People wrote to the great German mystic Jacob Böhme with questions and sometimes he actually wrote back. One person, for instance, wanted to know how to find the philosophers' stone. Böhme's answer is about as plain as he ever got: "Searching onely doth nothing; the Philosophers Stone is a very dark disesteemed Stone, of a Gray colour, but therein lyeth the highest Tincture." If you want the great mystery, he went on, take the earth and its metals and you will find the ground of it soon enough. As for why the old Magi kept the tincture to themselves, he had an answer for that as well: "there is no other cause at all, but that the World is not worthy of it." It's a great answer. This book collects thirty-five of those letters. Böhme wrote them one at a time to friends and patrons who had read his manuscripts and wanted more. He never meant them for print. Twenty-five years after his death an English translator gathered thirty-five of them, and then a London bookseller published them.
For some context, Böhme was a shoemaker in Görlitz, a town on the Silesian border. In 1600 he had a mystical experience that he spent the rest of his life trying to describe: sunlight caught in a pewter dish, and the structure of the whole creation opening in front of him. He worked at his explanation for twelve years in a book he called Aurora, and then let the manuscript circulate among friends. That turned out to be a mistake. Gregory Richter, the chief pastor of Görlitz, denounced him from the pulpit, the town council confiscated the manuscript, and Böhme was told to stop writing. He stopped for about five years. Then he started again and wrote nearly everything he is known for before he died in 1624.
The letters come out of that late stretch. A nobleman wanted to know about Aurora. A man named Paul Keym kept writing about the first resurrection and the thousand years' Sabbath, and got two long replies for his trouble. A correspondent Böhme addressed as Mr. Frederick asked whether the serpent really had to eat earth after the curse, and whether the beasts in paradise fed on paradisical fruit. Böhme took all of it seriously. He wrote a good deal more plainly here than he did in the treatises, and now and then he sounded tired: "He that can understand it, let him understand it; but he that cannot, let him not censure and cavill at it."
England discovered Böhme late but with great enthusiasm. Twenty different books by the Teutonic Philosopher came out in English at London between 1645 and 1662. This one was translated by John Ellistone, who worked alongside his cousin John Sparrow and died in 1652; the preface to the reader is signed with his initials.
The book also works as Böhme's own guide to Böhme. Writing on the first of January 1622, he told his correspondent: "I send you the Booke of the Forty Questions, there you may see further ground, which notwithstanding is better grounded into the Centre of all Beings in the Booke of the Threefold Life; and yet much more in the Book of the Signature of all things."
Then there's the company the book kept. 1649 is the year England executed its king. Matthew Simmons, who printed it, had also printed Milton's Tenure of Kings and Magistrates that February and would print his Eikonoklastes in October, the two books that argued the killing had been lawful. Gyles Calvert, who sold it at the Black Spread Eagle by St Paul's, published Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger who wanted the common land dug up and farmed in common, and a few years later the first Quakers; Calvert's wife went to prison for selling a treasonable book. Böhme came into English through the radical press in the middle of a revolution, and the English read him accordingly. William Law and William Blake are both downstream of these translations.
The copy is complete. All three parts are here as issued: the Epistles, then a Testimonie made up of two letters of October 1641 from German admirers who had known Böhme, then a Warning that the translator built out of passages from the books and set down as one continuous speech. The two admirers are named by their initials and nothing else. One set of initials is A.V.F., and the letter is Abraham von Franckenberg's, who knew Böhme in his last years and wrote the first account of his life. The errata leaf is still at the end. The book cannot settle on how to spell the man, either, printing him Behmen on the title page and Beme where he signs off. It has had a hard life, and a good part of that was spent in the reference collection of the Public Library of Cincinnati. Condition, binding and provenance are set out below.
Provenance: Ink ownership signature of B. P. Blackley at the head of the title page and again at the head of the first page of text. Old ink pen-trials and calligraphic flourishes on the page facing the close of the twenty-fourth epistle. Bookplate of the Public Library of Cincinnati, Reference Collection, printed in red with the city's motto Juncta Juvant, on the front pastedown; the borrower's date slip on the rear pastedown; pencil accession numbers on the title page and its verso.
BEHMEN, Jacob (Jacob Böhme). The Epistles of Jacob Behmen, aliter, Teutonicus Philosophus. Very usefull and necessary for those that read his Writings, and are very full of excellent and plaine Instructions how to attaine to The Life of Christ. Translated out of the German Language. London: Printed by M. Simmons for Gyles Calvert, at the Black Spread Eagle, at the West end of Pauls Church, 1649. First edition in English, translated by John Ellistone. One volume. With, as issued: A reall and unfeigned Testimonie, concerning Iacob Beme of Old Seidenberg, in upper Lausatia, Printed in the Yeare, 1649; and A Warning from Iacob Beem the Teutonique Phylosopher, To such as reade his Writings, Printed in the Yeare, 1649, each with its own title page.
Physical Description: Quarto. The chain lines run horizontally and the watermark sits halved in the gutter at mid-height, which is what a quarto does. Sixteen unnumbered pages of preliminaries; then 215 pages of the letters and a blank; then the Testimonie and the Warning together, twenty-seven pages numbered 1 to 29, the printer having skipped 23 and 24 when he set the numbers; then eight leaves of contents and a final errata leaf. Thirty-five epistles. Woodcut initials and head-pieces. The page numbers go wrong in a good many places — page 153 is printed 157, and someone has put it right in pencil — but the catchwords and signatures run clean from end to end. The catchword at the foot of page 22 is "monstrous," and it carries straight over to page 25, so nothing is wanting there either. The volume is complete.
References: Wing B3404. ESTC R2334. The Testimonie is separately recorded at ESTC R24508.
Binding: Later calf spine over marbled boards, five raised bands, gilt lettering reading EPISTLES OF J. BEHMAN, the date gilt in a lower compartment. The leather is worn through in places with loss at head and tail, and an old tape repair remains on the spine. The joints are rubbed and the corners bumped. The front hinge has been reglued and is now firm. An old ink shelf number is written on the spine.
Condition: The paper is chipped and flaky throughout, with staining and browning, the outer leaves worst affected; the title page is chipped at the fore-edge. The text is legible and the volume is complete.
People wrote to the great German mystic Jacob Böhme with questions and sometimes he actually wrote back. One person, for instance, wanted to know how to find the philosophers' stone. Böhme's answer is about as plain as he ever got: "Searching onely doth nothing; the Philosophers Stone is a very dark disesteemed Stone, of a Gray colour, but therein lyeth the highest Tincture." If you want the great mystery, he went on, take the earth and its metals and you will find the ground of it soon enough. As for why the old Magi kept the tincture to themselves, he had an answer for that as well: "there is no other cause at all, but that the World is not worthy of it." It's a great answer. This book collects thirty-five of those letters. Böhme wrote them one at a time to friends and patrons who had read his manuscripts and wanted more. He never meant them for print. Twenty-five years after his death an English translator gathered thirty-five of them, and then a London bookseller published them.
For some context, Böhme was a shoemaker in Görlitz, a town on the Silesian border. In 1600 he had a mystical experience that he spent the rest of his life trying to describe: sunlight caught in a pewter dish, and the structure of the whole creation opening in front of him. He worked at his explanation for twelve years in a book he called Aurora, and then let the manuscript circulate among friends. That turned out to be a mistake. Gregory Richter, the chief pastor of Görlitz, denounced him from the pulpit, the town council confiscated the manuscript, and Böhme was told to stop writing. He stopped for about five years. Then he started again and wrote nearly everything he is known for before he died in 1624.
The letters come out of that late stretch. A nobleman wanted to know about Aurora. A man named Paul Keym kept writing about the first resurrection and the thousand years' Sabbath, and got two long replies for his trouble. A correspondent Böhme addressed as Mr. Frederick asked whether the serpent really had to eat earth after the curse, and whether the beasts in paradise fed on paradisical fruit. Böhme took all of it seriously. He wrote a good deal more plainly here than he did in the treatises, and now and then he sounded tired: "He that can understand it, let him understand it; but he that cannot, let him not censure and cavill at it."
England discovered Böhme late but with great enthusiasm. Twenty different books by the Teutonic Philosopher came out in English at London between 1645 and 1662. This one was translated by John Ellistone, who worked alongside his cousin John Sparrow and died in 1652; the preface to the reader is signed with his initials.
The book also works as Böhme's own guide to Böhme. Writing on the first of January 1622, he told his correspondent: "I send you the Booke of the Forty Questions, there you may see further ground, which notwithstanding is better grounded into the Centre of all Beings in the Booke of the Threefold Life; and yet much more in the Book of the Signature of all things."
Then there's the company the book kept. 1649 is the year England executed its king. Matthew Simmons, who printed it, had also printed Milton's Tenure of Kings and Magistrates that February and would print his Eikonoklastes in October, the two books that argued the killing had been lawful. Gyles Calvert, who sold it at the Black Spread Eagle by St Paul's, published Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger who wanted the common land dug up and farmed in common, and a few years later the first Quakers; Calvert's wife went to prison for selling a treasonable book. Böhme came into English through the radical press in the middle of a revolution, and the English read him accordingly. William Law and William Blake are both downstream of these translations.
The copy is complete. All three parts are here as issued: the Epistles, then a Testimonie made up of two letters of October 1641 from German admirers who had known Böhme, then a Warning that the translator built out of passages from the books and set down as one continuous speech. The two admirers are named by their initials and nothing else. One set of initials is A.V.F., and the letter is Abraham von Franckenberg's, who knew Böhme in his last years and wrote the first account of his life. The errata leaf is still at the end. The book cannot settle on how to spell the man, either, printing him Behmen on the title page and Beme where he signs off. It has had a hard life, and a good part of that was spent in the reference collection of the Public Library of Cincinnati. Condition, binding and provenance are set out below.
Provenance: Ink ownership signature of B. P. Blackley at the head of the title page and again at the head of the first page of text. Old ink pen-trials and calligraphic flourishes on the page facing the close of the twenty-fourth epistle. Bookplate of the Public Library of Cincinnati, Reference Collection, printed in red with the city's motto Juncta Juvant, on the front pastedown; the borrower's date slip on the rear pastedown; pencil accession numbers on the title page and its verso.
BEHMEN, Jacob (Jacob Böhme). The Epistles of Jacob Behmen, aliter, Teutonicus Philosophus. Very usefull and necessary for those that read his Writings, and are very full of excellent and plaine Instructions how to attaine to The Life of Christ. Translated out of the German Language. London: Printed by M. Simmons for Gyles Calvert, at the Black Spread Eagle, at the West end of Pauls Church, 1649. First edition in English, translated by John Ellistone. One volume. With, as issued: A reall and unfeigned Testimonie, concerning Iacob Beme of Old Seidenberg, in upper Lausatia, Printed in the Yeare, 1649; and A Warning from Iacob Beem the Teutonique Phylosopher, To such as reade his Writings, Printed in the Yeare, 1649, each with its own title page.
Physical Description: Quarto. The chain lines run horizontally and the watermark sits halved in the gutter at mid-height, which is what a quarto does. Sixteen unnumbered pages of preliminaries; then 215 pages of the letters and a blank; then the Testimonie and the Warning together, twenty-seven pages numbered 1 to 29, the printer having skipped 23 and 24 when he set the numbers; then eight leaves of contents and a final errata leaf. Thirty-five epistles. Woodcut initials and head-pieces. The page numbers go wrong in a good many places — page 153 is printed 157, and someone has put it right in pencil — but the catchwords and signatures run clean from end to end. The catchword at the foot of page 22 is "monstrous," and it carries straight over to page 25, so nothing is wanting there either. The volume is complete.
References: Wing B3404. ESTC R2334. The Testimonie is separately recorded at ESTC R24508.
Binding: Later calf spine over marbled boards, five raised bands, gilt lettering reading EPISTLES OF J. BEHMAN, the date gilt in a lower compartment. The leather is worn through in places with loss at head and tail, and an old tape repair remains on the spine. The joints are rubbed and the corners bumped. The front hinge has been reglued and is now firm. An old ink shelf number is written on the spine.
Condition: The paper is chipped and flaky throughout, with staining and browning, the outer leaves worst affected; the title page is chipped at the fore-edge. The text is legible and the volume is complete.
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