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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.
1sun, and we see in the substance the body, but not the sun, although it works therein; so likewise the spirit of Christ is hid in the children of God. But as a herb springing from the earth does by the virtue of the sun put forth a fair blossom and fruit, so also God's children out of their disregarded form [or homeliness, to the lewd world's or prating hypocrite's eye, do bring forth the fair fruits of humility and piety]. The forty-First Chapter Of the Seal of the Covenant of Circumcision, and of Baptism 1. WHEN God had made a Covenant with Abram, 1 and blessed him, and made him a father of many nations, which should be blessed through him, viz. by Abram's blessing in the Covenant, then he gave him the seal of the Covenant, viz. the sign and the figure upon what ens the blessing passed; and showed him in this figure, what in man should inherit and possess the eternal blessing; that is to say, not the gross earthly bestial man, which is conceived and born in the lust of the flesh, out of the bestial lust of man and woman; which did involve or insinuate itself into Adam, according to the brutish and bestial property of the divided life's essence. Upon this the Covenant and blessing does not pass; but upon the ens of the Word formed out of the heavenly world's property, out of the limus of the earth; not upon the introduced Serpent's ens out of the dark world's ens and property; but upon the soul, and its right body, which was created to it in Adam.
21 Gen. xvii. 2. And we here see by the circumcision the types that the bestial copulation of man and woman is an abomination before the holiness of God, which yet is borne withal, by divine patience and permission, seeing now it cannot be otherwise with man, he having lost the magical birth of Paradise. For here God set forth the figure in the circumcision, that every male must be circumcised on this member of the propagation of the masculine seed, in that man sows his own will out of the property of nature in his seed; therefore God set forth the figure with the circumcision, both of the earthly seed, and also of the member and will. For the spirit in the Covenant must cut off, through Christ's death, this figure in the inward spiritual man, together with this bestial will and desire. 3. For the bestial gross earthly seed of the man or woman shall not put on the Covenant and blessing, as Christ also said; but he who is not born of the will of man, nor of the flesh, but of God (John i. 13). The bestial birth, with its members, must be cut off through the temporal death; and die in the spiritual birth through Christ's death, and be buried in the eternal death, viz. in the nothing.
34. But seeing the Covenant of God had incorporated itself in Abraham's seed to a propagation, God did here set before him by the circumcision the person of Christ, in whose death this beast and monster should die, and out of his death a new angelical form should come forth. For the circumcision was not the atonement, but the apprehended [or conceived] ens of faith was the atonement; out of which ens of faith Christ should be born; but the circumcision was the sign that the ens of faith in the Word of God, should cut off the earthly seed. 5. For the living Word of God looked into the Covenant; and in the Covenant the human seed of the heavenly part lay disappeared; and in the disappeared ens stood the aim or limit of the new regeneration in Christ's motion, where the Word of the divine tincture and power would again move itself in the true humanity created in Adam; and also it did move itself in the spirit of the children of faith, so that they were received and accepted of God in the spirit (upon the promise of the motion or manifestation of the shut-up ens) as dear innate children.
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.
1sun, and we see in the substance the body, but not the sun, although it works therein; so likewise the spirit of Christ is hid in the children of God. But as a herb springing from the earth does by the virtue of the sun put forth a fair blossom and fruit, so also God's children out of their disregarded form [or homeliness, to the lewd world's or prating hypocrite's eye, do bring forth the fair fruits of humility and piety]. The forty-First Chapter Of the Seal of the Covenant of Circumcision, and of Baptism 1. WHEN God had made a Covenant with Abram, 1 and blessed him, and made him a father of many nations, which should be blessed through him, viz. by Abram's blessing in the Covenant, then he gave him the seal of the Covenant, viz. the sign and the figure upon what ens the blessing passed; and showed him in this figure, what in man should inherit and possess the eternal blessing; that is to say, not the gross earthly bestial man, which is conceived and born in the lust of the flesh, out of the bestial lust of man and woman; which did involve or insinuate itself into Adam, according to the brutish and bestial property of the divided life's essence. Upon this the Covenant and blessing does not pass; but upon the ens of the Word formed out of the heavenly world's property, out of the limus of the earth; not upon the introduced Serpent's ens out of the dark world's ens and property; but upon the soul, and its right body, which was created to it in Adam.
21 Gen. xvii. 2. And we here see by the circumcision the types that the bestial copulation of man and woman is an abomination before the holiness of God, which yet is borne withal, by divine patience and permission, seeing now it cannot be otherwise with man, he having lost the magical birth of Paradise. For here God set forth the figure in the circumcision, that every male must be circumcised on this member of the propagation of the masculine seed, in that man sows his own will out of the property of nature in his seed; therefore God set forth the figure with the circumcision, both of the earthly seed, and also of the member and will. For the spirit in the Covenant must cut off, through Christ's death, this figure in the inward spiritual man, together with this bestial will and desire. 3. For the bestial gross earthly seed of the man or woman shall not put on the Covenant and blessing, as Christ also said; but he who is not born of the will of man, nor of the flesh, but of God (John i. 13). The bestial birth, with its members, must be cut off through the temporal death; and die in the spiritual birth through Christ's death, and be buried in the eternal death, viz. in the nothing.
34. But seeing the Covenant of God had incorporated itself in Abraham's seed to a propagation, God did here set before him by the circumcision the person of Christ, in whose death this beast and monster should die, and out of his death a new angelical form should come forth. For the circumcision was not the atonement, but the apprehended [or conceived] ens of faith was the atonement; out of which ens of faith Christ should be born; but the circumcision was the sign that the ens of faith in the Word of God, should cut off the earthly seed. 5. For the living Word of God looked into the Covenant; and in the Covenant the human seed of the heavenly part lay disappeared; and in the disappeared ens stood the aim or limit of the new regeneration in Christ's motion, where the Word of the divine tincture and power would again move itself in the true humanity created in Adam; and also it did move itself in the spirit of the children of faith, so that they were received and accepted of God in the spirit (upon the promise of the motion or manifestation of the shut-up ens) as dear innate children.
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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