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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1496 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 19 1 pope or ministers. 2 Or is founded. 8 in thy unrepentant garment of sins. * Or between time and eternity. 6 princely potentates. 6 pope or minister. 54. But concerning the feigned masses for souls which the 1 priests say for money, without any true devotion, and without hearty pressing in to God, that is altogether false, and 2 standeth in Babel ; it helpeth the soul little or nothing ; it must be an earnest fight that must be had with the devil, thou must be well armed ; for thou enterest into combat with a [mighty] prince, look to it that thyself (in thy 8 rough garment) be not beaten down. 55. I will not say, that one that is a true believer [or truly faithful] in the new birth, cannot (with earnest combating) help a soul, which moveth in the * door of the deep between heaven and hell ; but he must have sharp weapons, when he hath to do with 6 principalities and powers, or else they will deride and scorn him ; as it is done for certain, when the 6 priest, with his glistering cope [or other fine clothes], cometh between heaven and hell, and will [undertake to] fight with the devil.

256. 0 ! hear thou 6 priest, there belongeth neither gold nor money, nor any self-chosen holiness about it ; there is a very worthy Champion which assisteth the soul ; and if it getteth no victory in him, then thy hypocrisy will not help it. Thou takest money, and sayest mass for every one, whether they be in heaven or in hell, thou dost not inquire after that ; and besides, thou art altogether uncertain of it, but only thou mayest be sure, that thou appearest before God to be a perpetual liar. Ch. 19] ENTERING OF THE SOULS TO GOD 497 57. But that they have hitherto ascribed such acute knowledge to the soul, after the departure of the body, that thing is very various, according as the soul is variously armed. If it here (in this body) entered into the new birth, and if itself was entered, with its noble Champion [Jesus Christ], through the gates of the deep, to God, so that it hath received the crown of the high wisdom from the noble virgin, then indeed it hath great wisdom and knowledge, even above the heavens, for it is in the bosom of the virgin, through whom the eternal wonders of God are opened. This [soul] hath also great joy and clarity [brightness or lustre], above the heavens of the elements ; for the glance of the holy Trinity shineth from it, and clarifieth [brighteneth, or glorifieth] it.

358. But that they should ascribe great knowledge to a soul (which scarce at the end, with great danger, is loosed from the band of the devil, and which in this world did not so much as once care for the wisdom of God, but looked after its pleasure only, and which hath not in this world been once crowned with the Holy Ghost) that is not so. Doth not Christ himself say, The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light ? 59. If the soul be freed from the bands of the devil, then it liveth in meekness, and in great humility, in the stillness of the 1 element, without » eten.ai the springing-up of any works ; it doth no miracles 32 498 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 19 [or sheweth no works of wonder], but humbleth itself before God. Yet it is possible for the highlyworthy champion-like souls to do wonders ; for they have great knowledge, and power [or virtue], though they all appear (in the humble love) before the countenance of God, and there is no grudging among them. The true Door of the Entrance into Heaven , or into Hell. 60. Reason always seeketh for paradise, out of which it is gone forth, and it saith, Where is the place whither the souls go to rest in? Whither flieth it when it departeth from the body ? Doth it go far, or doth it stay here ? 61. Although we may be hard to be understood, in our high knowledge, (because a soul that desireth 1 Or under- to x see it, must enter into the new birth, or else

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