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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1hooped, crying, Ho, ho ! we have gotten the game, we are princes over men, we will torment them soundly, because they would have possessed our throne; we should have been their footstool, and now we are their judges ; what care we for God, he dwelleth not in our kingdom ; wherefore hath he thrust us out ? We will be sure to wreak our spleen upon his image. The most pleasant, and most lovely Gate [or Exposition] of the Promise of the Treader upon the Serpent, highly to be considered. 97. Now when no counsel [or remedy] was found, and that man was sunk down into hell, to the great triumph of the devils, then said God to the serpent (the devil), Because thou hast done thus, be thou cursed ; and the Seed of the Woman shall tread upon [or break] thy head, and thou shalt bruise Or sting. [or * wound] his heel ; at which the abyss of hell did quake and tremble, but the devil understood not wholly what that should be ; only he saw that the Word imagined [or represented itself] in Adam and in Eve, in the centre of life, and that it opposed the fierceness of the kingdom of hell, of which he stood in fear, and his jollity was lessened, for he did not relish that. 98. Moses writeth here as if the serpent had beguiled Eve, because God cursed it, [and said,] That it should eat earth, and creep upon its belly ; but Moses here putteth the veil before our eyes, Ch. 17] OF THE FALL OF ADAM AND EVE 413

2that he cannot be looked in the face. For all prophecies stand in dark words, that the devil may not know [nor apprehend them], and learn / the times, and that he may not strow his false seed, before the wonders of God appear ; as may be seen in all the Prophets, who prophesied of the Treader upon the Serpent. 99. We know, that the devil slipped into the serpent, and spake out of the serpent; for God did not mean [by it] that the Treader upon the Serpent should tread upon the head of the bestial serpent ; but that he should destroy the devil and the abyss of hell. But that was the punishment of the bestial serpent, that it should remain a poisonous worm without feet, and eat earth, and have communion with the devil ; for so all evil spirits in hell appear, in their own form, according to their source [or quality], as serpents, dragons, horrible worms, and evil beasts. 100. This now the devil did not understand; because God spake of the serpent, and cursed it to [be] a horrible worm, and he supposed that it did not concern him; neither doth he yet know his own judgment, he knoweth only what he learneth from men, that l declare [things] in the 1 Or prophesy. spirit of God ; yet the spirit of God doth not wholly intimate his judgment to him, but all in the depth, afar off, so that he cannot wholly understand it. For to the enlightened men all prophecies (even concerning the wickedness of men) 414 THE THKEE PRINCIPLES [Ch. l7

3are thus given, and they dare not set them down clearer, that the devil may not wholly learn the counsel of God, and strow his sugar upon it ; though in this place there are very excellent things, that ought not to be revealed to the world, for they remain till the judgment of God ; that the devil may bring no new sects into it, and lead men into doubt ; and therefore they shall be passed over till the time of the lily. 101. So now when we consider the great love and mercifulness, in that God hath turned to man, we find cause enough to write and teach these 1 matters, or x things ; for it concerneth our eternal salvation and works'and redemption out of the jaws of hell ; therefore I will set down the ground of the promised Messiah, that the following writings may be the better understood, especially Moses in his Book of the Law, where there is need of it. Now he that will see nothing, God help him, he must needs be blind ; for the time of the visitation of the hardened Jews, Turks, and Heathens, cometh now. Whosoever will see, let them see ; the lamps for the bridegroom are shortly to be kindled. He cometh, whosoever desireth to be a guest, let him prepare him a wedding-garment. 102. Now, saith reason, How could Adam and Eve know what God meant by the Treader upon the Serpent? Indeed, they did not wholly and altogether know ; only they saw that the devil must depart from them, and not shew himself Ch. 17] OF THE FALL OF ADAM AND EVE 415

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