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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 Master. — If thou forsakest the World, thou comest into That whereof the World is made ; and if thou losest thy Life, and comest to have thy own Power faint, then thy Life is in That for whose sake thou forsakest it, viz., in God, from whom it came into the Body. 8. The Scholar. — God hath created Man in 'and for the natural Life, to rule overall Creatures on Earth, and to be a Lord over all Things in this World ; and therefore Reason suggests that he should possess it as his own. How Men may and should rule over all Creatures , and can be like all Things. The Master. — If thou rulest over all Creatures outwardly only, then thy Will and Ruling is in a Bestial Kind, and is but an imaginary transitory Ruling ; and thou also bringest thy Desire into a Bestial Essence, whereby thou becomest infected and captivated, and gettest also a Bestial Condition. But if thou hast left the imaginary Condition, then thou art in the Superimaginariness, and rulest over all Creatures in that Qround out of which they are created, and nothing on Eart'n can hurt thee ; for thou art like all Things, and nothing is unlike to thee. 9. The Scholar. — O loving Master, pray teach me the shortest Way how I may come to be like all Things. The MASTER. — With all my Heart; do but think on the Words Of the Super-Sensual Life. 9,7 - ... _____ •
2of our "Lord Jesus Christ , when he said, ‘ Unless ye turn and 4 become as Children, ye shall not see the Kingdom of God/ Now if thou wilt be like all Things, thou must forsake all Things, and turn thy Desire^ away from them, and not desire them, nor seek to possess that for thy own , which is something . For as soon as thou takest something into thy Desire , and receivest it into thee for thy own , then that something is the same with thyself, and it worketh with thee in thy Will, and then thou art obliged to protect it, and to take Care for it as for thy own Being. But if thou receive nothing into thy Desire y then thou art free from all Things, and rulest over all Things at once. For thou hast received nothing for thy own , and art nothing to all Things, and all Things are nothing to thee. Thou art as a Child which understandeth not what a Thing is ; or though thou dost under- •sfctnd it^e^thou understandest it without being affected thereby; in that Manner wherein God ruleth and seeth all Things, and yet nothing comprehendeth or captivateth him.
3Thou 'didst also desire that I would teach thee how thou mightest attain it. Consider then the Words of Christ , who said, ‘ Without me ye can do nothing/ In thy own Power thou canst not come to such Rest that no Creature should touch thee, unless thou givest thyself wholly up to the Life of our Lord Jesus Christ , and resignest thy Will and Desire wholly to Him, and Wiliest nothing without Him. Then with thy Body thou art in the World, in the Properties , and with thy Reason under the Cross of our I^ord Christ ; but with thy Will thou walkest in Heaven , and art in the Original from whence all Creatures proceeded, and to which they go again. And then thou mayest behold all Things outwardly with thy Reason , and inwardly with thy Mind \ and rule in and over all Things with Christy to whom all Power is given both in Heaveji and on Earth. 10. The Scholar. — O Master, the Creatures that live in me so withhold me, that I cannot wholly yield and give up myself as I willingly would.
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 Master. — If thou forsakest the World, thou comest into That whereof the World is made ; and if thou losest thy Life, and comest to have thy own Power faint, then thy Life is in That for whose sake thou forsakest it, viz., in God, from whom it came into the Body. 8. The Scholar. — God hath created Man in 'and for the natural Life, to rule overall Creatures on Earth, and to be a Lord over all Things in this World ; and therefore Reason suggests that he should possess it as his own. How Men may and should rule over all Creatures , and can be like all Things. The Master. — If thou rulest over all Creatures outwardly only, then thy Will and Ruling is in a Bestial Kind, and is but an imaginary transitory Ruling ; and thou also bringest thy Desire into a Bestial Essence, whereby thou becomest infected and captivated, and gettest also a Bestial Condition. But if thou hast left the imaginary Condition, then thou art in the Superimaginariness, and rulest over all Creatures in that Qround out of which they are created, and nothing on Eart'n can hurt thee ; for thou art like all Things, and nothing is unlike to thee. 9. The Scholar. — O loving Master, pray teach me the shortest Way how I may come to be like all Things. The MASTER. — With all my Heart; do but think on the Words Of the Super-Sensual Life. 9,7 - ... _____ •
2of our "Lord Jesus Christ , when he said, ‘ Unless ye turn and 4 become as Children, ye shall not see the Kingdom of God/ Now if thou wilt be like all Things, thou must forsake all Things, and turn thy Desire^ away from them, and not desire them, nor seek to possess that for thy own , which is something . For as soon as thou takest something into thy Desire , and receivest it into thee for thy own , then that something is the same with thyself, and it worketh with thee in thy Will, and then thou art obliged to protect it, and to take Care for it as for thy own Being. But if thou receive nothing into thy Desire y then thou art free from all Things, and rulest over all Things at once. For thou hast received nothing for thy own , and art nothing to all Things, and all Things are nothing to thee. Thou art as a Child which understandeth not what a Thing is ; or though thou dost under- •sfctnd it^e^thou understandest it without being affected thereby; in that Manner wherein God ruleth and seeth all Things, and yet nothing comprehendeth or captivateth him.
3Thou 'didst also desire that I would teach thee how thou mightest attain it. Consider then the Words of Christ , who said, ‘ Without me ye can do nothing/ In thy own Power thou canst not come to such Rest that no Creature should touch thee, unless thou givest thyself wholly up to the Life of our Lord Jesus Christ , and resignest thy Will and Desire wholly to Him, and Wiliest nothing without Him. Then with thy Body thou art in the World, in the Properties , and with thy Reason under the Cross of our I^ord Christ ; but with thy Will thou walkest in Heaven , and art in the Original from whence all Creatures proceeded, and to which they go again. And then thou mayest behold all Things outwardly with thy Reason , and inwardly with thy Mind \ and rule in and over all Things with Christy to whom all Power is given both in Heaveji and on Earth. 10. The Scholar. — O Master, the Creatures that live in me so withhold me, that I cannot wholly yield and give up myself as I willingly would.
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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