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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1and elements, as to his body ; what these do with him, that he is, and that standeth in the substance ; they make one great, another small ; one straight, another stooping and crooked ; they send one fortune and riches, and another poverty ; of one they make a crafty subtle man according to the counsel and kingdom of this world, and of another they make an idiot ; they make one a king, and they break and pull down another ; one they kill, another they bring into the world ; and they continually drive the mind of man, yet into nothing else but into vain turmoil, discontent, and vexation. 69. Besides, the kingdom of hell, and of [fierce] wrath, always gape after the soul, and set their jaws wide open to devour the captive soul ; which is held fast fettered with two strong chains ; the one of the kingdom of hell ; the other of the kingdom of this world ; and it is continually led by the heavy, lumpish, bestial, and sickly body, as a thief who is often led to the place of execution, and still by a petition reprieved, and laid in prison again, 398 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 17

2and the poor soul must lie thus in prison the whole time of the body ; where the devil on the one side very suddenly rusheth upon it with his devouring fierceness, wrath, and malice, and would carry it into the abyss. Then instantly [it is beat upon by] the glistering [flattering] world, with pomp, bravery, covetousness, and voluptuousness of perdition ; presently [again come upon it] sickness and fear, and it is continually trembling and quaking ; and when man goeth but in the dark, how is it amazed, and continually afraid that the executioner will take it, 1 Or execute and * do execution upon it ! justice. The Gate [or Exposition] of the great Sin, and 2 committed Contrariety of Will against God, 2 in Man. by or through man- 70. If we did well consider the abominations and great sins of man before God, which our first parents inherited for us, then we should scarce ever be merry in this world at all, if the spirit of this world did not cast foolish fancies, and seeming joys and pleasures before us, in our imprisonment ; or if the regeneration did not cause us so highly to rejoice, that we shall once be delivered out of this prison; for in this life, we find nothing else but mere abomination, sin, misery, and death, and scarce attain (in this [temporary] life) so much as a glimpse of the eternal joy. 71. Now the mind asketh, What is sin then ? How is it sin ? Wherefore hath God a loathing against the substance which he hath created?

3Ch. 17] OF THE FALL OF ADAM AND EVE 399 Behold, thou child of man, there is no sin in heaven in the presence of God ; only in thyself there is sin, and sin separateth us and our God asunder ; otherwise all things are fixed [or perfect], and good in their own being [or substance] ; the kingdom of hell and of wrath is good in itself, according to its [own] region, it doth not vex or torment itself; but its woe [pain or smart] is its birth, and the rising of its source ; also it desire th nothing else. 72. And so also the kingdom of this world is fixed [or perfect], and good in itself ; neither doth it vex or torment itself ; but the elevating of the elements (viz. the kindling of the heat, cold, air, and water) is its growing and springing ; neither doth it torment itself in itself, nor hath it any distress or fear in itself. 73. Only man (who is proceeded out of another Principle) hath in both those [forementioned] Principles, woe, misery, sorrow, and distress; for he is not in his native country; and neither of these two Principles can attain his native country. Therefore the poor soul must be thus l plagued and i pinched and tormented, that it may attain its native country 8queezedagain; it must go again through the gate of the

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