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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110. God could well have created creatures which °urselvesshould have managed the beasts, [so] that man might well have stayed in paradise in the angelical form; and besides that, there are already, in all the four elements, creatures without a soul ; God would well have laid the labour [or charge] of managing the beasts upon another generation, which were also 9 earthly. But he saw well that 9 Or of the four elements. man would not stand, therefore instantly the 428 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 18 1 had desired bestial man. 2 Or commandment laid upon them. burthen was laid upon him, as Moses also writeth of it. 11. But if God l would have had bestial men, then he would have created them so in the beginning, and given them no commandment (neither should they have been tempted) ; as indeed the beasts have no Maw. 12. Therefore all objections, which fall into reason, are nothing else but the subtle contradictions [or fallacies] of the devil, who would very fain maintain, that God did will the fall of man. There are also men that dare to say, that God did will it ; [and say] that he fitted the tongue of the serpent to seduce Eve ; whose judgment is very justly upon themselves, because they [offer to] confirm the devil's word with lying, and [go about to] make God a liar.

213. It is very true, according to the first Principle (viz. the abyss of hell) he hath willed it ; but that kingdom is not called God ; there is yet another Principle and fast enclosure between. But in the second Principle (where God 8 Or manifests 3 appeareth) he hath not willed it. Indeed all is God's. But the first Principle is the band of eternity, which maketh itself; from whence God the Father issueth forth from eternity into the second Principle; and therein he generateth his Heart and Son [from eternity to eternity] ; and there the Holy Ghost goeth forth from the Father and the Son, and not in the first himself. Ch. 18] PROMISED SEED OF THE WOMAN 429 [Principle]; and man is created for the second Principle. 14. And therefore also the Heart of the second Principle (by himself) hath new regenerated him [man] out of the band of the first Principle, and delivered him from the harsh [or wrathful] band ; and each [Principle] shall stand, to itself, in its own eternity : And yet God alone is Lord, and alone almighty ; but the eternal band is indissoluble, or else the Deity also would be dissoluble. But now all must be to his honour, glory, and joy ; and he is alone the Creator of all things ; and all must stand [naked] before him ; as the Scripture saith, Thou shalt see, and rejoice, when the wicked are recompensed; whereas in the second Principle, there is no desire of revenge * at all ; but in the i AS the light j. , /. , of the fire

3sharpness of the breaking-through out ot the nrst doth not , , , r consume any- [Principle] into the second, where the soul strametn thing. through from the torment into the joy, there it reioiceth that the 2 driver (who plagued [and vexed] ' hunter or , tormentor. it) is imprisoned, and because now it is securely freed from him ; even as it is the joy of the kingdom of heaven, that the devil (in the first Principle) is imprisoned, so that he cannot molest the heaven any more, and kindle the habitation of the element. 15. Therefore there is also very great joy in heaven, * for this world, because there is a Principle 3 at. generated, so that the devil can make no more use of the fierce wrath, which he poured forth and 430 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 18 1 The second and the third. 2 As the fire's consuming is the joy of the light. 3 As there would be no light without fire. 4 Or manifestations. 5 the world. 6 Mysterium. kindled in the time of his creation ; but is imprisoned between the ltwo Principles, which are both good.

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