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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1the crack of the fire ; it [reason] is afraid of it [that countenance], and trembleth at it ; it saith continually to Moses, Speak thou with the Lord, for we are afraid, and moreover, altogether naked [and unclean]. 35. It presenteth indeed the wrath of God to itself, and trembleth at its fall, but it knoweth not what hath happened to it ; it only presents the disobedience before itself, and maketh [as if] God were an angry malicious devil, that cannot be reconciled, having indeed put on the garment of anger (in Adam and Eve) on to itself in body and soul, and hath set itself (against the will of God) in the bath [or lake] of anger, on which God took 1 Or mercy, such l pity [or compassion], that he hath not spared his own Heart, to send it into the depth of anger, into the abyss of hell, [as also] into the death and breaking of the four elements from the eternal holy element, to help fallen man, and to deliver him out of the anger and death. 36. But the veil (in the death of Christ) was since taken away from the face of Moses, instead whereof the stars with the four elements have yet cast a mist and cloud (through the infection of the 2 Or the devil) before man ; for the 2 region of this world dom. hath generated the Antichrist, and set [him] before 3 Or darkness, the countenance of Moses, in a 3 cloud, as if he were

2Christ; so that the countenance of Moses cannot be apprehended [or beheld]. Therefore we have need of the lily, which groweth through the Tables Ch. 17] OF THE FALL OF ADAM AND EVE 383 of Moses (that were graven through) with its strong smell, which reacheth into the paradise of God ; from whose virtue, the people [or nations] shall be so virtuous and strong, that they shall forsake the Antichrist, and shall run through the darkness to ,the smell of the blossom. For the Breaker-through the Gates hath planted the lily, and he hath given it into the hand of the noble virgin, and this [lily] groweth in the element wonderfully against the horrible storm of hell, and [against] the l kingdom a Or dominion. of this world ; where then many 2 branches will fall 2 Or twigs. to the ground, from whence Antichrist becometh blind, and groweth stark mad and raving in the fog and mist, and stirreth the 3 four elements in s the anger the [wrath or grim] fierceness; and then it is the four eieneedful for the children of God to awake from the m sleep of the fog ; this the spirit intimateth, in the light of nature, seriously and earnestly.

337. Therefore, according to our knowledge, we will set down an exposition of the fall of man, which is very perfectly manifested, and appeareth in the light of the day, and ^convinceth us. And we 4 overhave no need of the 5 fooleries of the Antichrist, 7^™^ or who with the blood and death of Christ doth but sy exP°8i' seek his own covetousness, pride, and voluptuousness, and draweth the veil of Moses before our eyes, that we should not see (through the Tables that were graven through) Joshua or Jesus, into the Promised Land of paradise ; that he may only sit and ride upon his horrible and devouring 384 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 17 beast of covetousness and pride, which [beast] is become so very great and strong, that it shadoweth the circuit of the earth, and ruleth so wonderfully 1 high and over 1 mountains and valleys, with his fierceness ; low which [beast] yet shall be broken by the lily without hands. At which the [people or] nations shall wonder, and say : How art thou, 0 terrible and great might [and power], founded upon so weak and loose a ground ! 38. Now then, if we consider the miserable fall of Adam and Eve, we need not to run long after the mad Antichrist, to fetch [or learn] wisdom from him ; he hath none. Let us only consider ourselves, and compare the heavenly and earthly images one with the other, and so we [shall] see the whole 2 Or drift. 2 root and ground thereof : We have no need of a

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