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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.
115. Understand it aright, ye Jews and Christians; you have but one only baptism; the Jew is baptised inwardly on the soul in the ens of the Covenant, and circumcised on the disappeared ens of the right heavenly humanity, viz. the Serpent's ens is cut off from the heavenly ens in the power of the Word, and the flaming love- spirit in the ens of the Word tinctures the true humanity, and baptises it with the in-taken or conceived ens of faith; the faith, in the spirit of God baptises it with its heavenly water. 16. And the Christian is baptised even with the same very word and water in the faith; it is wholly one and the same; only, this is the [external] difference: that God has appointed and established the Covenant of circumcision in the baptism of water; seeing that this fire-baptism has manifested itself in Christ's humanity in the water of life. 17. And that you may yet see, that they are both one, Christ was circumcised as a Jew, and was baptised as a Christian; thereby to declare that he, in his love, revealed in the humanity, had manifested the fire-baptism in the water, viz. in great meekness and longsufferance, and changed them into one.
218. The ens of faith was not yet become incarnate among theJews, therefore God gave them the sign of the inward circumcision by the cutting off of the outward foreskin, that so they might have a sign that the Holy Spirit, in the ens of faith in the Covenant, would cut off their sinful birth; whereby they were the children of grace in the ens of faith. 19. But this same ens, of faith was first made flesh among the Christians in Christ's humanity, and is also now incarnate in the children of faith in their true man. The Christians do now in their faith's desire put on Christ (viz. this ens of faith, which the Jews did also put on in the flesh) in the heavenly flesh, viz. in the heavenly living water in the divine manifestation. 20. This water is the heaven, wherein the only holy element is the motion and essence; it is Christ's, viz. God's, holy corporeity, viz. the formed wisdom of the forth-breathed or formed word of the divine powers, God's living, eternal- speaking Word, which is a spirit, and the divine understanding; which again attracts to itself its own forth-breathed essence, viz. the forming of its wisdom.
321. The Father's will draws the soul, which is a fire-breath out of its fire-spirit, unto itself; and the Son's will draws the noble image created out of the wisdom, viz. out of the heavenly essence, to itself; and the Holy Spirit draws the whole moving human understanding to itself so that it is a God-Man, and a Man-God, God made manifest in an image; and this is the image of God. And thus also the circumcision and the baptism is to be understood, which in both is the ground and chief cornerstone to the new birth, among the Jews, and Christians. 22. Now in that the males were to be circumcised, and not the females, and yet all are to be baptised among the Christians, is thus to be understood, as follows. Mark it aright, ye Jews and Christians, and all other nations, we tell and declare it unto you all, for ye are hereby called; the time is come about that the Antichrist must die. 23. Adam was the image of God, he was man and woman, and yet neither of them before his Eve, but a masculine virgin in peculiar love, full of chastity and purity. The tinctures, viz. the power of the fire and light, according to the property of the Father and Son, were both in each other as one, in an incessant conjunction of desire, wherein stood the peculiar fiery love-desire.
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.
115. Understand it aright, ye Jews and Christians; you have but one only baptism; the Jew is baptised inwardly on the soul in the ens of the Covenant, and circumcised on the disappeared ens of the right heavenly humanity, viz. the Serpent's ens is cut off from the heavenly ens in the power of the Word, and the flaming love- spirit in the ens of the Word tinctures the true humanity, and baptises it with the in-taken or conceived ens of faith; the faith, in the spirit of God baptises it with its heavenly water. 16. And the Christian is baptised even with the same very word and water in the faith; it is wholly one and the same; only, this is the [external] difference: that God has appointed and established the Covenant of circumcision in the baptism of water; seeing that this fire-baptism has manifested itself in Christ's humanity in the water of life. 17. And that you may yet see, that they are both one, Christ was circumcised as a Jew, and was baptised as a Christian; thereby to declare that he, in his love, revealed in the humanity, had manifested the fire-baptism in the water, viz. in great meekness and longsufferance, and changed them into one.
218. The ens of faith was not yet become incarnate among theJews, therefore God gave them the sign of the inward circumcision by the cutting off of the outward foreskin, that so they might have a sign that the Holy Spirit, in the ens of faith in the Covenant, would cut off their sinful birth; whereby they were the children of grace in the ens of faith. 19. But this same ens, of faith was first made flesh among the Christians in Christ's humanity, and is also now incarnate in the children of faith in their true man. The Christians do now in their faith's desire put on Christ (viz. this ens of faith, which the Jews did also put on in the flesh) in the heavenly flesh, viz. in the heavenly living water in the divine manifestation. 20. This water is the heaven, wherein the only holy element is the motion and essence; it is Christ's, viz. God's, holy corporeity, viz. the formed wisdom of the forth-breathed or formed word of the divine powers, God's living, eternal- speaking Word, which is a spirit, and the divine understanding; which again attracts to itself its own forth-breathed essence, viz. the forming of its wisdom.
321. The Father's will draws the soul, which is a fire-breath out of its fire-spirit, unto itself; and the Son's will draws the noble image created out of the wisdom, viz. out of the heavenly essence, to itself; and the Holy Spirit draws the whole moving human understanding to itself so that it is a God-Man, and a Man-God, God made manifest in an image; and this is the image of God. And thus also the circumcision and the baptism is to be understood, which in both is the ground and chief cornerstone to the new birth, among the Jews, and Christians. 22. Now in that the males were to be circumcised, and not the females, and yet all are to be baptised among the Christians, is thus to be understood, as follows. Mark it aright, ye Jews and Christians, and all other nations, we tell and declare it unto you all, for ye are hereby called; the time is come about that the Antichrist must die. 23. Adam was the image of God, he was man and woman, and yet neither of them before his Eve, but a masculine virgin in peculiar love, full of chastity and purity. The tinctures, viz. the power of the fire and light, according to the property of the Father and Son, were both in each other as one, in an incessant conjunction of desire, wherein stood the peculiar fiery love-desire.
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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