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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.
129. For the promised Word in the Covenant with Abraham should give itself out of Abraham's seed into Sarah's seed, viz. into the woman's matrix in Venus's tincture, and take unto it the female ens out of the love-tincture, which had parted itself from Adam into a woman. Indeed, not according to the manifest life of the holy heavenly ens shut up in her, which disappeared in Adam and Eve, which was first made manifest in Christ, but according to the kingdom of the formed word of nature, in which the heavenly ens lay shut up, until the motion of the Covenant in the ens of Mary, where the limit or eye-mark stood at the end of the Covenant. 30. Thus Hagar and her son Ishmael (who as to the will of self; viz. as to the devil's introduced desire and his outward constellation, was a mocker of his brethren, and did exercise them) must be an instrument of nature, whereby God manifested his wonders. 31. But as God will not eternally cast away the nature from him, but thus uses it in time in a contrary, to the opening of his wonders of wisdom out of love, and anger, as a generatress of his wonders [in good and evil], the like also we are to understand concerning the evil innate property in man, which cannot judge the soul.
232. But the free will which it has if it therewith continues in the iniquity in selfhood, that condemns it. For it will not enter again into the One, viz. into the quiet Rest. Its condemnation is in itself; and not without it; it makes its hell in itself; that is, it awakens, out of the centre of the eternal spiritual nature, God's wrath in itself; viz. the property of the dark fire- world. In which it is not the child of God's love, but of his anger, of which substance and essence itself is. 33. For if the soul dies to self-will, then it is dead unto hell, viz. to the kingdom of the wrathful nature. Now it cannot do this in its own self-ability, unless God look upon it again, as here happened to Hagar, when she said, Thou God seest me. And therefore she called this place or fountain, the fountain of the living and seeing. For the fountain of life did even there manifest itself in her, and brought her again to conversion. 34. For she should not be cast out with her son from the purpose or election of God, but God did only set forth the figure of both kingdoms in their seed, viz. in Ishmael's, and Isaac's: for thus said God afterwards to Abraham, Moreover, concerning Ishmael I have heard you: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget; and I will make him a great nation (Gen. xvii. 20).
335. Now what God has blessed, that the Bishop with his reason shall not unhallow or make execrable. He 1 has set him 2 up to be a ruler in the kingdom of nature, that he might manifest the wonders of nature, and not predestinated him to condemnation, as Babel judges; in whose hand a shepherd's crook were more comely and fitting, than to expound the mysteries of the Scripture with earthly eyes [or apprehensions], and make conclusions therein; which indeed serve the devil, and make men lewd and profane. 1 God. 2 Ishmael. 36. For though Ishmael was afterwards cast out with his mother Hagar, so that he attained not to the inheritance of Abraham's goods; the same has far another figure than reason sees in it. God set Ishmael to be a prince in the kingdom of nature; and Isaac to be a prince in the kingdom of grace. Ishmael must possess strange [or another sort of] goods, because he was not sprung forth out of the line of the Covenant; and Isaac was of the line of the Covenant; and therefore God gave Isaac Abraham's goods, viz. the blessed inheritance, because he was born of the blessing, and out of him the Lord of the goods should come. Therefore he in the meanwhile should be a possessor of the same dominion, until the Lord should come; and Ishmael must be a servant and minister of the same Lord [who was to come after] .
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.
129. For the promised Word in the Covenant with Abraham should give itself out of Abraham's seed into Sarah's seed, viz. into the woman's matrix in Venus's tincture, and take unto it the female ens out of the love-tincture, which had parted itself from Adam into a woman. Indeed, not according to the manifest life of the holy heavenly ens shut up in her, which disappeared in Adam and Eve, which was first made manifest in Christ, but according to the kingdom of the formed word of nature, in which the heavenly ens lay shut up, until the motion of the Covenant in the ens of Mary, where the limit or eye-mark stood at the end of the Covenant. 30. Thus Hagar and her son Ishmael (who as to the will of self; viz. as to the devil's introduced desire and his outward constellation, was a mocker of his brethren, and did exercise them) must be an instrument of nature, whereby God manifested his wonders. 31. But as God will not eternally cast away the nature from him, but thus uses it in time in a contrary, to the opening of his wonders of wisdom out of love, and anger, as a generatress of his wonders [in good and evil], the like also we are to understand concerning the evil innate property in man, which cannot judge the soul.
232. But the free will which it has if it therewith continues in the iniquity in selfhood, that condemns it. For it will not enter again into the One, viz. into the quiet Rest. Its condemnation is in itself; and not without it; it makes its hell in itself; that is, it awakens, out of the centre of the eternal spiritual nature, God's wrath in itself; viz. the property of the dark fire- world. In which it is not the child of God's love, but of his anger, of which substance and essence itself is. 33. For if the soul dies to self-will, then it is dead unto hell, viz. to the kingdom of the wrathful nature. Now it cannot do this in its own self-ability, unless God look upon it again, as here happened to Hagar, when she said, Thou God seest me. And therefore she called this place or fountain, the fountain of the living and seeing. For the fountain of life did even there manifest itself in her, and brought her again to conversion. 34. For she should not be cast out with her son from the purpose or election of God, but God did only set forth the figure of both kingdoms in their seed, viz. in Ishmael's, and Isaac's: for thus said God afterwards to Abraham, Moreover, concerning Ishmael I have heard you: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget; and I will make him a great nation (Gen. xvii. 20).
335. Now what God has blessed, that the Bishop with his reason shall not unhallow or make execrable. He 1 has set him 2 up to be a ruler in the kingdom of nature, that he might manifest the wonders of nature, and not predestinated him to condemnation, as Babel judges; in whose hand a shepherd's crook were more comely and fitting, than to expound the mysteries of the Scripture with earthly eyes [or apprehensions], and make conclusions therein; which indeed serve the devil, and make men lewd and profane. 1 God. 2 Ishmael. 36. For though Ishmael was afterwards cast out with his mother Hagar, so that he attained not to the inheritance of Abraham's goods; the same has far another figure than reason sees in it. God set Ishmael to be a prince in the kingdom of nature; and Isaac to be a prince in the kingdom of grace. Ishmael must possess strange [or another sort of] goods, because he was not sprung forth out of the line of the Covenant; and Isaac was of the line of the Covenant; and therefore God gave Isaac Abraham's goods, viz. the blessed inheritance, because he was born of the blessing, and out of him the Lord of the goods should come. Therefore he in the meanwhile should be a possessor of the same dominion, until the Lord should come; and Ishmael must be a servant and minister of the same Lord [who was to come after] .
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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