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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.
1O thou Life of my Fleih and of my Soul in Christ my Brother, I. beseech thee in the Hunger of my Soul, and entreat thee with all my Powers, though they be weak, to give me what thou hast promised me, and freely bestow upon me in my Saviour Jesus 1*3 The Way to Qhrist . Christ, His Flesh for Food and his Blood for Drink, to refresh my poor hungry Soul, that it may be quickened, and strengthened in the Word which became Man, by which it may long and hunger after thee aright. O thou deepest Love in the most sweet* Name JESUS, give thyself into the Desire of my Soul. For therefore thou hast moved thyself, and according to thy great Sweetness manifested thyself, in the Human Nature, and called us to thee: we who hunger and thirst after thee, and hast promised us that thou wilt refresh us. I now open the Lips of my Soul to thee, O thou sweet Truth ; and though I am not worthy to desire it of thy Holiness, yet I come to thee through thy bittec Passion and Death : thou having sprinkled my Uncleanness with thy Blood, arid sanctified me in thy Humanity , and made an open Gate for me through thy Death, to thy sweet Love in thy Blood. Through thy five holy Wounds, from which thou didst shed thy Blood, I bring the Desire of my Soul into thy Love.
2O fesus Christ, thou Son of GOD and Man, I pray thee receive into thyself thy purchased Inheritance, which thy Father -hath given thee. I cry within me, that I may enter through thy holy Blood and Death into thee. Open thyself in me, that the Spirit of my Soul may reach thee, and receive thee into it. Lay hold on my Thirst in me with thy Thirst ; bring thy Thirst after us Men, which thou hadst upon the Cross, into my Thirst, and give me thy Blood to drink in my Thirst. That my Death in me which holdeth me Captive, may be drowned in the Blood of thy Love, and that my extinguished or suppressed Image, which as to the Kingdom of Heaven disappeared in my Father Adam through Sin, may be made alive through thy powerful Blood, and my Soul clothed with it again as with the new Body which dwelleth in Heaven. In which Image thy holy Power and Word that became Man dwelleth, which is the Temple of the Holy Spirit, who dwelleth in us according to thy Promise, saying, ‘ we will come to you t and ‘ make our Abode with you.’ O thou great Love of fesus Christ, I can do no more than sink my Desire into thee ; thy Word which became Man, is Truth ; since thou hast bidden me come, now I come. Be it unto me according to thy Word and Will. Amen. Of 'True 'Repentance. A ’Vy'arning to the Reader.
3B ELOVED Reader, out of Love to thee, I will not conceal from thee what is here earnestly signified to me. If thou lovest the Vanity of the Flesh still, and art not in an earnest Purpose on the Way to the New Birth of Re - generation , intending to become a Nezv Alan, then leave the above-written Words in these Prayers unnamed ; else they will turn to a Judgment of God in thee. Thou must not take the holy Names in vain, thou art faithfully warned : They belong to the Thirsty Soul. But if thy Soul be in earnest, it shall find by Experience what Words they are. A direction, How the Soul must meet its Beloved , when she knocketh in its Centre , or Closed Inner-Chamber . B ELOVED Soul, if thou wilt be earnest without Intermission; thou shalt certainly obtain the Favour of a Kiss from the Noble Sophia {or Divine Wisdom ) in the Holy Name JESUS ; for she standeth ever before the Door of the Soul \ knocking , and warning the Sinner of his wicked Way. Now if he once thus desireth her Love, she is ready for him, and kisseth him with the Beams of her sweet Love, from whence the Heart receiveth Joy. But she doth not presently unite herself with the Soul, that is, she doth not presently awaken the extinguished Heavenly Image in herself, which disappeared in Adam in Paradise . No, there might be Danger to Man in that ; for if Adam and Lucifer fell having it manifested in them, the same may easily happen to Man, who is still so strongly enthralled in Vanity.
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.
1O thou Life of my Fleih and of my Soul in Christ my Brother, I. beseech thee in the Hunger of my Soul, and entreat thee with all my Powers, though they be weak, to give me what thou hast promised me, and freely bestow upon me in my Saviour Jesus 1*3 The Way to Qhrist . Christ, His Flesh for Food and his Blood for Drink, to refresh my poor hungry Soul, that it may be quickened, and strengthened in the Word which became Man, by which it may long and hunger after thee aright. O thou deepest Love in the most sweet* Name JESUS, give thyself into the Desire of my Soul. For therefore thou hast moved thyself, and according to thy great Sweetness manifested thyself, in the Human Nature, and called us to thee: we who hunger and thirst after thee, and hast promised us that thou wilt refresh us. I now open the Lips of my Soul to thee, O thou sweet Truth ; and though I am not worthy to desire it of thy Holiness, yet I come to thee through thy bittec Passion and Death : thou having sprinkled my Uncleanness with thy Blood, arid sanctified me in thy Humanity , and made an open Gate for me through thy Death, to thy sweet Love in thy Blood. Through thy five holy Wounds, from which thou didst shed thy Blood, I bring the Desire of my Soul into thy Love.
2O fesus Christ, thou Son of GOD and Man, I pray thee receive into thyself thy purchased Inheritance, which thy Father -hath given thee. I cry within me, that I may enter through thy holy Blood and Death into thee. Open thyself in me, that the Spirit of my Soul may reach thee, and receive thee into it. Lay hold on my Thirst in me with thy Thirst ; bring thy Thirst after us Men, which thou hadst upon the Cross, into my Thirst, and give me thy Blood to drink in my Thirst. That my Death in me which holdeth me Captive, may be drowned in the Blood of thy Love, and that my extinguished or suppressed Image, which as to the Kingdom of Heaven disappeared in my Father Adam through Sin, may be made alive through thy powerful Blood, and my Soul clothed with it again as with the new Body which dwelleth in Heaven. In which Image thy holy Power and Word that became Man dwelleth, which is the Temple of the Holy Spirit, who dwelleth in us according to thy Promise, saying, ‘ we will come to you t and ‘ make our Abode with you.’ O thou great Love of fesus Christ, I can do no more than sink my Desire into thee ; thy Word which became Man, is Truth ; since thou hast bidden me come, now I come. Be it unto me according to thy Word and Will. Amen. Of 'True 'Repentance. A ’Vy'arning to the Reader.
3B ELOVED Reader, out of Love to thee, I will not conceal from thee what is here earnestly signified to me. If thou lovest the Vanity of the Flesh still, and art not in an earnest Purpose on the Way to the New Birth of Re - generation , intending to become a Nezv Alan, then leave the above-written Words in these Prayers unnamed ; else they will turn to a Judgment of God in thee. Thou must not take the holy Names in vain, thou art faithfully warned : They belong to the Thirsty Soul. But if thy Soul be in earnest, it shall find by Experience what Words they are. A direction, How the Soul must meet its Beloved , when she knocketh in its Centre , or Closed Inner-Chamber . B ELOVED Soul, if thou wilt be earnest without Intermission; thou shalt certainly obtain the Favour of a Kiss from the Noble Sophia {or Divine Wisdom ) in the Holy Name JESUS ; for she standeth ever before the Door of the Soul \ knocking , and warning the Sinner of his wicked Way. Now if he once thus desireth her Love, she is ready for him, and kisseth him with the Beams of her sweet Love, from whence the Heart receiveth Joy. But she doth not presently unite herself with the Soul, that is, she doth not presently awaken the extinguished Heavenly Image in herself, which disappeared in Adam in Paradise . No, there might be Danger to Man in that ; for if Adam and Lucifer fell having it manifested in them, the same may easily happen to Man, who is still so strongly enthralled in Vanity.
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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