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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.
13. All evil Works done purposely belong to the Judgment of Qod. But he that turneth from the Will, goeth out from the Power, of them, and those his Works belong to the Fire. All Things shall and must be made manifest in the End. For therefore God brought His working Power into Essence or Substance , that His Love and Anger might be made manifest , and become a Repre. sentation of His Deeds of Wonder, to His Glory. 4. And every Creature ought to know, that it should continue in that Condition wherein it was created; otherwise it runneth on in Contrariety and Enmity to the Will of God, and bringeth itself into Pain. For every Intelligent Creature that hath lost its Place or State wherein God first created it, is in Disorder and Misery, till it recovereth the same. A Creature which is Created out of Darkness hath no Pain in the Darkness ; as a venomous Serpent hath no Pain from its Venom. The Venom is its Life ; but if it should lose its Venom, and have some good Thing instead Of 'True ‘Resignation. 4*9 thereof*brought into it, and be made manifest in its Essence , that would be Pain and Death to it. Thus Qood is Torment to a Being whose Nature is evil, and Evil is in like Manner Pain and Death to the good. 5. Man was created of for , and in Paradise ; of for , and in the Love of God ; but if he bring himself into Anger , which is as a poisonous Pain and Death, then that contrary Paradisaical Life of Love is a Pain and Torment to him.
26. If the Devil had been created out of the wrathful Matrix , for and hi Hell and had not had the Divine Ens or Essence , he could have no Pain in Hell. But he being created for and in Heaven , and yet having stirred' up the Source or Property of Darkness fti himself \ and thereby brought himself totally into Darkness , therefore the Light is now a Pain to him, that is, it caustith an everlasting Despair of God’s Qrace , and* a continual Enmity to God, because Gqd cannot endure him in Himself but hath ca§t him out. Therefore the Devil is angry and wrathful against his own Mother , of whose Essence and Substance he hath his Original, viz., the eternal Nature , which keepeth him Prisoner in his own Place , as a Revolter or fallen Spirit, and sporteth in him with its Property of Anger . And, seeing he would not bear his Part in promoting the Divine Joy , in and for which he was created, therefore he must now do the contrary, and be an Enemy to all Qoodness. For, of Qod and in Him are all Things; Darkness and Light , Love and Anger, Fire and Light; but hecalleth Himself Qod, only as to the Light of His Love.
37. There is an eternal Contrariety between Darkness and Light; neither of them comprehendetli the other, and neither of them is the other ; and yet there is only one Essence , Being , or Substance, wherein they both subsist. But there is a Difference in Quality and Will ; yet the Essence or Substance is not divided, but a Principle maketh the Division. So that the one is a nothing in the otb^r, and yet it is there, but not manifest in the Property of that Thing wherein it is. 8. For the Devil continued in his own Dominion or Principality, not indeed in that wherein God createdhxvo, but in the aching , painful Birth of Eternity , in the Centime of Nature and Property of Wrath , in the Property which begetteth Darkness , Anguish and Pain. Indeed he is a Prince in the Place of this World , but m the first Principle , in the Kingdom of Darkness , in the Pit or Abyss. 9. Not in the Kingdom of the Sun , Stars , and Elements ; he is no Lord or Prince there, but in the zvrathful Part , viz., in the Root of the Evil of every Thing ; and yet he hath not Power to do what he pleaseth with That. 4 59 The Way to Qhrist.
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.
13. All evil Works done purposely belong to the Judgment of Qod. But he that turneth from the Will, goeth out from the Power, of them, and those his Works belong to the Fire. All Things shall and must be made manifest in the End. For therefore God brought His working Power into Essence or Substance , that His Love and Anger might be made manifest , and become a Repre. sentation of His Deeds of Wonder, to His Glory. 4. And every Creature ought to know, that it should continue in that Condition wherein it was created; otherwise it runneth on in Contrariety and Enmity to the Will of God, and bringeth itself into Pain. For every Intelligent Creature that hath lost its Place or State wherein God first created it, is in Disorder and Misery, till it recovereth the same. A Creature which is Created out of Darkness hath no Pain in the Darkness ; as a venomous Serpent hath no Pain from its Venom. The Venom is its Life ; but if it should lose its Venom, and have some good Thing instead Of 'True ‘Resignation. 4*9 thereof*brought into it, and be made manifest in its Essence , that would be Pain and Death to it. Thus Qood is Torment to a Being whose Nature is evil, and Evil is in like Manner Pain and Death to the good. 5. Man was created of for , and in Paradise ; of for , and in the Love of God ; but if he bring himself into Anger , which is as a poisonous Pain and Death, then that contrary Paradisaical Life of Love is a Pain and Torment to him.
26. If the Devil had been created out of the wrathful Matrix , for and hi Hell and had not had the Divine Ens or Essence , he could have no Pain in Hell. But he being created for and in Heaven , and yet having stirred' up the Source or Property of Darkness fti himself \ and thereby brought himself totally into Darkness , therefore the Light is now a Pain to him, that is, it caustith an everlasting Despair of God’s Qrace , and* a continual Enmity to God, because Gqd cannot endure him in Himself but hath ca§t him out. Therefore the Devil is angry and wrathful against his own Mother , of whose Essence and Substance he hath his Original, viz., the eternal Nature , which keepeth him Prisoner in his own Place , as a Revolter or fallen Spirit, and sporteth in him with its Property of Anger . And, seeing he would not bear his Part in promoting the Divine Joy , in and for which he was created, therefore he must now do the contrary, and be an Enemy to all Qoodness. For, of Qod and in Him are all Things; Darkness and Light , Love and Anger, Fire and Light; but hecalleth Himself Qod, only as to the Light of His Love.
37. There is an eternal Contrariety between Darkness and Light; neither of them comprehendetli the other, and neither of them is the other ; and yet there is only one Essence , Being , or Substance, wherein they both subsist. But there is a Difference in Quality and Will ; yet the Essence or Substance is not divided, but a Principle maketh the Division. So that the one is a nothing in the otb^r, and yet it is there, but not manifest in the Property of that Thing wherein it is. 8. For the Devil continued in his own Dominion or Principality, not indeed in that wherein God createdhxvo, but in the aching , painful Birth of Eternity , in the Centime of Nature and Property of Wrath , in the Property which begetteth Darkness , Anguish and Pain. Indeed he is a Prince in the Place of this World , but m the first Principle , in the Kingdom of Darkness , in the Pit or Abyss. 9. Not in the Kingdom of the Sun , Stars , and Elements ; he is no Lord or Prince there, but in the zvrathful Part , viz., in the Root of the Evil of every Thing ; and yet he hath not Power to do what he pleaseth with That. 4 59 The Way to Qhrist.
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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