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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.
1All whosoever in this Time of Strife, namely, from the Fall to the Resurrection , are not zealous in the Spirit of Christ , and desirous to promote Peace and Love , but seek and strive for themselves only, are of the Devil , and belong to the Pit of Darkness, and must consequently be separated from Christ . For in Heaven all serve GOD their Creator in humble Love . 1 57- Tiie Scholar. — Wherefore then doth God suffer such Strife and Contention to be in this Time ? THE MASTER. — The Life itself standeth in Strife , that it may be made manifest , sensible, and palpable , and that the Wisdom may be made separable and known .
2The Strife also cpnstituteth the eternal Joy of the Victory. For there will arise great Praise and Thanksgiving in the Saints from the Experimental Sense and Knowledge that Christ in them hath overcome Darkness , and all the Self of Nature , and that they are at length totally delivered from the Strife; at which they shall rejoice eternally , when they shall know how the Wicked are recompensed. And therefore God sufferetk all Souls to stand in a Free Will, that the eternal Dominion both of Love and Anger, of Light and of Darkness, may be made manifest and known ; and that every Life might cause and find its own Sentence In itself. For that which is now a Strife and Pain to, the Saints in their wretched Warfare here , shall in the End beturned into great Joy to them ; and that which hath been a Joy and Pleasure to Ungodly Persons in this World, shall afterwards be turned into eternal Torment and Shame to them. Therefore the Joy of the Saints must arise to them out of Death , as the Of the Super-Sensual Life . i ^5 — . « — Light ariseth out of a Candle by the Destruction and Consumption of it in its Fire ; that so the Life may be freed from the Painfulness of Nature , and possess another World.
3And as the Light hath quite another Property than the Fire hath, for it giveth and yieldeth itself forth ; whereas the Fire draweth in and consumeth itself ; so the holy L ife of Meekness springeth forth through the Death of Self- Will, and then God’s Will of Love' only ruleth, and doth all in all. For thus the eternal One hath attained Feeling and Separability , and brought itself forth again with the Feeling , through Death , in great Joyfulness ; that there might be an eternal Delight in the infinite Unity, and an eternal Caiffie of Joy ; and therefore Painfulness must now be the Qround and Cause of this Motion or Stirring to the Manifestation of all Things. And herein lieth the Mystery ^>f the hidden Wisdom of God. FINIS.
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.
1All whosoever in this Time of Strife, namely, from the Fall to the Resurrection , are not zealous in the Spirit of Christ , and desirous to promote Peace and Love , but seek and strive for themselves only, are of the Devil , and belong to the Pit of Darkness, and must consequently be separated from Christ . For in Heaven all serve GOD their Creator in humble Love . 1 57- Tiie Scholar. — Wherefore then doth God suffer such Strife and Contention to be in this Time ? THE MASTER. — The Life itself standeth in Strife , that it may be made manifest , sensible, and palpable , and that the Wisdom may be made separable and known .
2The Strife also cpnstituteth the eternal Joy of the Victory. For there will arise great Praise and Thanksgiving in the Saints from the Experimental Sense and Knowledge that Christ in them hath overcome Darkness , and all the Self of Nature , and that they are at length totally delivered from the Strife; at which they shall rejoice eternally , when they shall know how the Wicked are recompensed. And therefore God sufferetk all Souls to stand in a Free Will, that the eternal Dominion both of Love and Anger, of Light and of Darkness, may be made manifest and known ; and that every Life might cause and find its own Sentence In itself. For that which is now a Strife and Pain to, the Saints in their wretched Warfare here , shall in the End beturned into great Joy to them ; and that which hath been a Joy and Pleasure to Ungodly Persons in this World, shall afterwards be turned into eternal Torment and Shame to them. Therefore the Joy of the Saints must arise to them out of Death , as the Of the Super-Sensual Life . i ^5 — . « — Light ariseth out of a Candle by the Destruction and Consumption of it in its Fire ; that so the Life may be freed from the Painfulness of Nature , and possess another World.
3And as the Light hath quite another Property than the Fire hath, for it giveth and yieldeth itself forth ; whereas the Fire draweth in and consumeth itself ; so the holy L ife of Meekness springeth forth through the Death of Self- Will, and then God’s Will of Love' only ruleth, and doth all in all. For thus the eternal One hath attained Feeling and Separability , and brought itself forth again with the Feeling , through Death , in great Joyfulness ; that there might be an eternal Delight in the infinite Unity, and an eternal Caiffie of Joy ; and therefore Painfulness must now be the Qround and Cause of this Motion or Stirring to the Manifestation of all Things. And herein lieth the Mystery ^>f the hidden Wisdom of God. FINIS.
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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