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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.
1the mouth it is gone out of Sodom, and the body is yet at Sodom, and looks with Lot's wife only upon covetousness, and temporal pleasure, and will not go with the heart out of Sodom. 34. Therefore the angel of the wonders says, you are sifted, and apprehended [ taken or captivated] in the turba, you art [guilty, and] capable of the brimstone-fire: your verbal hypocrisy, in that you say that you are gone out of Babel, and Sodom, does not at all avail you; you are wholly captivated with Lot's wife in the three first; seeing you hunger only after the three first; and use the spirit of Christ [only] for an external covering, and will not hear in you what now the Lord speaks; but hear only what the Antichrist speaks in his pride, covetousness, envy, and anger, how you may please your earthly mortal idol, Mausim [and Mammon], viz. self-love, selfwill, self-sense. 35. You seek and honour only the external idol-god, viz. silver, and gold, copper, and the fullness of the belly to your luxurious, sumptuous, and stately Sodomitical pleasure. And this idol is also sifted for your sake, and is made nigh and far off unto you, and you understand not what it means. You say, There is no danger, and it may well be helped and amended; we may contrive it well enough to a good use. But you know not what is thereby signed and signified. The most inward figure of Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of Salt, is this:
236. When these two angels came from Abraham, viz. from the spirit of Christ, unto Sodom to Lot, and he bowed himself before the Lord unto the earth, and entreated these angels to turn in unto him; they entered according to the divine property essentially in unto him, in manner as they came in unto Abraham with the ens of faith. Even so it was here: for it was but one Covenant. But in Abraham, the seed to Christ's person was named, and not in Lot; as Moses declares very sufficiently. 37. Lot's faith took the ens from the angel, who brought the same to him from Abraham's faith's-ens; for of one (viz. of him who did move and manifest himself in Abraham) they must all be sanctified. Now Lot, by the administration of the angel (understand formed angels, sent out of the divine property, out of Christ's ens and word), was sanctified as a proxime line, [ line of affinity] or branch on the ens of Abraham.
338. And seeing Lot's daughters were capable of this sanctification, and not the mother, the mother must go again into the first matter; and Lot must copulate with his two daughters in the blessed seed; for they were capable of it, and none else in the world. For two potent generations were to arise from thence, viz. the Moabites, and the Ammonites, a great people, as the spirit in Moses does also speak very covertly and hiddenly concerning Lot's daughters; that the one said unto the other, Lo ! there is not a man on the earth to come in unto us after the manner of men; come let us give our father sweet wine to drink; and then we will lie with him; that so he may not know it, and we may preserve seed of our father: for the mother was not capable of this holy seed, seeing she was captivated and taken in the probation [sifting trial] in the turba.
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.
1the mouth it is gone out of Sodom, and the body is yet at Sodom, and looks with Lot's wife only upon covetousness, and temporal pleasure, and will not go with the heart out of Sodom. 34. Therefore the angel of the wonders says, you are sifted, and apprehended [ taken or captivated] in the turba, you art [guilty, and] capable of the brimstone-fire: your verbal hypocrisy, in that you say that you are gone out of Babel, and Sodom, does not at all avail you; you are wholly captivated with Lot's wife in the three first; seeing you hunger only after the three first; and use the spirit of Christ [only] for an external covering, and will not hear in you what now the Lord speaks; but hear only what the Antichrist speaks in his pride, covetousness, envy, and anger, how you may please your earthly mortal idol, Mausim [and Mammon], viz. self-love, selfwill, self-sense. 35. You seek and honour only the external idol-god, viz. silver, and gold, copper, and the fullness of the belly to your luxurious, sumptuous, and stately Sodomitical pleasure. And this idol is also sifted for your sake, and is made nigh and far off unto you, and you understand not what it means. You say, There is no danger, and it may well be helped and amended; we may contrive it well enough to a good use. But you know not what is thereby signed and signified. The most inward figure of Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of Salt, is this:
236. When these two angels came from Abraham, viz. from the spirit of Christ, unto Sodom to Lot, and he bowed himself before the Lord unto the earth, and entreated these angels to turn in unto him; they entered according to the divine property essentially in unto him, in manner as they came in unto Abraham with the ens of faith. Even so it was here: for it was but one Covenant. But in Abraham, the seed to Christ's person was named, and not in Lot; as Moses declares very sufficiently. 37. Lot's faith took the ens from the angel, who brought the same to him from Abraham's faith's-ens; for of one (viz. of him who did move and manifest himself in Abraham) they must all be sanctified. Now Lot, by the administration of the angel (understand formed angels, sent out of the divine property, out of Christ's ens and word), was sanctified as a proxime line, [ line of affinity] or branch on the ens of Abraham.
338. And seeing Lot's daughters were capable of this sanctification, and not the mother, the mother must go again into the first matter; and Lot must copulate with his two daughters in the blessed seed; for they were capable of it, and none else in the world. For two potent generations were to arise from thence, viz. the Moabites, and the Ammonites, a great people, as the spirit in Moses does also speak very covertly and hiddenly concerning Lot's daughters; that the one said unto the other, Lo ! there is not a man on the earth to come in unto us after the manner of men; come let us give our father sweet wine to drink; and then we will lie with him; that so he may not know it, and we may preserve seed of our father: for the mother was not capable of this holy seed, seeing she was captivated and taken in the probation [sifting trial] in the turba.
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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