Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence

Gate passedSeeker and aboveModern transcription — not a facsimileJacob Boehme (1575–1624)PUBLIC DOMAIN as published. Boehme d. 1624; the Sparrow translation is 1656. Per-part determination MADE 2026-08-29: the eight front-matter segments carrying the 2009 electronic edition own introductory apparatus were withheld (three excised in full, five redacted in part where a public-domain title block or Boehme text shared the page). The remaining 5,022 segments are public domain and are open at seeker tier.905 of 1000 segments carry a modern register · 343 pp

Jacob Boehme — the works in English, and one in Frencheditor’s preface to the volume

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.

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127. For there remain no more than two Principles eternally, the third [Principle] wherein he liveth here, perisheth ; and if he desireth not now the second [Principle], then he must remain in the first original eternally with the devils ; for after this time it will be no otherwise, there is no source which can come to help him [hereafter] ; for the kingdom of God goeth not back into the abyss, but it riseth up forward in the light of meekness ; this we speak seriously and in earnest, as it is highly known in the light of nature, in the ray of the 3 noble virgin. « the wisdom of God. The Gate of the Difference between Man and Beast. 28. My dear and loving reason, bring thy five senses hither, and consider thyself, according to the things above-mentioned, what thou art, how thou wast created the image of God, and how thou in Adam (by the infection of the devil) didst let thy spirit of this world take possession of thy paradise, which now sitteth in the room of paradise. Wilt thou say that thou wast created thus [as] 358 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 16 to this world in Adam at the beginning ? Then behold and consider thyself; and thou shalt find another image in thy mind and speech. Animal 29. Every l beast hath a mind, 2 having a will, or living „ . , , . creature. and the nve senses therein, so that it can distm8 of* guish therein what is good or ill for it. But where

2remain the senses in the will [that come] out of the gates of the deep, where the will discovereth itself [or glim m ere th] in the first Principle in infinitum [infinitely], out of which the understanding proceedeth, so that man can see into all things into their essences, how high they are graduated, whereupon followeth the distinction [or different articulation] of the tongue ? For if a beast had them, then it could also speak, and distinguish voices, and speak of the things that are in substance [or being], and search into the originality. But because it is not out of the eternal, therefore it hath no understanding in the light of nature, be it never so nimble and crafty ; neither doth its strength and force avail to the lifting it up into understanding ; no, it is all in vain. 30. Man only hath understanding, and his senses reach into the essences and qualities of the stars and elements, and search out the ground of all things in the region of the stars and elements : And this now hath its original in man, in the eternal element, he being created out of the [eternal] element, and not out of the out-births of the four elements. And therefore the eternity Ch. 16] THREEFOLD SPIRIT AND WILL 359 seeth into the l beginning out-birth in the corrupt!- 1 inceptive, bility ; and the 2 beginning in the out-birth cannot 20r inception, see into the eternity, for the 2 beginning taketh its original out of the eternity, out of the eternal mind.

331. But that man is so very blind and ignorant, or void of understanding, is because he lieth captive in the regimen [or dominion] of the stars and elements, which many times figure [or fashion] a wild beast in the mind of man, a lion, a wolf, a dog, a fox, a serpent, and such like ; though indeed man getteth no such body, yet he hath such a mind ; of which Christ spake to the Jews, and called some of them wolves, foxes, and serpents. Also John the Baptist said so of the Pharisees, and we see apparently, how many men live wholly like beasts, according to their bestial mind, and yet are so audacious, that they judge and condemn those that live in the image of God, and 3 subdue their bodies. 3 tame, or bring under 32. But if he speaketh or judgeth anything well, subjection, he speaketh not from the bestial image of the mind, wherein he liveth, but he speaketh from the hidden man, which is hidden in the bestial [man], and judgeth against his own bestial life ; for the hidden law of the eternal nature standeth hidden in the bestial man, and it is in a hard restraint, and judgeth [or condemneth] the [malicious] wickedness of the 4 carnal mind. 4 fleshly. 33. Thus there are three in man that strive against one another, viz. the eternal proud malicious 360 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 16

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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Commentary

whole issue ·

Cross-estate[P-V]translated_asboehme:2:1:003

This English 'Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence' and boehme:11 are the same work in two languages — and the French is not just any translation. It is Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin's own: 'Des trois principes de l'essence divine', issued by the Périsse brothers of the rue Mercière. Saint-Martin learned German in his fifties expressly to read Boehme, and spent his last years translating him. The estate therefore holds, side by side, the text that formed the Unknown Philosopher and the form in which he gave it to France — the single most direct documentary link between the two founders of this corpus.

→ boehme:11