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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.
122. This holy ens in the Word of faith must enter into the great horror of God's anger; for in its property the soul stood therein essentially. It is out of the Father's fire-property, out of his strength and omnipotence, viz. out of the first Principle. And here the second Principle, viz. the love-fire, came to help it; therefore it must enter again into its own root from whence it came to be a creature; and be tinctured in the power of the love-fire in the divine light, and be changed into an excellent pure divine gold: of which this offering was a type. 23. And that the fowls fell upon the carcasses, which Abraham drove away, signifies the hungry essence of the wrathful property of the anger of God in man, which hungered after the humanity, and would devour the same into itself: But the Word in Abraham's faith drove away the devourer from thence; it should not be devoured, but be offered; that so one essence might enter into another, and overpower the other.
224. The offering of Christ (viz. the humanity of Christ), did indeed give itself wholly as an offering or sacrifice into the Father's anger, into his fire's essence; but the love-spirit of God hindered the wrathful essence of the fire, so that the fire could not devour the humanity of Christ. It took only the self-will of the humanity, and brought it again into the first universal entire will; out of which man's will was given him, which had corrupted him, and brought him to selfhood. Here it was again introduced into the Father's will, viz. into the first root; for so also Christ said (when he in this condition or trial on the Mount of Olives sweat blood), Father, not my will, but thine, be done (Luke xxii. 42). 25. The divided word of man's property, which had turned itself away from the universal perfection, viz. From the ONE, into a selfhood, must enter again into the ALL, and be tried, purged and purified through the fire of God; and live and move in the One, viz. in the Father's only will. 26. The figure of the servitude in Egypt signifies that Christ in his members should be only a pilgrim and stranger in this world, and that the outward man (which is of this world's essence) should be subject to the dominion and power of this world's essence; and be plagued, and always accounted only as a carpenter's axe, whereby men do build the house.
327. For a Christian man is even as God's hatchet, wherewith God builds his house for a habitation; both as to the holy children, and also to the wicked. They must build both. Inwardly from God's spirit they build God's temple, and outwardly with their hands they must be in servitude; for the outward kingdom (wherein they dwell) is not theirs, but the heathen's, which have their heaven therein, and work therein in God's anger. 28. As it was very fully and mystically told to Abraham that he should be subject to servitude in his children, until the iniquity of the Amorites was full. So that herein we see very clearly how God's children must serve the Amorites, viz. the Gentiles, until they also obtain their inheritance in the wrath of God, and also wholly accomplish their works in the anger of God for a building of the dark world; for God said they should serve the Egyptians, and have only plagues for their reward, until they had accomplished and filled up their measure. Thus the wicked must wholly finish their works; and the children of God must be embroiled also in servitude with them.
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.
122. This holy ens in the Word of faith must enter into the great horror of God's anger; for in its property the soul stood therein essentially. It is out of the Father's fire-property, out of his strength and omnipotence, viz. out of the first Principle. And here the second Principle, viz. the love-fire, came to help it; therefore it must enter again into its own root from whence it came to be a creature; and be tinctured in the power of the love-fire in the divine light, and be changed into an excellent pure divine gold: of which this offering was a type. 23. And that the fowls fell upon the carcasses, which Abraham drove away, signifies the hungry essence of the wrathful property of the anger of God in man, which hungered after the humanity, and would devour the same into itself: But the Word in Abraham's faith drove away the devourer from thence; it should not be devoured, but be offered; that so one essence might enter into another, and overpower the other.
224. The offering of Christ (viz. the humanity of Christ), did indeed give itself wholly as an offering or sacrifice into the Father's anger, into his fire's essence; but the love-spirit of God hindered the wrathful essence of the fire, so that the fire could not devour the humanity of Christ. It took only the self-will of the humanity, and brought it again into the first universal entire will; out of which man's will was given him, which had corrupted him, and brought him to selfhood. Here it was again introduced into the Father's will, viz. into the first root; for so also Christ said (when he in this condition or trial on the Mount of Olives sweat blood), Father, not my will, but thine, be done (Luke xxii. 42). 25. The divided word of man's property, which had turned itself away from the universal perfection, viz. From the ONE, into a selfhood, must enter again into the ALL, and be tried, purged and purified through the fire of God; and live and move in the One, viz. in the Father's only will. 26. The figure of the servitude in Egypt signifies that Christ in his members should be only a pilgrim and stranger in this world, and that the outward man (which is of this world's essence) should be subject to the dominion and power of this world's essence; and be plagued, and always accounted only as a carpenter's axe, whereby men do build the house.
327. For a Christian man is even as God's hatchet, wherewith God builds his house for a habitation; both as to the holy children, and also to the wicked. They must build both. Inwardly from God's spirit they build God's temple, and outwardly with their hands they must be in servitude; for the outward kingdom (wherein they dwell) is not theirs, but the heathen's, which have their heaven therein, and work therein in God's anger. 28. As it was very fully and mystically told to Abraham that he should be subject to servitude in his children, until the iniquity of the Amorites was full. So that herein we see very clearly how God's children must serve the Amorites, viz. the Gentiles, until they also obtain their inheritance in the wrath of God, and also wholly accomplish their works in the anger of God for a building of the dark world; for God said they should serve the Egyptians, and have only plagues for their reward, until they had accomplished and filled up their measure. Thus the wicked must wholly finish their works; and the children of God must be embroiled also in servitude with them.
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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