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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139. But hast thou been a base slanderer, liar, deceiver, false murderous man, then such a spirit proceedeth from thee, and that desireth in the eternity nothing else but mere falsehood ; it spitteth out from its fiery jaws, fiery darts full of abomination and reproach ; it is a continual stirrer and breaker in the fierce sternness, devouring in itself, Ch. 16] THREEFOLD SPIRIT AND WILL 363 and consuming nothing ; all its [things, beings, essences, works, or] l substances appear in its l Or whataoJ . . ever he hath tincture : its image is figured according as its mind ever been, hath been here. 40. Therefore I say, a beast is better than such a man, who giveth himself up into the hellish images ; for a beast hath no eternal spirit, its spirit is from the spirit of this world, out of the 2 cor- 2 Or fragility, ruptibility, and passeth away with the body, till [it cometh] to the figure without spirit, that [figure] remaineth standing ; seeing that the eternal mind hath by the virgin of the eternal wisdom of God discovered itself in the out-birth, for the manifesting of the great wonders of God, therefore those [creaturely figures], and also the figured wonders, must stand before 8 him eternally ; although no 3 God or the eternal mind. bestial figure or shadow sunereth or doth anything, but is as a shadow or painted figure [or limned picture].

241. Therefore in this world all things are given into man's power, because he is an eternal spirit, and all other creatures [are] no other than a figure in the wonders of God ; and therefore man ought well to consider himself, what he speaketh, doth, and purposeth, in this world ; for all his works follow after him, and he hath them eternally before his eyes, and liveth in them. Except it be, that he is again new regenerated out of evil and falsehood, through the blood and death of Christ, in the water and the Holy Ghost, and then he breaketh forth 364 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 16 out of the hellish and earthly image, into an angelical [image], and cometh into another kingdom, into which its untowardness [or vices] cannot follow, and that [untowardness, waywardness, or vice] is drowned in the blood of Christ, and the image of God is renewed out of the earthly and hellish. 42. Thus we are to consider, and highly to know in the light of nature, the ground of the kingdom of heaven, and of hell, as also [the ground] of the kingdom of this world, and how man in the mother's body inheriteth three kingdoms, and how man in this life beareth a threefold image, which 1 Or pur- our first parents by the first sin a inherited for us ; chftsccl

3therefore we have need of the Treader upon the Serpent, to bring us again into the angelical image. And it is needful for man to tame his body and mind [or bring them under subjection], with great earnestness [and labour], and to submit himself under the cross, and not to hunt so eagerly after pleasure, riches, and the bravery of this world, for therein sticketh perdition. 43. Therefore said Christ, A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven ; because they take such delight in pride, haughtiness, and fleshly voluptuousness, and the noble mind is dead to the kingdom of God, and continueth in the eternal darkness. For the image of the spirit of the soul sticketh in the mind ; and to whatsoever the mind inclineth and giveth up itself, in that is Ch. 16] THREEFOLD SPIRIT AND WILL 365 the spirit of the soul figured by the eternal Fiat. 44. Now if the spirit of the soul remaineth unregenerated in its first Principle (which it hath inherited out of the eternity, with the beginning of its life), then also (at the breaking [or deceasing] of its body) there proceedeth out of its eternal mind such a creature, as its continual will hath been here in this life.

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