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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.
130. But the poisonful malignant sensual desire, which the devil had made monstrous, had shut up this holy ens in Adam in death, and covered it with the gross earthly property; like unto a fair piece of gold which was changed into lead, so that one would say, the gold is dead and gone. And 'twere truly so indeed, if the artist did not again redeem it. 31. Thus likewise the heavenly artist would not reject Adam's disappeared gold, and make clean another new thing, but he took his own tincture, and of his own gold, out of which he had made Adam's gold, and tinctured Adam's gold with his own gold, [even] with his tincture, that is, with the Word, viz. with the power of God, and with the essence of the Word, viz. with the heavenly corporality. 32. So that Christ became a God-man, and Adam and Abraham in Christ a man-God; God and man one person undivided, according to and out of all the three Principles of eternity and time, according to and out of body and soul; with every property of man, and every divine property: except the Serpent's property which Adam lusted after, took in, and imprinted on himself; the same he did not assume; but the ens, understand the human ens, whereinto the devil had
2sown his seed, that he must assume, and therein bruise the head of the devil, and of the insown Serpent's ens, and destroy the prison of death, which held the heavenly ens shut up; and spring forth afresh; as the dry rod of Aaron, which budded and bare green almonds, was a lively representation of this: and this is the true understanding of the seed of Abraham and his Blessing, as he means. 33. Abraham in the spirit of Christ should be a blessing, for Abraham's ens, and Christ's ens, has blessed all nations. Understand, the line of the Covenant, in which the promised Word stood in the aim or limit of the Covenant, viz. the spirit of the five vowels, the great name JEOVA, which God, by the motion of the Covenant in Abraham's seed, made to [be] JEHOVA, or JEHOVAH, as an inspired or inbreathed God, who should bless the whole Alphabet of the sense-all tongue, 1 understand, the formed compacted word, viz. all nations, tongues and speeches: a blessing of the Jews and Gentiles. 1 Or tongue that expresses the sense of all languages in one. 34. For he said, all nations shall be blessed in you, no nation or people excepted, but all, even all; not only the line of the Covenant, but Adam in his children; the line of the Covenant should bless the line of Japhet and Ham; for Japheth should dwell in Shem's tent, that is, in Christ, viz. Japheth should be received into Shem's line.
335. But the gross earthly Ham (understand the gross flesh) is accursed in Ham and Cain, and shall not inherit God's kingdom (John vi. 63). Not Ham in soul and body [is cursed], but the Serpent's man, whose figure according to the outward, Cain and Ham must represent, so that all properties might be manifest in an external figure. 36. Therefore we admonish theJews, that they learn to know their Messiah. For the time of their visitation is at hand, wherein they shall be redeemed from the captivity of their misery, and be made free again. 37. Also we admonish those that are ours, that they grant Mary to be the daughter of Abraham, and Adam, and Christ's mother as to the soul, and Adam's created image, and not according to the Deity, or according to the ens in the Word of life which came from heaven, for that was not her propriety. Indeed it stood in her, but [it was] in the Word of the promise in the eye-mark of the Covenant (which was accomplished, or) at the limit, [in her] . 38. But she is not the mother, which has brought forth or born God, as the Jews and Turks do say that we so teach; but God has brought forth and blessed the same in her seed; she in her seed received the power of the Holy Ghost in the Word, and brought forth the creature which was God and man.
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.
130. But the poisonful malignant sensual desire, which the devil had made monstrous, had shut up this holy ens in Adam in death, and covered it with the gross earthly property; like unto a fair piece of gold which was changed into lead, so that one would say, the gold is dead and gone. And 'twere truly so indeed, if the artist did not again redeem it. 31. Thus likewise the heavenly artist would not reject Adam's disappeared gold, and make clean another new thing, but he took his own tincture, and of his own gold, out of which he had made Adam's gold, and tinctured Adam's gold with his own gold, [even] with his tincture, that is, with the Word, viz. with the power of God, and with the essence of the Word, viz. with the heavenly corporality. 32. So that Christ became a God-man, and Adam and Abraham in Christ a man-God; God and man one person undivided, according to and out of all the three Principles of eternity and time, according to and out of body and soul; with every property of man, and every divine property: except the Serpent's property which Adam lusted after, took in, and imprinted on himself; the same he did not assume; but the ens, understand the human ens, whereinto the devil had
2sown his seed, that he must assume, and therein bruise the head of the devil, and of the insown Serpent's ens, and destroy the prison of death, which held the heavenly ens shut up; and spring forth afresh; as the dry rod of Aaron, which budded and bare green almonds, was a lively representation of this: and this is the true understanding of the seed of Abraham and his Blessing, as he means. 33. Abraham in the spirit of Christ should be a blessing, for Abraham's ens, and Christ's ens, has blessed all nations. Understand, the line of the Covenant, in which the promised Word stood in the aim or limit of the Covenant, viz. the spirit of the five vowels, the great name JEOVA, which God, by the motion of the Covenant in Abraham's seed, made to [be] JEHOVA, or JEHOVAH, as an inspired or inbreathed God, who should bless the whole Alphabet of the sense-all tongue, 1 understand, the formed compacted word, viz. all nations, tongues and speeches: a blessing of the Jews and Gentiles. 1 Or tongue that expresses the sense of all languages in one. 34. For he said, all nations shall be blessed in you, no nation or people excepted, but all, even all; not only the line of the Covenant, but Adam in his children; the line of the Covenant should bless the line of Japhet and Ham; for Japheth should dwell in Shem's tent, that is, in Christ, viz. Japheth should be received into Shem's line.
335. But the gross earthly Ham (understand the gross flesh) is accursed in Ham and Cain, and shall not inherit God's kingdom (John vi. 63). Not Ham in soul and body [is cursed], but the Serpent's man, whose figure according to the outward, Cain and Ham must represent, so that all properties might be manifest in an external figure. 36. Therefore we admonish theJews, that they learn to know their Messiah. For the time of their visitation is at hand, wherein they shall be redeemed from the captivity of their misery, and be made free again. 37. Also we admonish those that are ours, that they grant Mary to be the daughter of Abraham, and Adam, and Christ's mother as to the soul, and Adam's created image, and not according to the Deity, or according to the ens in the Word of life which came from heaven, for that was not her propriety. Indeed it stood in her, but [it was] in the Word of the promise in the eye-mark of the Covenant (which was accomplished, or) at the limit, [in her] . 38. But she is not the mother, which has brought forth or born God, as the Jews and Turks do say that we so teach; but God has brought forth and blessed the same in her seed; she in her seed received the power of the Holy Ghost in the Word, and brought forth the creature which was God and man.
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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