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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.
152. For God saw that Adam could not then generatp MagicasByt having entered with his Lust into Vanity. Now therefore Moses saith, ‘ God caused a deep Sleep to fall upon him, and he slept;’ that is, seeing Man would not continue in the Obedience of the Divine Harmony in the Properties , submitting himself to stand still as an Instrument of the Spirit of God ; therefore God suffered him to fall from the Divine Harmony into an Harmony of his own, vis., into the awakened Properties of Evil and food ; the Spirit of his Soul went into these. 53. And there in this Sleep he died from the Ange'lical World , and fell under the Power of the outward Fiat, and thus bade farewell to the eternal Image which was of God’s begetting. Here his Angelical Form and Power fell into a Swoon and lay on the Ground. 54. And then by the Fiat God made the Woman out of him, out of the Matrix of Venus, vis., out of that Property wherein Adam had the Begettress in himself ; and so out of one Body he made two, and divided the Properties of the Tinctures, vis., the watery and fiery Constellations in the Element ; yet not whoUy in Substance but in the Spirit, vis., the Properties of the Watery and Fiery Soul.
255. And yet it is but one Thing still, only the Property of the Tincture was divided ; the Desire of Self-Love was taken out of Adam, and formed into a Woman according to his Likeness. And thence it is that Man now so eagerly desireth the Matrix of the Woman, and the Woman desireth the Limbus of the Man , vis., the Fire-Element, the Original of the true Soul, by which is meant the Tincture of Fire ; for these two were one in Adam, and therein consisted the Magical Begetting. $6. And as soon as Eve was made out of Adam in his Sleep, both Adam and Eve were at that Instant set and constituted in Of T^e generation . yj — i — — » — the outlvard natural Life, having the Members given them for Propagation, after the manner of the Brute Animals, and also the Fleshly Carcase, into which they might put their gross Earthliness, and live like Beasts. 57. Of which the* poor Soul that is captivated in Vanity is at this Day ashamed; and sorry that its Body hath gotten such a Bestial monstrous Shape. Nothing can be clearer than this. For it is because Mankind are ashamed of their Members and Nakedness, that they borrow their Clothing from the earthly Creatures. For this they would not have done, had they not lost the Angelical Form, and assumed that of a Beast. 58. This borrowed Clothing, together with the awakened Earthliness, and Subjection to tfie Powers of Heat and Cold, is a plain and full Proof to Man, that he is not truly at Home in this World.
3•For 4II Earthly Appetites, Cares, and Fears , together with this false Clotlnng, must perish and be severed from the Soul again. 59. Now when Adam afvoke from Sleep, he beheld his Wife, and knSw that she came out of him ; for he had not yet eaten of Vgnity with his outward Mouth , but with the Imagination, Desire, and Lust only. 60. And it was the first Desire of Eve, that she might eat of the Tree of Vanity, of Evil and food, to which the Devil in the Form of a Serpent persuaded her, saying, * That her Eyes should ‘ be opened, and she should be as God himself which was both a Lie and a Truth. 61. But He told her not, that she should lose the Divine Light and Power thereby ; He only said, ‘her Eyes should be opened, ‘that she might taste, prove, and know Evil and Good, as He ‘had done.’ Neither did He tell her that Heat and Cold would awake in her, and that the Property of the outward Constellations would have great Power over the Flesh and over the Mind. 62. His only Aim was that the Angelical Image, viz., the Substance which caine from the inward Spiritual World, might disappear in them. For then they would be constrained to live •in Subjection to the gross Earthliness, and the Constellations or Stars; and then he knew well enough that when the outward World perished, the Soul would be with him in Darkness. For he saw that the Body must die, when he perceived by that which God had intimated ; and so he expected still to be Lord to all
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.
152. For God saw that Adam could not then generatp MagicasByt having entered with his Lust into Vanity. Now therefore Moses saith, ‘ God caused a deep Sleep to fall upon him, and he slept;’ that is, seeing Man would not continue in the Obedience of the Divine Harmony in the Properties , submitting himself to stand still as an Instrument of the Spirit of God ; therefore God suffered him to fall from the Divine Harmony into an Harmony of his own, vis., into the awakened Properties of Evil and food ; the Spirit of his Soul went into these. 53. And there in this Sleep he died from the Ange'lical World , and fell under the Power of the outward Fiat, and thus bade farewell to the eternal Image which was of God’s begetting. Here his Angelical Form and Power fell into a Swoon and lay on the Ground. 54. And then by the Fiat God made the Woman out of him, out of the Matrix of Venus, vis., out of that Property wherein Adam had the Begettress in himself ; and so out of one Body he made two, and divided the Properties of the Tinctures, vis., the watery and fiery Constellations in the Element ; yet not whoUy in Substance but in the Spirit, vis., the Properties of the Watery and Fiery Soul.
255. And yet it is but one Thing still, only the Property of the Tincture was divided ; the Desire of Self-Love was taken out of Adam, and formed into a Woman according to his Likeness. And thence it is that Man now so eagerly desireth the Matrix of the Woman, and the Woman desireth the Limbus of the Man , vis., the Fire-Element, the Original of the true Soul, by which is meant the Tincture of Fire ; for these two were one in Adam, and therein consisted the Magical Begetting. $6. And as soon as Eve was made out of Adam in his Sleep, both Adam and Eve were at that Instant set and constituted in Of T^e generation . yj — i — — » — the outlvard natural Life, having the Members given them for Propagation, after the manner of the Brute Animals, and also the Fleshly Carcase, into which they might put their gross Earthliness, and live like Beasts. 57. Of which the* poor Soul that is captivated in Vanity is at this Day ashamed; and sorry that its Body hath gotten such a Bestial monstrous Shape. Nothing can be clearer than this. For it is because Mankind are ashamed of their Members and Nakedness, that they borrow their Clothing from the earthly Creatures. For this they would not have done, had they not lost the Angelical Form, and assumed that of a Beast. 58. This borrowed Clothing, together with the awakened Earthliness, and Subjection to tfie Powers of Heat and Cold, is a plain and full Proof to Man, that he is not truly at Home in this World.
3•For 4II Earthly Appetites, Cares, and Fears , together with this false Clotlnng, must perish and be severed from the Soul again. 59. Now when Adam afvoke from Sleep, he beheld his Wife, and knSw that she came out of him ; for he had not yet eaten of Vgnity with his outward Mouth , but with the Imagination, Desire, and Lust only. 60. And it was the first Desire of Eve, that she might eat of the Tree of Vanity, of Evil and food, to which the Devil in the Form of a Serpent persuaded her, saying, * That her Eyes should ‘ be opened, and she should be as God himself which was both a Lie and a Truth. 61. But He told her not, that she should lose the Divine Light and Power thereby ; He only said, ‘her Eyes should be opened, ‘that she might taste, prove, and know Evil and Good, as He ‘had done.’ Neither did He tell her that Heat and Cold would awake in her, and that the Property of the outward Constellations would have great Power over the Flesh and over the Mind. 62. His only Aim was that the Angelical Image, viz., the Substance which caine from the inward Spiritual World, might disappear in them. For then they would be constrained to live •in Subjection to the gross Earthliness, and the Constellations or Stars; and then he knew well enough that when the outward World perished, the Soul would be with him in Darkness. For he saw that the Body must die, when he perceived by that which God had intimated ; and so he expected still to be Lord to all
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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