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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1according to the region of the stars ; yet [the starry region] cannot bring the spirit of the soul into its own form, but it practiseth its juggling therewith, 4 Or con- and so there is no rest in its * worm, and its worm science. of the soul hangeth to its treasure ; as Christ said, Where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also. 22. Therefore it happenetb often, that the spirit of a deceased man is seen walking, also many Ch. 19] ENTERING OF THE SOULS TO GOD 481 times it is seen riding in the perfect form of fire ; also many times in [some] other manner of disquietude ; all according as the clothing of the soul hath been in the time of the body, just so hath its source [or condition] been ; and such a form, according to its source, it hath (after the departing of the body) in its figure, and so rideth (in such form) in the source [or working] of the stars, till that source also be consumed ; and then it is wholly 1 naked, and is never seen more by any man. But * Or without J , . . a body. the deep abyss without end and number is its eternal dwelling-house, and its works which it hath here wrought, stand in the figure, in its tincture, and follow after it.

223. Hath it wrought good here ? Then it shall eat that good ; for all sins stand before it in its tincture : If it think inwardly in itself of the kingdom of heaven, (which yet it neither seeth nor knoweth), then it seeth the causes wherefore it is in such a source [or misery] ; for itself hath made that. And there all the tears of the oppressed and afflicted are in its tincture, and they are fiery, stinging and burning in a hostile manner, fretting and gnawing in themselves, and make an eternal despair in the essences, and a hostile will against God ; the more it thinketh of 2 abstinence, the more 2Or forbearthe gnawing worm riseth up in itself. 24. For there is no light, either of this world, or of God, but its own fiery kindling in itself, and that is its light, which standeth in the horrible flash of 31 ance. 482 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 19 the grimness, which also is an enmity to itself ; yet the source is very unlike, all according to that which the soul hath here burthened itself with. For such a soul there is no [remedy or] counsel, it cannot come into the light of God ; and although St Peter had left many thousand keys upon earth, 1 that soul, yet none of them could open the heaven for *it; for it is separated from the band of Jesus Christ, and there is between it and the Deity, a whole 2 Principle or 2 birth ; and it is as with the 3rich man, where j Luke xvi those that would come from thence to us cannot.

3And this must be understood of the unrepentant souls, which thus in hypocrisy [or show of holiness] depart from the body, being unregenerated. 25. But there is a great difference in souls, and 4 Or their therefore 4the going to heaven is very unlike; departure is also unlike, some of them are through true repentance and 8 Or evil sorrow for their B misdeeds, through their faith (in the time of their bodies) set [or engrafted] into the Heart of God, [and] new regenerated through the birth of Jesus Christ ; and they instantly (with the breaking of their bodies) leave all that is 6 transitory or 6 earthly, and instantly also lay off the region corruptible. .. , 11oi the stars ; and they comprehend, in their essences of the first Principle, the mercy of God the Father in the kind love of Jesus Christ ; and [these] also stand, in the time of their bodies, according to the essences of the soul, (which they receive from the passion and death of Christ), in the gate of the heaven ; and their departure from Ch. 19] ENTERING OF THE SOULS TO GOD 483 the body is a very pleasant entering into the element before God, into a still rest, expecting their bodies, without [irksome] longing ; where then the paradise shall flourish again, which the soul tasteth very well, but effecteth no source [or work] till the first Adam, fas he was] before the fall, l be again l Or be its clothing Upon it. again.

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