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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1deep anguish of death ; it must break through two kingdoms, and it sticketh here 2 between the door 2 in the chink, and the hinges, and is continually infected with Sng oTthe those things which keep it back and plague it ; it door' sticketh as it were in a press. 400 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 17 74. If it straineth to God [ward], then the devil holdeth it on one side with one band, and the 1 Or assault world with another band ; and they l set upon it ; the devil handleth it in fierceness [sternness, fro wardness], or wrath, which is a source [or quality], and sin, which cannot attain to the kingdom of God ; and the world leadeth it into pride, covetousness, 2 or budding and fleshly lust, so that the 2 essences of the soul JjK£tal grow full [or impregnated] with the fleshly will ; for the will of the mind draweth these things into the soul, and so the soul (from that which is attracted) 3 muddy. becometh wholly unclean, 3 swelled and dark, and cannot attain the light of God ; its essences, that should give up themselves to God, cannot : For they are too rough, and cannot get into the light, that kindleth not itself in its essences. The gates of the deep must be broken open first, and then the essences [of the soul, may] 4 beyond. press into the liberty, 4 without the darkness ; 5 Or big with but if the mind be 5 filled, then it cannot [come pride, covet- . i T i -\ n i •

2ousness, envy, into the liberty], and then begmnetn horror, fear, distress, and despair of the kingdom of God, and this maketh mere torment [woe, pain, and smart] in the soul. 75. Thus thou shalt know in what manner it is sin before God ; thou hast in thyself the [one eternal pure] element, which is a joy in the presence of God ; and now if thou rage and rave with the source [quality or property] of hell, then thou touchest [or troublest] the element ; and thou stirrest Ch. 17] OF THE FALL OF ADAM AND EVE 401 up the l wrath [and makest it] to go forth, and 1 Or fierce thou doest as the devil did, when he awakened [or gt stirred up] and kindled the fierce x wrath in the Fiat, whereby the l fierceness generated earth and stones ; thou sinnest [piercing] into the heaven in the presence of God, upon which the Prophets complained in many places, that the disobedient did grieve their God. Though (in himself) he felt no pain, yet his wrath was kindled in the first Principle, in the gate of the deep, wherein the soul stand eth, and that is a mere abomination before him. 76. Behold, all whatsoever thou lettest into thy mind (if thy soul be not inclined [or yielded up] to God, so that it 2 believeth and trusteth in him) then * st all whatsoever thou doest is sin ; for thou bringest an earthly mind into the gate of the deep, where the spirit of God [moveth, walketh, or] goeth, and thou defilest the element which is in the presence of God.

377. Thou wilt say, How? God dwelleth in heaven. 0 ! thou blind mind, full of darkness ; the heaven where God dwelleth is also in thee, as Adam was both upon earth, and also in paradise at once ; and give not way to Antichrist to direct thee aloft without [the place of] this world above the stars, for he telleth thee a lie, as the devil himself did. God is everywhere, as the Prophet David saith : If I fly to the day-break, or into hell, thou art there. Also where is the place of my rest ? 26 402 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 17 Am not I he that filleth all things f Yet I behold the miserable and those that are of a broken spirit, and I will dwell in them : Also, / will dwell in 1 Or tent. Jacob, and my l tabernacle shall be in Israel : Understand it rightly, he will dwell in the contrite and broken spirit, which breaketh the gate of darkness, he will press into that [spirit], 2 infection or 78. Therefore beware of the 2 longing [lust or hunger. . .

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