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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.
1to his humanity, and will much more be done in his last manifestation, that all people will cleave to him and acknowledge him. When Babel takes its end then will this be first perfectly fulfilled, which dependence and cleaving to him at present the images, imaginations or fictions of opinions and sects in Babel, do keep back, in that the strange and foreign people and nations stumble, and are scandalised at the contentions and disputations of confounded speeches, and withhold from it. 52. But when the tower of Babel falls on every side, then shall all people cleave to him, honour and serve him, which dependence and cleaving to him supposed Christendom has hindered by the Antichrist, which has a Ion g time sat in the seat of Christ as an earthly god. When this ceases, then will the kingdom of Christ be wholly manifest, which men at present behold only in images [opinions, without certain knowledge] : This is understood by those of our society. 53. Also, He will bind his foal to the vine, and his she-ass's colt to the noble branch.
2O you poor, sick, old, miserable Adam, if you did understand this rightly, then you would be delivered from all strife. What is the foal and the she-ass's colt? The foal is the human soul: for the young lion signifies the power of the divine Word in the soul; but the foal is the natural soul, which Christ should bind to the vine of the sweet-tasted divine love, viz. the eternal- speaking Word would bind this foal, the creaturely soul's word of the soul's essence and substance, to itself and be married to it; and the she-ass is the inward Paradisical man, viz. the divine man, from the ens of the inward ground, from the heavenly world's light's substance, viz. the Virgin Sophia. 54. This she-ass, which must bear the outward burden of the bestial man upon it, should Christ, that is, the Word, bind to the name Jesus, viz. to God's own self-subsisting substance, viz. to the most noble branch, which bears the sweet wine of the love of God. 55. And this she-ass is the temple of God, wherein the kingdom of God is again manifested in us; it is Christ in us (Col. i. 27 and iii. 11), which, as a she-ass in man, himself takes upon him the burden and sin of man, and slays it through the young lion.
356. This inward new spiritual holy man is rightly the she-ass's colt, for it must be manifested through the soul, as light is manifested through fire. Thus a man is to understand that the light is the fire's colt, and is manifested through the fire from the dying of the candle: thus also it is to be understood in the ground of the soul, which is also a fire-spirit. 57. O you poor Christendom! if you did understand this rightly, and did press into it, so that you also, with this she-ass which faded in Adam, stood bound to the foal's noble branch, what need of striving then? Is it not now a simple she-ass which bears Christ and Adam upon it, viz. Christ in it, which is its noble branch, viz. its sap and power, and Adam upon it as a burden? 58. O you Babylonish whore! you keep off this she-ass with your dragon-beast, so that poor Christendom must bear your evil beast; whereon you, whore, ridest: but your time is near, that you are to go into the abyss of hell-fire, says the spirit of wonders. 59. Also, He will wash his garment in wine, and his mantle in the blood of the grape.
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.
1to his humanity, and will much more be done in his last manifestation, that all people will cleave to him and acknowledge him. When Babel takes its end then will this be first perfectly fulfilled, which dependence and cleaving to him at present the images, imaginations or fictions of opinions and sects in Babel, do keep back, in that the strange and foreign people and nations stumble, and are scandalised at the contentions and disputations of confounded speeches, and withhold from it. 52. But when the tower of Babel falls on every side, then shall all people cleave to him, honour and serve him, which dependence and cleaving to him supposed Christendom has hindered by the Antichrist, which has a Ion g time sat in the seat of Christ as an earthly god. When this ceases, then will the kingdom of Christ be wholly manifest, which men at present behold only in images [opinions, without certain knowledge] : This is understood by those of our society. 53. Also, He will bind his foal to the vine, and his she-ass's colt to the noble branch.
2O you poor, sick, old, miserable Adam, if you did understand this rightly, then you would be delivered from all strife. What is the foal and the she-ass's colt? The foal is the human soul: for the young lion signifies the power of the divine Word in the soul; but the foal is the natural soul, which Christ should bind to the vine of the sweet-tasted divine love, viz. the eternal- speaking Word would bind this foal, the creaturely soul's word of the soul's essence and substance, to itself and be married to it; and the she-ass is the inward Paradisical man, viz. the divine man, from the ens of the inward ground, from the heavenly world's light's substance, viz. the Virgin Sophia. 54. This she-ass, which must bear the outward burden of the bestial man upon it, should Christ, that is, the Word, bind to the name Jesus, viz. to God's own self-subsisting substance, viz. to the most noble branch, which bears the sweet wine of the love of God. 55. And this she-ass is the temple of God, wherein the kingdom of God is again manifested in us; it is Christ in us (Col. i. 27 and iii. 11), which, as a she-ass in man, himself takes upon him the burden and sin of man, and slays it through the young lion.
356. This inward new spiritual holy man is rightly the she-ass's colt, for it must be manifested through the soul, as light is manifested through fire. Thus a man is to understand that the light is the fire's colt, and is manifested through the fire from the dying of the candle: thus also it is to be understood in the ground of the soul, which is also a fire-spirit. 57. O you poor Christendom! if you did understand this rightly, and did press into it, so that you also, with this she-ass which faded in Adam, stood bound to the foal's noble branch, what need of striving then? Is it not now a simple she-ass which bears Christ and Adam upon it, viz. Christ in it, which is its noble branch, viz. its sap and power, and Adam upon it as a burden? 58. O you Babylonish whore! you keep off this she-ass with your dragon-beast, so that poor Christendom must bear your evil beast; whereon you, whore, ridest: but your time is near, that you are to go into the abyss of hell-fire, says the spirit of wonders. 59. Also, He will wash his garment in wine, and his mantle in the blood of the grape.
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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