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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.
124. Why must even the mocker be thus done unto? Because in him lay the kingdom of the wonders of God's manifestation out of nature, viz. out of the fire-world, out of God's strength and omnipotence; which he will again introduce in Christ into the love, viz. into the only free One. But Hagar, viz. the will of the fire-soul's nature, must be converted and enter into repentance, humble itself before the free, viz. the only merciful love-will, viz. before the Covenant and seed in Isaac, and cast away the rebellious will from itself. 25. And therefore the Lord sent his angel to meet her, and manifested himself unto her with his voice, and she called the name of the Lord Thou God sees me: Here I have seen him who has looked after me. That is, the contrary or rebellious will ran away from the free, viz. from God. But God looked again upon the poor miserable and captive soul, and called it again. And then said the soul, Certainly, here I have seen him who has looked after me, after that my will of self, viz. of nature, was run forth from him; which is thus much.
226. When as the mocker, viz. selfwill is gone forth in its nature, and has brought itself into an opposition against its brethren 1 (who sometimes will not work in their heavenly allotted ens), and set itself against them with contempt and scorn; and performed its office of nature given unto it for the exercise of the children of God; then God looks also upon the mocker, as his instrument to the exercising of the soul, and wills not that the soul should perish. He looks on it again, instructs it, and calls it, and draws it also in man's conscience unto himself; this now is the meaning: he has looked after me, even when I had almost accomplished the work of nature in the will of self. 1 Understand, the powers of the soul; and also all holy men in whom the light prevails.
327. Hagar being thus seen of God, when she became disobedient to her mistress, and ran away from her, and without doubt in an opposite will against her mistress, the same did much trouble, move and affect the woman. Thereby her mistress, viz. Sarah, was also exercised, so that she was earnestly moved in herself, and called and prayed to God, that he would take away her reproach; in that she was barren, and bless her, and make her fruitful; that she also did purify the house or vessel wherein she should receive the holy seed of Abraham in his blessed seed, and not introduce any human wantonness of nature into Abraham's blessed seed; but desired she might have a right divine desire in her, wherein she might take the seed of Abraham. 28. And even therefore God made her barren, even to her old age, lest the bestial lust should be predominant in her, and mix itself in Abraham's blessed seed; for she should give all her human power (viz. the woman's seed in the Covenant, which did move itself in her, as to the kingdom of nature) into the seed of Abraham; not out of the wantonness of bestial lust, but out of the desire of the nature of the formed word. Therefore the bestial lust, introduced by Adam (in which lust the devil had made his murdering den), must be first even as quite mortified in her, that so the inward nature might yet stand only in the desire, viz. the formed word's ens as to the creature.
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.
124. Why must even the mocker be thus done unto? Because in him lay the kingdom of the wonders of God's manifestation out of nature, viz. out of the fire-world, out of God's strength and omnipotence; which he will again introduce in Christ into the love, viz. into the only free One. But Hagar, viz. the will of the fire-soul's nature, must be converted and enter into repentance, humble itself before the free, viz. the only merciful love-will, viz. before the Covenant and seed in Isaac, and cast away the rebellious will from itself. 25. And therefore the Lord sent his angel to meet her, and manifested himself unto her with his voice, and she called the name of the Lord Thou God sees me: Here I have seen him who has looked after me. That is, the contrary or rebellious will ran away from the free, viz. from God. But God looked again upon the poor miserable and captive soul, and called it again. And then said the soul, Certainly, here I have seen him who has looked after me, after that my will of self, viz. of nature, was run forth from him; which is thus much.
226. When as the mocker, viz. selfwill is gone forth in its nature, and has brought itself into an opposition against its brethren 1 (who sometimes will not work in their heavenly allotted ens), and set itself against them with contempt and scorn; and performed its office of nature given unto it for the exercise of the children of God; then God looks also upon the mocker, as his instrument to the exercising of the soul, and wills not that the soul should perish. He looks on it again, instructs it, and calls it, and draws it also in man's conscience unto himself; this now is the meaning: he has looked after me, even when I had almost accomplished the work of nature in the will of self. 1 Understand, the powers of the soul; and also all holy men in whom the light prevails.
327. Hagar being thus seen of God, when she became disobedient to her mistress, and ran away from her, and without doubt in an opposite will against her mistress, the same did much trouble, move and affect the woman. Thereby her mistress, viz. Sarah, was also exercised, so that she was earnestly moved in herself, and called and prayed to God, that he would take away her reproach; in that she was barren, and bless her, and make her fruitful; that she also did purify the house or vessel wherein she should receive the holy seed of Abraham in his blessed seed, and not introduce any human wantonness of nature into Abraham's blessed seed; but desired she might have a right divine desire in her, wherein she might take the seed of Abraham. 28. And even therefore God made her barren, even to her old age, lest the bestial lust should be predominant in her, and mix itself in Abraham's blessed seed; for she should give all her human power (viz. the woman's seed in the Covenant, which did move itself in her, as to the kingdom of nature) into the seed of Abraham; not out of the wantonness of bestial lust, but out of the desire of the nature of the formed word. Therefore the bestial lust, introduced by Adam (in which lust the devil had made his murdering den), must be first even as quite mortified in her, that so the inward nature might yet stand only in the desire, viz. the formed word's ens as to the creature.
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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