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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196. I let it pass, and it is true, that she may be in heaven with body and soul ; but with such a body as Moses and Elias had upon mount Tabor, in the apparition before Christ [at his transfiguration], viz. that new body out of the element ; the transitory [corruptible body] belongeth to the earth, for if we could have subsisted in God, with this [transitory and corruptible] body, God would not have become man, and have died for us. Even as all the Apostles of Christ are dead, and yet live ; and so may it also be, that the body of the virgin was changed into a heavenly, and laid off the earthly. What doth that avail us ? She is no goddess. 97. And the invocation of the saints is wholly against the nature of the first Principle. She is with God indeed, we need not to dispute that ; but we should only look to it, that we also may come to her [where she is] in her Son, and then we shall have eternal joy with her, for that she is (from the grace of God) become the blessed of [all] women, and that we see the green lily twig on her, and that she is the mother of our salvation, out of whom salvation is born, through God. 468 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 18 i Or purifying Of l Purgatory. fire.

298. That invented and well-forged purgatory hath some ground in nature, but in such a way (as it is taught) it is a lie ; and the greedy [desire of] filling the insatiable belly of the fierce [ravening] beast sticketh therein ; For it hath founded its kingdom of heaven thereon, and hath taken upon it to have the keys of Peter, (which it never had at all), to [open and shut] purgatory. 99. Yet I grant that it hath the key to open purgatory with ; but the other key which it hath, will not open the kingdom of heaven, but only the rich chest of gold, out of which the [supposed] maids [or virgins] receive their wages, and are sent (with fine passports) "into purgatory ; then the a the whore, 2 strumpet thinketh she goeth to heaven, to St uifShfui Peter, and thus the false god beguileth the false soul. , , goddess. 100. 0 ! thou blind world, with thy forged masses for souls, such as thy blessing is, such thou art thyself ; thou dost all for money ; if nothing be given thee, thou wilt keep no solemnity or procession. If thou wilt pray for thy neighbour's soul, do so while it is between heaven and hell, in the body of this world, then thou mayest effect somewhat ; and|it is very pleasing [and acceptable] to God, that thou desirest to be one body in Christ ; and thou helpest the necessity [or want] of thy fellow-member, to bring him into God; Ch. 18] PROMISED SEED OF THE WOMAN 469

3it is the pleasure and will of God, that one [help] to bear the burthen of another, and to be saved in one brotherly love, and in one body. 101. Thou blind minister to the kingdom of Antichrist, when thou sayest mass for souls, how is it, that sometimes thou takest upon thee to ransom a soul which is in heaven, or altogether in the abyss with the devil ? Dost thou not think that the devil mocketh thee ? Or how canst thou help them that are in heaven ? Thou criest out [and sayest], They are in pain [and torment]. And thou art a liar in the presence of God. And how then will that holy soul bless thee, and give thee thanks ? How is it, when thou thyself art in the abyss with all devils, that thou standest, and wilt ransom others out of purgatory, and that for money, which thou afterwards spendest with whores ? 0 fie upon thee ! thou great whore [or harlot], how hast thou made for thyself a heavenly kingdom upon earth, for thy voluptuousness, and deceivest the poor soul of man ? Thou must either turn, or go into the eternal purgatory. 102. And now seeing there is somewhat in purgatory, and that all is not so dead, *as the a Or the wolf wolf of the beast feigneth, whereby he may devour giveth it forth, the beast, and the woman that sitteth thereon, and

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