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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193. Therefore it is not good to prattle with the devil, he is a liar and murderer from the beginning of his kingdom, and a thief also ; he cometh only 410 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 17 to murder and to steal, as here [with Eve]. And the devil is the highest cause of the fall ; for he 1 *ne sweet- strewed l sugar upon Adam, so that he imagined ness of sin. & [or lusted] after the kingdom of this world ; though Adam indeed did not see him, yet he slipped into the essences of the [fierce, sour] sternness ; and did there strow hell's paradisical sugar before him, so that Adam lusted. 94. But because he beguiled Adam and Eve with his sugar, therefore God hath prepared such a dwelling-house for him, as Adam lets forth 2 from the (2 from the earthly sugar) at the nethermost earthly volup- V . , « , tuousness, and exit ; and that shall be left for him at the dainty deli- . .

2cades, the corruption of the earth, when it goeth into its ether ; and then that pleasant smell of the stink of sin and abominations (in the kingdom of the fierce wrath) shall remain for him, and that sugar he shall eat eternally, and frame his will con8 Or oven. tinually therein to get other sugar in the 8 furnace of the fire, and then he may make that ready for him, as may best suit with his palate ; at which he quaketh and treinbleth, when he heareth the spirit declare such things. And hereby it is also signified to all the ungodly, that they shall also eat the same sugar eternally, which they have continually baked here, with their blaspheming, cursing, covetousness, scorn, backbiting [thorny-taunting], murdering, robbing, and taking the sweat of the needy and miserable to maintain their haughty stately pride. Ch. 17] OF THE FALL OF ADAM AND EVE 411 95. And now when these two, thus captivated by the devil and this world, stood before God with fear and great horror, and felt the anger of God, and the severe judgment ; then the Heart of God, which had made them, pitied them, and it did 1 look whether there was any [remedy or] counsel 1 appear or r , . -, discover itself,

3that might help poor man, and redeem [or deliver] to see. him from the bands of the eternal [fierceness or] wrath, and from the mortal body of this world. But there was nothing found, neither in heaven, nor in this world, that could make them free ; there was no principality or throne-angel, which had the ability to do it ; all was lost, they were in the eternal judgment of the temporal and eternal death. For the first Principle had captivated them, in the spirit of the soul, and qualified [or mingled] with the soul ; the kingdom of heaven in the light was shut up, [and there was a firm enclosure] of a whole Principle between, and2 it could not reach 2 the soul, the kingdom of heaven again, except that it were born of God again ; otherwise there was no counsel, nor help, nor refuge in any thing at all. 96. Then the devil mocked the image, and hell opened its jaws wide, and had the bridle in their essences, and continually drew them therewith towards the hellish fire of the fierce wrath ; and then there was trembling and horror in the mind, and they could not reach the love of God. Heaven was their enemy, no angel came near them, but the horrible devils, they shewed themselves, and 412 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 17

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