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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127. And then God confounded their language, that they might yet see that they had only confounded senses [or thoughts], and should turn them to God ; that they also might see that they did not understand the language of the saints [or holy people], of the stock of Shem ; and that they must be scattered abroad over the whole world, so that a holy seed might be preserved, and that all might not perish ; but it availed not, they were wicked. 28. Then God (out of the fierceness of the first Principle) burnt Sodom and Gomorrah, those five kingdoms, with fire, for a terror ; but it availed not, sin grew like a green branch. And then God promised the chosen generation, that if they would walk before him, he would bless them as the stars of heaven, and make them so great [that they should not be numbered], and yet there were still among them evil birds hatched. And then God brought them into a strange land, and prospered macrocosm 436 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 18 them, to try whether they would acknowledge his goodness, and depend on him, but they were yet worse. 29. Then God stirred up a Prophet among them, even Moses, who gave them laws, and sharp 1 promoted, or doctrines, as nature x required; and these were thrust forth. . u

2given them (through the spirit of the 2 great world) in zeal, in the fire. Yet seeing they would live still in the roughness, therefore they were tried [or tempted to see] whether they would live in the Father ; and God gave them bread from heaven, and fed them forty years, to try what manner of people they would be, and whether they would by any means be brought to cleave to God. He gave them ordinances and customs [to observe] in meats and drinks, and also a priestly order, with heavy and hard precepts and punishments, which he published also to them ; but it availed not, they were only wicked, and walked in the dominion [or regimen] of the stars ; and yet far worse, [they walked] altogether according to the wrathfulness of hell. 30. And there is a great matter for us to see in the several meats which God forbad them, especially swine's flesh, whose source [quality or property] will not subsist in the fire, but affordeth only a stink ; and so it doth also in the fire of the soul, which reacheth [or stirreth] the originality of the first Principle ; from whence the first Principle (in the soul) stinketh [or maketh a stink], which is Ch. 18] PROMISED SEED OF THE WOMAN 437

31 contrary to the Word, and the noble virgin, and it J Or loathmaketh the gates of the breaking-through [into the light] swelled [thick, misty, fumy], and dark : For the soul is also a fire, which burneth ; and if it receiveth such a 2 source, [quality, or property] then 2 Or fuel for that darkeneth it the more, and burneth in the * vapour, like a flash [of lightning], as may be seen in the fat of swine ; for which cause God did forbid it them. 31. And there was no other cause of their employment about offering sacrifice, than because man was earthly ; and so the Word standing near the soul in the gate of the light of life, 8 he heard 8 God. their prayers, through the earthly source [quality or property] of their smells [4 or incense] ; and so 4 Or offerings they had a token in the fire, that their prayer was acceptable to God ; as may be seen in many places in Moses, which shall be expounded in its due place. 32. And there is a very great matter to be seen in Moses, concerning his 5 brightened face; where "glorious it was tried whether it were possible that the soul s could be ransomed by the Father's clarity [or brightness] in the fire, if they did live in his law, which was sharp and consuming, and a great piercing to the soul ; but it was in vain, it might not be. 33. And there the noble virgin (in the spirit of the Prophets) did 6 point at the Seed of the'OrproTTT i- • r i n ' of. Woman, at ms incarnation [or becoming man], 438

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