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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1Ch. 17] OP THE FALL OF ADAM AND EVE 395 the body ; and there was nothing else in them but enmity to itself, [proceeding] from the tart essences of the stars, wherein one source [or quality] striveth against the other, and one breaketh [or destroyeth] the other with greater pain and torment to the body, with trembling and shrieking ; and at last [comes] corruption and death, as it is before our eyes. 62. There the devil gat the game for the kingdom of this world to be his again, he gat an entrance into man, and he could reach into the essences of his soul ; for they were * now both in one kingdom. » Mar. and the 63. He [the devil] supposed, [saying], The king- both in the dom of this world is thine, thou shalt sport thyself grace.' according to thy power with the image of man, which should have possessed thy throne, his spirit is in thy kingdom ; and so [the devil] mocked God in his mind, [saying], Where is now thy noble image, which thou didst create to rule over my throne ? Am not I lord of the great might of the fire ? I will rule over thy throne, the might [or strength] and virtue is mine : I fly up above the thrones of virtue and strength, and no might [or power] can withstand me.

264. Yes indeed he flieth up above the thrones, but he cannot fly into the thrones ; he flieth up in the first eternal source of fire, which is stern, sour, dark, hard, cold, rough, and burning, but he cannot get through the open gate of the deep, into the light of God, but he flieth up aloft in his abyss, in the eternity, in the wrathful source [or quality] of 396 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 17 hell, and reach eth nothing else. And therefore he is a prince (though in the abyss of hell), which was well enough known to man after his miserable fall. 65. And because I may not be well understood by the Keader, in that I write, that man dwelleth in the abyss of hell with the devils, therefore I will shew him the ground, that he may touch and handle it ; and if he will not feel it, yet it is given to him that he may know it, and it shall be a witness against him. 66. It is not without a cause, that Christ calleth the devil a prince of this world ; for he is so, according to the first Principle, according to the kingdom of wrath, and continueth so to eternity. But he is not so according to the kingdom of the four elements and stars ; for if he had full power in that, then there would be no vegetative [fruit] nor living creature upon the earth. He cannot master 1 that which the * exit of the four elements ; for he is in the issueth. originality, and there is a [whole] Principle be2jOr aspects tween ; only when the 2 constellations do awaken the of the stars.

3fierce wrath of the fire, in the elements, as in a tempestuous storm, then he is master-juggler [in mischief], and rejoiceth himself [therein]. Though indeed he hath no power there either, except it be permitted him from the anger of God, then he is the hangman [or executioner], and executeth the 8 The sen- "right as a servant [minister or officer] ; but not as tence, judg- . ment, or a judge, but as an executioner. 67. He is executioner in the kingdom of this Ch. 17] OF THE FALL OF ADAM AND EVE 397 world; the stars are the council, and God is the king of the land, and whosoever departeth from God, falleth into the council of the stars, which run many upon the sword, and make them lay violent hands upon themselves, and [bring] some to a rope, others to the water ; and there he is very busy, and is the driver or executioner. 68. Into this great misery man is fallen ; and he is fallen quite ^ome to the kingdom of the stars a into the bosom.

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