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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 Bond of thy Promise must be firm and steadfast. Before she will Crown thee; thou must be tempted and tried: She taketh the Beams of her Love from thee again, to see whether thou wilt prove faithful ; also she letteth thee stand as it were aloof, and answereth thee not so much as with one Look of her Love. For .before she will Crow*n thee thou must be judged, that thou mayest Taste the bitter Potion of Jlregs, which thou hast filled for thyself in thine Abominations. Thou must come before the Gates of Hell, first, and there show forth thy Victory for her in her Love, in that Strength, wherewith she upheld thee in Opposition to the Devil's malign Influence. 2 — 2 i& The W'ay to Qhrist.
2Christ' was tempted in the Wilderness, and if thou wilt put on Him, thou must go through His whole Progress or Journey, even from His Incarnation to His Ascension, And though thou art not able, nor required to do that which H$ hath done ; yet thou must enter wholly into His Process , and therein die continually from the Corruption of the Soul. For the Virgin Sophia espouseth not herself to the Soul, except in this Property which springeth up in the Soul through the Death of Christ , as a new Plant standing in Heaven. The earthly Body cannot comprehend her in his Lifetime, for it must first die from the corruptible Vanity; but the Heavenly Image which disappeared in Adam % viz., the true Seed of the Woman wherein Go D became Man, and into which He brought His living Seed, the Heavenly Substantiality , is capable of the Pearl \ after the Manner wherein it came to pass in Mary, in the End or Fulfilling of the Covenant*.
3Therefore, take heed what thou cfoest ; When thou hast made thy Promise, keep it ; and then she will crozvn thee mo # re readily than thou wouldst be crowned. But thou must be sure, when the Tempter cometh to thee with the Pleasure, Beauty, and Glory of the World, that thy Mind reject it and say, ‘ I must be a Servant 4 and not a Master in the Vineyard of Christ ; I am but a Steward 4 of God in and over all that I have, and I must do with it as his i Word teacheth me ; my Heart must sit down with the simple 4 and lowly, in the Dust, and be always humble.' * Whatsoever State and Condition thou art in, Humility must be in the Front, or else thou wilt not obtain the noble Virgin in Marriage . The free Will of thy Soul must stand the Brunt as a Champion ; for if the Devil cannot prevail against the Soul with Vanity, nor catch it with that Bait, then he cometh with its Unworthiness and Catalogue of Sins. And there thou must fight hard, and the Merits of Christ must be set in the Front, or else the Creature cannot prevail against the Devil. For in this Conflict it goeth so terribly with many a poor Sinner, that outward Reason thipketh him to be distracted, or possessed by an evil Spirit . The Devil defendeth himself so horribly in some, especially if he hath had a great Fort of Prey in them, that he must be stoutly assaulted before he will depart and leave his Castle . In this kind of Combat Heaven and Hell are fighting one against the other. - '
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 Bond of thy Promise must be firm and steadfast. Before she will Crown thee; thou must be tempted and tried: She taketh the Beams of her Love from thee again, to see whether thou wilt prove faithful ; also she letteth thee stand as it were aloof, and answereth thee not so much as with one Look of her Love. For .before she will Crow*n thee thou must be judged, that thou mayest Taste the bitter Potion of Jlregs, which thou hast filled for thyself in thine Abominations. Thou must come before the Gates of Hell, first, and there show forth thy Victory for her in her Love, in that Strength, wherewith she upheld thee in Opposition to the Devil's malign Influence. 2 — 2 i& The W'ay to Qhrist.
2Christ' was tempted in the Wilderness, and if thou wilt put on Him, thou must go through His whole Progress or Journey, even from His Incarnation to His Ascension, And though thou art not able, nor required to do that which H$ hath done ; yet thou must enter wholly into His Process , and therein die continually from the Corruption of the Soul. For the Virgin Sophia espouseth not herself to the Soul, except in this Property which springeth up in the Soul through the Death of Christ , as a new Plant standing in Heaven. The earthly Body cannot comprehend her in his Lifetime, for it must first die from the corruptible Vanity; but the Heavenly Image which disappeared in Adam % viz., the true Seed of the Woman wherein Go D became Man, and into which He brought His living Seed, the Heavenly Substantiality , is capable of the Pearl \ after the Manner wherein it came to pass in Mary, in the End or Fulfilling of the Covenant*.
3Therefore, take heed what thou cfoest ; When thou hast made thy Promise, keep it ; and then she will crozvn thee mo # re readily than thou wouldst be crowned. But thou must be sure, when the Tempter cometh to thee with the Pleasure, Beauty, and Glory of the World, that thy Mind reject it and say, ‘ I must be a Servant 4 and not a Master in the Vineyard of Christ ; I am but a Steward 4 of God in and over all that I have, and I must do with it as his i Word teacheth me ; my Heart must sit down with the simple 4 and lowly, in the Dust, and be always humble.' * Whatsoever State and Condition thou art in, Humility must be in the Front, or else thou wilt not obtain the noble Virgin in Marriage . The free Will of thy Soul must stand the Brunt as a Champion ; for if the Devil cannot prevail against the Soul with Vanity, nor catch it with that Bait, then he cometh with its Unworthiness and Catalogue of Sins. And there thou must fight hard, and the Merits of Christ must be set in the Front, or else the Creature cannot prevail against the Devil. For in this Conflict it goeth so terribly with many a poor Sinner, that outward Reason thipketh him to be distracted, or possessed by an evil Spirit . The Devil defendeth himself so horribly in some, especially if he hath had a great Fort of Prey in them, that he must be stoutly assaulted before he will depart and leave his Castle . In this kind of Combat Heaven and Hell are fighting one against the other. - '
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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