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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.
111. Understand, the soul of Adam knew not Christ in its heavenly matrix in the tincture of Venus. It thought that it was the fair pleasant child; therefore it went with this holy tincture into self-full lust. But now when God showed the soul this holy tincture in the Covenant, then the soul said, I did not know it; viz. that this female property, as it was in me, was God's wife, who brings forth by it; and spoke by the field-captain, viz. by the outward nature to Abraham in Christ: Take now your wife, viz. the heavenly matrix in me; for, look! God is with you in all that you do. That is, I will restore again unto you whatsoever I have taken into my selfpossession, viz. the matrix of the divine world's property, which is closed up in me, and now awakened in you; take it, it is your wife. And when Abraham, understand Christ, took the same (Gen. xx. 17) then all the women and maids of Abimelech, and his servants, understand the daughters of Eve, were healed in the heavenly matrix through Christ's wife, viz. through Sarah in the Covenant, that they again might bring forth God's children.
212. Now the soul in the Father's property spoke to Abraham in Christ, seeing (Matt, xxviii. 18) all power over the humanity was given unto him, Swear unto me by God, that you will not show any unkindness [unfaithfulness] to me, nor my children, nor my nephews; but according to the kindness that I have done unto you, do you also unto me, and to the land wherein you are a stranger. That is, as if God the Father in the soul should speak with Christ his Son, to whom he had given the whole humanity [all mankind] for a peculiar possession, and say thus:
3Seeing I have given you the power in the human property which is mine, to be your own, swear now unto me by God; that is, deeply bind yourself therewith into an essential oath, or one eternal covenant; that you will not show any unkindness to my nature in the human property, nor to the children, viz. to the branches which spring forth anew out of their property; nor to their nephews, or grand-children; that is, to those children who spring out from the wild property, where oftentimes a wicked husband or a wicked wife are joined together, the one being ungodly, and the other honest; but according to the kindness which I have done unto you, even unto your image, (in that I have restored unto you again this heavenly matrix, which in Adam was captivated in my wrath, and disappeared from your image, in my anger), you shall do likewise to me; and unto the land, that is, unto the outward man, wherein God's children bear the heavenly image; that is, unto the land wherein you sojourn.
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.
111. Understand, the soul of Adam knew not Christ in its heavenly matrix in the tincture of Venus. It thought that it was the fair pleasant child; therefore it went with this holy tincture into self-full lust. But now when God showed the soul this holy tincture in the Covenant, then the soul said, I did not know it; viz. that this female property, as it was in me, was God's wife, who brings forth by it; and spoke by the field-captain, viz. by the outward nature to Abraham in Christ: Take now your wife, viz. the heavenly matrix in me; for, look! God is with you in all that you do. That is, I will restore again unto you whatsoever I have taken into my selfpossession, viz. the matrix of the divine world's property, which is closed up in me, and now awakened in you; take it, it is your wife. And when Abraham, understand Christ, took the same (Gen. xx. 17) then all the women and maids of Abimelech, and his servants, understand the daughters of Eve, were healed in the heavenly matrix through Christ's wife, viz. through Sarah in the Covenant, that they again might bring forth God's children.
212. Now the soul in the Father's property spoke to Abraham in Christ, seeing (Matt, xxviii. 18) all power over the humanity was given unto him, Swear unto me by God, that you will not show any unkindness [unfaithfulness] to me, nor my children, nor my nephews; but according to the kindness that I have done unto you, do you also unto me, and to the land wherein you are a stranger. That is, as if God the Father in the soul should speak with Christ his Son, to whom he had given the whole humanity [all mankind] for a peculiar possession, and say thus:
3Seeing I have given you the power in the human property which is mine, to be your own, swear now unto me by God; that is, deeply bind yourself therewith into an essential oath, or one eternal covenant; that you will not show any unkindness to my nature in the human property, nor to the children, viz. to the branches which spring forth anew out of their property; nor to their nephews, or grand-children; that is, to those children who spring out from the wild property, where oftentimes a wicked husband or a wicked wife are joined together, the one being ungodly, and the other honest; but according to the kindness which I have done unto you, even unto your image, (in that I have restored unto you again this heavenly matrix, which in Adam was captivated in my wrath, and disappeared from your image, in my anger), you shall do likewise to me; and unto the land, that is, unto the outward man, wherein God's children bear the heavenly image; that is, unto the land wherein you sojourn.
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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