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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.
184. But afterwards, when as they would be only blind beasts, he hid himself also from them in respect of the humanity by the Turkish religion, 1 so that they were wholly deprived of the candlestick of the world, and it went with them, as the prophet said to Israel under their king: Ah! I must give you judges, as informer times (Isa. i. 26). 85. Thus the king of light in the humanity was withdrawn from them, and the judicature of nature was given them again for a guide and governor; so that they returned again into the mother's womb, viz. into the root, out of which man was created, that is, to the only God; so that the name and knowledge of the holy humanity of Christ is yet put out with them. 86. And that they might not use the same so vainly, and uneffectually for swearing, and false defence [or covering], they must again enter into Hagar, as into the mother's womb; and have now verily been a long time a people run away in their mother Hagar from Abraham's house, viz. From the humanity of Christ. 1 The doctrine of Mahomet [Mohammed], or the Alcoran. [Quran]
287. But know and declare this as a word of the Most High, known in the sound of his trumpet, which he has prepared to awaken all nations, and to visit the face of the whole earth: That the angel of the great counsel, viz. the holy voice of Christ, is not departed from them, eternally to forget them, so little as a mother can forget her child, that she should not have pity upon the son of her womb, albeit he were disobedient to her. 88. For as the angel came to Ishmael [being yet in the womb] when his mother fled from Sarah, and did enrich him with a blessing and worldly dominions, and bade the mother with the child return to Sarah; thus likewise when the Eastern Countries entered again into the mother's womb, with their knowledge of religion, God gave unto them, in the kingdom of nature, power and authority over the princely dominions of the world, for to possess and rule them under the light of nature, till its time; and then they shall come in again with great joy, and with great humility, to Abraham, viz. to Christ. 89. And not in the form of the Babylonical, formal, literal Christendom, in their invented and contrived orders, which are only letter 1 Christians (so that a testimony [or some outward footsteps] of Christ and his kingdom have still continued upon the earth), but they shall be born in spirit, and in power; for they are the lost son, which is wandered away from the Father, and is become the swineherd.
390. But when the angel shall bid them return, they come in the humility of the lost son returning to the Father. And then there will be great joy celebrated by Christ and his angels, that the dead is made alive, and the lost is again found, and the true golden jubilee-year of the marriage of the Lamb arises up among them. 91. And albeit the elder brother (who has continued in the letter) does grumble at it, in respect of the different form which he has made to himself (for the most part for his belly and honour), yet they are not moved at it; they are merry with the Father. 92. Now then, if we truly compare counterfeit 2 Christendom and the Turks together, and look upon them aright, then we see that they (since the Turks departed from them) have been but, one people, before God in righteousness and holiness, with different names. 93. And they are the two sons, to one whereof the Father said, Go and do this; and he said, Yea, but did it not; and to the other also, Do this, and he said, No, but did it (Matt. xxi. 28-31). Which does so highly advance or set forth the Turks in the kingdom of nature, which the blind Christian world does not understand. 1 Verbal, outside. 2 Painted.
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.
184. But afterwards, when as they would be only blind beasts, he hid himself also from them in respect of the humanity by the Turkish religion, 1 so that they were wholly deprived of the candlestick of the world, and it went with them, as the prophet said to Israel under their king: Ah! I must give you judges, as informer times (Isa. i. 26). 85. Thus the king of light in the humanity was withdrawn from them, and the judicature of nature was given them again for a guide and governor; so that they returned again into the mother's womb, viz. into the root, out of which man was created, that is, to the only God; so that the name and knowledge of the holy humanity of Christ is yet put out with them. 86. And that they might not use the same so vainly, and uneffectually for swearing, and false defence [or covering], they must again enter into Hagar, as into the mother's womb; and have now verily been a long time a people run away in their mother Hagar from Abraham's house, viz. From the humanity of Christ. 1 The doctrine of Mahomet [Mohammed], or the Alcoran. [Quran]
287. But know and declare this as a word of the Most High, known in the sound of his trumpet, which he has prepared to awaken all nations, and to visit the face of the whole earth: That the angel of the great counsel, viz. the holy voice of Christ, is not departed from them, eternally to forget them, so little as a mother can forget her child, that she should not have pity upon the son of her womb, albeit he were disobedient to her. 88. For as the angel came to Ishmael [being yet in the womb] when his mother fled from Sarah, and did enrich him with a blessing and worldly dominions, and bade the mother with the child return to Sarah; thus likewise when the Eastern Countries entered again into the mother's womb, with their knowledge of religion, God gave unto them, in the kingdom of nature, power and authority over the princely dominions of the world, for to possess and rule them under the light of nature, till its time; and then they shall come in again with great joy, and with great humility, to Abraham, viz. to Christ. 89. And not in the form of the Babylonical, formal, literal Christendom, in their invented and contrived orders, which are only letter 1 Christians (so that a testimony [or some outward footsteps] of Christ and his kingdom have still continued upon the earth), but they shall be born in spirit, and in power; for they are the lost son, which is wandered away from the Father, and is become the swineherd.
390. But when the angel shall bid them return, they come in the humility of the lost son returning to the Father. And then there will be great joy celebrated by Christ and his angels, that the dead is made alive, and the lost is again found, and the true golden jubilee-year of the marriage of the Lamb arises up among them. 91. And albeit the elder brother (who has continued in the letter) does grumble at it, in respect of the different form which he has made to himself (for the most part for his belly and honour), yet they are not moved at it; they are merry with the Father. 92. Now then, if we truly compare counterfeit 2 Christendom and the Turks together, and look upon them aright, then we see that they (since the Turks departed from them) have been but, one people, before God in righteousness and holiness, with different names. 93. And they are the two sons, to one whereof the Father said, Go and do this; and he said, Yea, but did it not; and to the other also, Do this, and he said, No, but did it (Matt. xxi. 28-31). Which does so highly advance or set forth the Turks in the kingdom of nature, which the blind Christian world does not understand. 1 Verbal, outside. 2 Painted.
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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