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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.
1my'S^ead, and unfold my Sins before thee in thy A nger, that it may sallow up the Guilt of them, so that they may not follow me in torn y Native Country. For mine Enemies are strong and mighty still in thy Anger, and therefore can do it better than I that am feeble and fainting already in the Will of Vanity. This thou knowest full well, O thou righteous God. I beseech thee therefore, O righteous God, since thou usest them as Friends to me, to do so good an Office for me, though my Earthly Reason knoweth it not, that thou wouldst make them also to understand and follow my Course, and send them such Friends in turn. But first bring them to the Light , that they may know thee, and give thee Thanks. , O mertiful God in Christ Jesus, I beseech thee, out of thy deep Love towards us poor Men, which thou hast manifested in me, in th® hidden^ Man, call us all in thee, to thee. O stir thyself in us yet once again in this last Trouble ; thy Anger being kindled in us, do thou resist it, lest it swallow us up wholly both Soul and Body.'
2. O thou Dawning of the Day-spring of God, break forth to the full ! art thou not already risen ? Manifest thy holy City Zion, thy holy Jerusalem, in us. O great God! I see thee in the Depth of thy Power and Strength. Awaken me wholly in thee, that I may be quickened in thee. Break off the Free of thy A nger ir? us, and let thy Love spring forth and bud in us. O LORD, I lie down in thy Sight, and beseech thee not to rebuke us in thine Anger. Are we not thy Possession which thou hast purchased? Forgive all of us our Sins, and deliver us from the Evil of thy Wrath, and from the Malice and Envy of the Devil ; and bring us under thy Cross in Patience into Paradise again. Amen. Here followeth a Prayer or Dialogue between the poor Soul and the noble Virgin Sophia , in the inward Ground of Man , viz., between the Spirit of Christ in the New Birth, out of his Humanity in us, and the Soul. Showing how great a Joy there is in the heaven of the New Regenerate Man ; and how lovingly and graciously the noble Sophia f re senteth herself to her Bridegroom the Soul, when it entereth into Repentance, and how the Soul behave th itself towards her, when she appeareth to it. 3 © The JFay to Qhrist . The Gates of the Paradisaical Garden of Roses. This is wider stood by none but the Children of Christ , who have known it by Experience.
3W HEN Christ the Corner-stone stirreth Himself in the extinguished Image of Man, in his hearty Conversion and Repentance; then Virgin Sophia appeareth in the ' stirring of the Spirit of Christ , in the extinguished Image , in her Virgins Attire before the Soul. At which the Soul is so amazed and astonished in its Uncleanness , that all its Sins immediately awake in it, and it trembleth before her. For then the Judgment p&sseth upon the Sins of the Soul, so that it even goeth back in its Un worthiness, o being ashamed in the Presence of its fair Love, and entereth into itself feeling and acknowledging itself utterly unworthy to receive such a Jewel. This is understood by those who are of our Tribe , and have tasted of this Heavenly C jift , and by none else. But the Noble Sophia draweth near in the Essence of the Soul, and kisseth it in friendly Manner, and tinctureth its dark Fire with her Rays of Love , and shineth through it with her bright and powerful Influence. Penetrated with the strong Sense and Feeling of which, the Soul skippeth in its Body for great Joy , and in the Strength of this Virgin Love , exulteth, and praiseth the great God, for his blessed Gift of Cjracc.
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.
1my'S^ead, and unfold my Sins before thee in thy A nger, that it may sallow up the Guilt of them, so that they may not follow me in torn y Native Country. For mine Enemies are strong and mighty still in thy Anger, and therefore can do it better than I that am feeble and fainting already in the Will of Vanity. This thou knowest full well, O thou righteous God. I beseech thee therefore, O righteous God, since thou usest them as Friends to me, to do so good an Office for me, though my Earthly Reason knoweth it not, that thou wouldst make them also to understand and follow my Course, and send them such Friends in turn. But first bring them to the Light , that they may know thee, and give thee Thanks. , O mertiful God in Christ Jesus, I beseech thee, out of thy deep Love towards us poor Men, which thou hast manifested in me, in th® hidden^ Man, call us all in thee, to thee. O stir thyself in us yet once again in this last Trouble ; thy Anger being kindled in us, do thou resist it, lest it swallow us up wholly both Soul and Body.'
2. O thou Dawning of the Day-spring of God, break forth to the full ! art thou not already risen ? Manifest thy holy City Zion, thy holy Jerusalem, in us. O great God! I see thee in the Depth of thy Power and Strength. Awaken me wholly in thee, that I may be quickened in thee. Break off the Free of thy A nger ir? us, and let thy Love spring forth and bud in us. O LORD, I lie down in thy Sight, and beseech thee not to rebuke us in thine Anger. Are we not thy Possession which thou hast purchased? Forgive all of us our Sins, and deliver us from the Evil of thy Wrath, and from the Malice and Envy of the Devil ; and bring us under thy Cross in Patience into Paradise again. Amen. Here followeth a Prayer or Dialogue between the poor Soul and the noble Virgin Sophia , in the inward Ground of Man , viz., between the Spirit of Christ in the New Birth, out of his Humanity in us, and the Soul. Showing how great a Joy there is in the heaven of the New Regenerate Man ; and how lovingly and graciously the noble Sophia f re senteth herself to her Bridegroom the Soul, when it entereth into Repentance, and how the Soul behave th itself towards her, when she appeareth to it. 3 © The JFay to Qhrist . The Gates of the Paradisaical Garden of Roses. This is wider stood by none but the Children of Christ , who have known it by Experience.
3W HEN Christ the Corner-stone stirreth Himself in the extinguished Image of Man, in his hearty Conversion and Repentance; then Virgin Sophia appeareth in the ' stirring of the Spirit of Christ , in the extinguished Image , in her Virgins Attire before the Soul. At which the Soul is so amazed and astonished in its Uncleanness , that all its Sins immediately awake in it, and it trembleth before her. For then the Judgment p&sseth upon the Sins of the Soul, so that it even goeth back in its Un worthiness, o being ashamed in the Presence of its fair Love, and entereth into itself feeling and acknowledging itself utterly unworthy to receive such a Jewel. This is understood by those who are of our Tribe , and have tasted of this Heavenly C jift , and by none else. But the Noble Sophia draweth near in the Essence of the Soul, and kisseth it in friendly Manner, and tinctureth its dark Fire with her Rays of Love , and shineth through it with her bright and powerful Influence. Penetrated with the strong Sense and Feeling of which, the Soul skippeth in its Body for great Joy , and in the Strength of this Virgin Love , exulteth, and praiseth the great God, for his blessed Gift of Cjracc.
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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