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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15. For the soul which is out of the first Principle (out of the band of the eternity) was breathed into the element of the body, to [be] the image of God, out of the strong might of God, and enlightened from the divine light, so that it hath received an angelical source [or quality] ; but when it went forth out of the light of God into the spirit of this world, then there sprang up in it the source of the first Principle ; and it neither saw nor felt the kingdom of God any more, till that the Heart of God set itself in the midst again ; into that the soul must enter again, and be born anew. 6. And that it might do this, therefore the Heart of God became a human l soul, and slew (by 1 One copy ,. . . i i \ i •• /• i • in hath human nis entering into death) the spirit ot this world, body.* and brought the fulness of the Deity again into his human soul, so that we also may altogether in his (as in our own) human soul, through him, press into the holy element before God. And now there * We believe that John Sparrow translated from MS. copies of the author's work. In the German edition of 1682 Gichtel prints: "Und dass sie seiches konte thun, so ward das Hertze Gottes selber eine menschliche Seele "—without any reference to "body."— [C. J. B.] 474 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 19

2is nothing to hinder us but our own vile sluggish drowsiness, that we suffer ourselves to be so wholly and altogether led by the spirit of this world, with pride, exalting of ourselves to honour and esteem, and greedy filling of the belly [with plenty] ; and we look no further, [to consider] that we are but pilgrims, and that as soon as the spirit of this world hath laid hold of us in the mother's body [or womb], we are then pilgrims, and must travel with our souls into another country, where the earthly body is not at home. 7. For as this world breaketh and passeth away, so also all flesh (which is generated out of the spirit of this world) must break and pass away. Therefore now when the poor soul must depart out of this body, wherein yet it is generated, if then it hath not the new garment of the regeneration of the Holy Ghost in it, and is not clothed with the mantle of Christ, with his incarnation, suffering, death, and resurrection, in him, then there beginneth great sorrow and unquietness, [viz.~\ in those only which at the breaking of their bodies are but in the gate, and so swim between heaven 1 Or beginneth and hell ; and there then xis need of wrestling and the wrestling. , . . , , , struggling, as is to be seen by very many when they are dying. 8. There then the poor soul in the first Principle awing, or doth 2 move in the door of the deep, being clothed

3with the virtue [or power of the dominion, or region] of the stars, appearing in that [shape or] swim. Ch. 19] ENTERING OP THE SOULS TO GOD 475 form of the body, which it had here ; and many of them desire this or that, which was their last will, in hope thereby to attain abstinence, and [quietness or] rest ; also many by night (according to the sidereal spirit) shew themselves very disquiet with tumbling and tossing of the body ; which our learned men from the school of this world ascribe to the devil; but they have no knowledge [or understanding] in it. 9. Seeing therefore that this is the weightiest article, and cannot be apprehended in such a way, we will describe the dying of man, and the departure of the soul from the body, and try if it might so be brought to knowledge, that the Reader may comprehend the [true] l meaning of it. l or under- .. . , . standing of it.

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