God, which Adam murdered, in all his children, through his anger, viz. through the first Principle (the kingdom of God's anger, which Adam awakened with his desire and lust); and it signifies further, Christ that should come, whom the Levites, with the Simeonites, viz. worldly dominion, viz. the Pharisees and heathenish government, would kill. For Jacob said he would make known to them what would befall them in the future times. 32. Therefore this figure looks at the future man, Christ, whom
3the Levites would, slay in their envy and anger, as is also come to pass: and for that cause shall his honour be no more in their Churches. For after such slaying of Christ their Church was taken from them, and the temple destroyed, and their sacrifices ceased, in which formerly the figure of Christ, viz. God's honour, stood. 33. But the oxen, which they have caused to perish in their selfwill, signifies the outward man from the limus of the earth, which they have caused to perish with the desire of vanity, so that it is become so grossly bestial and miserable that it is turned from a heavenly Paradisical image into a corruptible one, which is done out of self-will. 34. Further, it points at the future self-will of the Levites, with their worldly dominion, signifying how they would slay and kill with their murdering swords: whereas they can destroy no more of God's children but the oxen, viz. the bestial man. Which murdering swords have ever been among this generation, both with the Jews and [with the] Christians: which the children of God ought well to observe, that the spirit of God in the Covenant says, his soul shall not be in their murderous counsel, nor his honour in their Churches; for the sake of which they murder and destroy many that will not believe their sects and self-willed conclusions and determinations.
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.
126. The seven heads of the beast are the seven properties of nature, which are departed from the temperature, and have attained seven heads, viz. a sevenfold will, whence the life is come to be in strife, misery, sickness and corruption; and the whore upon this beast is the soul, which is defiled as a whore, and enters before God with this whore's image, and plays the hypocrite in his presence. 27. But the will of the seven-headed beast gives its power and strength to the whore, viz. to the soul, so that the soul sticks full of murder, pride, whorish lust, and self-honour; and in this Church and den of murder God's honour will not be. 28. This figure and magic exposition concerning Simeon and Levi prefigures to us the spiritual, and the worldly, dominion. First, in every man, whereby he governs himself both in spiritual and in natural things; and secondly, the management and authority of spiritual and of worldly offices, both in the Church and in worldly matters; whatsoever rules therein in Adamical self-power, without the new regeneration, that bears this image in it, viz. the murdering sword, where men condemn and slay one another with words. 29. All scurrilous, slanderous, libellous books, wherein men reproach and kill one another with words for the sake of the divine gift and knowledge, are the murderous swords of Simeon and Levi. Also all unrighteous sentences of worldly judgement are the same, and God's honour and will is not therein.
230. The spirit takes them both together in one figure, because both these offices govern the Adamical nature. They govern the world, viz. the formed outspoken word of God, [and] to them is given the power and authority of the kingdom of nature: but they shall give an account of this governme'nt. for the judgement of God is set in this figure, and the Apocalypse (Rev. xix. 20) casts the falsehood and wickedness of this image down into the fiery lake that burns with brimstone, and seals up the beast and the whore in eternity, and gives the kingdom, the power and authority, together with the priesthood, to Christ, and [to] his children born of him. 31. The spirit of Moses says, In their anger they have slain a man, and in their self-will they have destroyed oxen (Gen. xlix. 6). The man signifies the inward spiritual man, viz. the true image of God, which Adam murdered, in all his children, through his anger, viz. through the first Principle (the kingdom of God's anger, which Adam awakened with his desire and lust); and it signifies further, Christ that should come, whom the Levites, with the Simeonites, viz. worldly dominion, viz. the Pharisees and heathenish government, would kill. For Jacob said he would make known to them what would befall them in the future times. 32. Therefore this figure looks at the future man, Christ, whom
3the Levites would, slay in their envy and anger, as is also come to pass: and for that cause shall his honour be no more in their Churches. For after such slaying of Christ their Church was taken from them, and the temple destroyed, and their sacrifices ceased, in which formerly the figure of Christ, viz. God's honour, stood. 33. But the oxen, which they have caused to perish in their selfwill, signifies the outward man from the limus of the earth, which they have caused to perish with the desire of vanity, so that it is become so grossly bestial and miserable that it is turned from a heavenly Paradisical image into a corruptible one, which is done out of self-will. 34. Further, it points at the future self-will of the Levites, with their worldly dominion, signifying how they would slay and kill with their murdering swords: whereas they can destroy no more of God's children but the oxen, viz. the bestial man. Which murdering swords have ever been among this generation, both with the Jews and [with the] Christians: which the children of God ought well to observe, that the spirit of God in the Covenant says, his soul shall not be in their murderous counsel, nor his honour in their Churches; for the sake of which they murder and destroy many that will not believe their sects and self-willed conclusions and determinations.
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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