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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11 Or issuing 14. But if now the l essences of the first Principle faculties, or of the soul have been so very conversant about [or addicted to] the kingdom of this world, so that the essences of the soul have sought after the pleasures of this world only, in temporary honour, power, and bravery ; then the soul (or the essences out of the first Principle) keepeth the starry region to it still, as its dearest jewel, with a desire to live therein ; but then [the starry region] hath the mother (viz. the four elements) no more, and therefore it consumeth, with the time itself, in the essences out of the first Principle ; and so the essences of the first Principle continue raw [or naked, without a body]. 15. And here standeth the 2 purgatory. Thou blind world, if thou canst do anything, then help 8 Or strong, thy soul through the 3 strait gate. Now here, if the Treader upon the Serpent hath not hold of the cord, then it must indeed continue in the first Principle. Here now is the great life, and also the great death, where the soul must enter into the one or the other, and that is its eternal country afterwards. For the third Principle falleth away, and leaveth the soul, and it can use that no more in eternity. * Exit. Of the 4 Going-forth of the Soul. 16. Seeing then that man is so very earthly, therefore he hath none but earthly knowledge, except he be regenerated in the gate of the deep. 2 Or refining fire. Ch. 19] ENTERING OF THE SOULS TO GOD 479

2He always supposeth that the soul (at the deceasing of the body) goeth only out at the mouth ; and he understandeth nothing concerning its x deep1 deep essential virtues or essences above the elements. When he seeth a blue faculties, , f i • which are of a vapour go forth out 01 the mouth ot a dying man higher origi- .... i i i \ n*l than ^e (which maketh a strong smell all over the chamber) four elements, then he supposeth that is the soul. 17. 0 no, beloved reason, it is not so ; the soul is not seen nor comprehended in the outward elements; but that is the brimstone -spirit, the spirit of the third Principle ; for as when thou puttest out a candle, a filthy smell and stink cometh from it, which was not before when the candle did burn, so here also, when the light of the body breaketh, then the brimstone-spirit is smothered, from whence that vapour and deadly stink proceedeth, with its working [spirit, or infecting] poison. 18. Understand [or consider] it aright; it is the source-spirit [or working spirit] out of the gall which kindleth the heart, whereby the life was stirred, which is choked as soon as the tincture in the blood of the heart is extinguished. The right soul hath no need of such going-forth, it is much more subtle than the brimstone-spirit, though (in the lifetime) it is in one only substance.

319. But when the spirit of the four elements parteth, then the right soul (which was breathed j into Adam) standeth in its Principle ; for it is so subtle that it cannot be comprehended ; it goeth 480 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 19 through flesh and bones, also through wood and 1 breaketh or stone, and l stirreth none of them. diaturbeth. r ... 20. It may be comprehended [as lollowetnj : It it 2beenena- hath 2 promised somewhat in the time of the body, moured, and not broken off and hath not recalled it, then that word, and the from it. . i i i • / i • i i earnest promise, comprenendetn it, (which we ought to be silent in, here) ; or else there is nothing that comprehendeth it, but only its own Principle wherein it standeth, whether it be the kingdom of hell, or of heaven. 21. It goeth not out at the mouth like a bodily substance ; it is raw [or naked] without a body, and instantly passeth (at the departure of the four elements) into the centre, into the gate of the deep, [in the hidden eternity] ; and that which it is clothed withal, that it comprehendeth, and keepeth it : If its treasure be voluptuousness, might [or power], honour, riches, malice, wrath, lying, or the falsehood of the world, then the fierce might of the essences out of the first Principle comprehendeth these things, through the sidereal 3 buddeth or spirit, and keepeth them, and 3 worketh therewith floweth.

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