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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.
1I LIFT my Heart to thee, O God, thou Fountain of Eternal Life, and give thee Thanks through Jesus Christ thy Beloved Son, our Lord and Saviour, for having protected and preserved me this Day from all Mischief that might have befallen me. I commend to thy Disposal my Condition and Employment, together with the Work of my Hands, and humbly repose them on thee. So fill my Soul with thy Spirit, that neither that Qrand Enemy the Devil, nor any other evil Influence or Desire , may find Harbour therein. Let my Mind only delight in thee in thy Temple, and let thy good Angel stay with me, that I may rest safely in thy Power, and under thy Protection. Amen. Revelation xxi. 6. * I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning ‘and the End. I will give unto him that is athirst, of the ‘ Fountain of the Water of Life freely. He that overcometh ‘ shall inherit All Things, and I will be his God, and he shall be * my Son.’ THE S NE C O N D BOOK. O F TRUE RESIGNATION, SHOWING How Man must daily die to his own Will i?t Self*; how he must bring his Desire into God, and what Ke should ask and desire of God. Likewise How he must spring up out of the dying sinful Man , with a new Mind and Will through the Spirit of Christ. ALSO, What the Old and New Man are, and what each of them is in Life , Will , and Practice. Written in the German Language, (Anno. 1622) By J‘ACOB BO E H ME. Matthew xvi. 24. Mark viii. *34. Luke ix. 23. John xii. 26. •
2HRIST saith, He that will follow me, let him deny himself \ and take up his Cross and follow me. Matthew xix. 27. Mark x. 28. Luke xviii, 28. Peter saith to Christ, Behold, W ? have forsaken All, and followed thee. Of true resignation Chapter I. W E have a clear Example in Lucifer , and also in Adam the first Man, of what Self doth, when it getteth the Light of Nature to be its own, and may walk with the Understanding in its own Dominion. We see also in Men learned in Arts and Sciences, that when they get the Light of this outward World or Nature into the Possession of their Reason, nothing comtth of it but Pride of themselves. And yet all the World so vehemently desireth and seeketh after this Light as the best Treasure ; and indeed it is the best Treasure this Worlcfaffords, if it be rightly used. 2. But while Self viz., Reason , is captivated and fast bound in a close, and strong Prison, that is to say, in the Anger of God, and in Earthlincss ; it is very dangerous for a Man to make Use of the Light of Knowledge in Self, as if it were in the Possession of Self.
33. For the Wrath of the Eternal and Temporal Nature will soon take Pleasure in it, and then and a Man's own Reason , will rise up in Pride, and depart from the true resigned Humility towards God, and will no longer eat of the Fruit of Paradise, but of the Property of Self, viz., of that Dominion of Life, wherein Qood and Evil are mixed, as Lucifer wad Adam did. Who both entered with the Desire of Self back again into the Original, out of which the Creatures were brought forth, and into the Condition of the Creatures ; Lucifer into the Centre and Wrathful Nature, into the Matrix or Womb which bringeth forth Fire ; and Adam into the Earthly Nature, into the Matrix of the outward World, viz., into the Lust after (jood and Evil.
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.
1I LIFT my Heart to thee, O God, thou Fountain of Eternal Life, and give thee Thanks through Jesus Christ thy Beloved Son, our Lord and Saviour, for having protected and preserved me this Day from all Mischief that might have befallen me. I commend to thy Disposal my Condition and Employment, together with the Work of my Hands, and humbly repose them on thee. So fill my Soul with thy Spirit, that neither that Qrand Enemy the Devil, nor any other evil Influence or Desire , may find Harbour therein. Let my Mind only delight in thee in thy Temple, and let thy good Angel stay with me, that I may rest safely in thy Power, and under thy Protection. Amen. Revelation xxi. 6. * I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning ‘and the End. I will give unto him that is athirst, of the ‘ Fountain of the Water of Life freely. He that overcometh ‘ shall inherit All Things, and I will be his God, and he shall be * my Son.’ THE S NE C O N D BOOK. O F TRUE RESIGNATION, SHOWING How Man must daily die to his own Will i?t Self*; how he must bring his Desire into God, and what Ke should ask and desire of God. Likewise How he must spring up out of the dying sinful Man , with a new Mind and Will through the Spirit of Christ. ALSO, What the Old and New Man are, and what each of them is in Life , Will , and Practice. Written in the German Language, (Anno. 1622) By J‘ACOB BO E H ME. Matthew xvi. 24. Mark viii. *34. Luke ix. 23. John xii. 26. •
2HRIST saith, He that will follow me, let him deny himself \ and take up his Cross and follow me. Matthew xix. 27. Mark x. 28. Luke xviii, 28. Peter saith to Christ, Behold, W ? have forsaken All, and followed thee. Of true resignation Chapter I. W E have a clear Example in Lucifer , and also in Adam the first Man, of what Self doth, when it getteth the Light of Nature to be its own, and may walk with the Understanding in its own Dominion. We see also in Men learned in Arts and Sciences, that when they get the Light of this outward World or Nature into the Possession of their Reason, nothing comtth of it but Pride of themselves. And yet all the World so vehemently desireth and seeketh after this Light as the best Treasure ; and indeed it is the best Treasure this Worlcfaffords, if it be rightly used. 2. But while Self viz., Reason , is captivated and fast bound in a close, and strong Prison, that is to say, in the Anger of God, and in Earthlincss ; it is very dangerous for a Man to make Use of the Light of Knowledge in Self, as if it were in the Possession of Self.
33. For the Wrath of the Eternal and Temporal Nature will soon take Pleasure in it, and then and a Man's own Reason , will rise up in Pride, and depart from the true resigned Humility towards God, and will no longer eat of the Fruit of Paradise, but of the Property of Self, viz., of that Dominion of Life, wherein Qood and Evil are mixed, as Lucifer wad Adam did. Who both entered with the Desire of Self back again into the Original, out of which the Creatures were brought forth, and into the Condition of the Creatures ; Lucifer into the Centre and Wrathful Nature, into the Matrix or Womb which bringeth forth Fire ; and Adam into the Earthly Nature, into the Matrix of the outward World, viz., into the Lust after (jood and Evil.
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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