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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1first cause thereof. And though thou settest forth forth another, thyself never so wisely and handsomely, yet the driver is still before thee, and thou art the root of all those sins [which thou causest in others by thy hardness or oppression]. 48. And though thou prayest, yet thou keepest thy dark garment on still, which is defiled with mere 2 calumny, with usury, covetousness, high- 2 slander, mindedness, lechery, whoredom, wrath, envy, and robbery, [thy mind] is murderous, envious, and malicious ; thou criest to God that he should hear thee, and thou wilt not pull off this furred coat. Dost thou think that such a devil shall enter into God, or that God will let such a rough devil into him ? Thy mind standeth in the figure of a serpent, wolf, lion, dragon, or toad ; and when thou 3 carriest thyself so sprucely, thou art scarce 3 dost prank [thought] a subtle fox ; but as the will and the demurely and source [or quality] of thy heart is, so standeth thy figure also [before God], and such a form thy soul hath. And dost thou suppose that thou shalt bring such a pretty beast into the kingdom of God ? 49. Where is thy image of God ? Hast thou not turned it into a horrible worm and beast ? 0 ! thou belongest not to the kingdom of God, except 494 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 19 1 Or intercession. thou be born anew, and that thy soul appear in the image of God, then the mercy of God is upon thee, and the passion of Christ covereth all thy sins.

250. But if thou perse verest in thy bestial form till the end, and dost then stand, and givest God good words, that he should receive thy beast into heaven, whereas there is no faith in thee at all, and thy faith is nothing else but an historical knowledge of God, which [history] the devils also know very well ; then thou art not fastened to the band of Jesus Christ, and thy soul continueth to be a worm and a beast, and it beareth not the image of God ; and when it departeth from the body, it continueth in the eternal fire, and never more reacheth the gate of the breaking-through. The Earnest Gate of the Purgatory. 51. Then the mind asketh, May not a soul by the intercession of men [or their praying for them], be ransomed out of purgatory ? Antichrist hath played many juggling tricks with this, and hath built his kingdom upon it ; but I shall here shew you the root, which is highly known [by us] in the light of nature. 52. Men's l praying for, prevaileth thus far; if a soul hangeth to the thread of the new regeneration, and that it is not a total worm and beast, and that it presseth into God with an earnest desire, and if there be true Christians [there], which stand unfeignedly in the new birth, and that their spirit Ch. 19] ENTERING OF THE SOULS TO GOD 495

3of the soul (in their burning love towards the poor soul) doth press into God with the thread of the band of the poor soul, then indeed it helpeth the poor soul to wrestle, and to break in pieces the chains of the devil, especially if it be done before the poor soul be departed from the body ; and especially by parents, children, sisters, and brothers, or kindred of the blood. For their tinctures qualify [or mingle] therewith, as being generated from one and the same blood ; and the spirit of their soul entereth much more freely and willingly into this great combat, and getteth victory much sooner and more powerfully than strangers, if they stand in the new birth ; but without the new birth no victory is gained. There is no devil that doth destroy another [devil]. 53. But if the soul of the dying party be quite loosed off from the band of Jesus Christ, and that itself (by its own pressing in) doth not reach the thread [of faith], then the prayers of those that stand by about it help not, but it is with them, as Christ said to his seventy disciples, which he sent abroad, When you enter into a house, salute them [that are in if]. And if there be a child of peace in that house, then your salutation of peace shall rest upon it, but if not, then your salutation shall return to you again. Thus also their hearty wish of love, and their earnest pressing in to God, returneth again to the faithful, who were so heartily inclined to the soul of their friend.

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