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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168. So also it is with the damned [soul], when the body breaketh the soul needeth no flying forth, or departing far away ; it remaineth in that which is outermost l without the four elements, in the 1 beyond, darkness, and in the 2 anguishing source ; its source 2 Or aching is [that which cometh] after the light, and its rising [or springing-up] is enmity against itself, and so climbeth continually aloft over the thrones of the Deity, and findeth them not, to eternity ; but it rideth in its pride aloft over the thrones, in their own game, with the strong might of the grimness ; of which you shall find at large, about the description of the Last Judgment. THE TWENTIETH CHAPTER Of Adam and Eve's going forth out of Paradise, and of their entering into this World. And then of the true Christian Church upon Earth, and also of the Antichristian Cainish Church. 1. "I FERE we shall not be acceptable to the J — L Antichrist, much less to his stout horse [or stately beast]. But seeing it thus appeareth to us (in the wonder), we will describe it for a Memorial to ourselves, and behold how the beginning and end of everything is, that we also (in our combat) 1 Or in the may labour in the 1 gate of the deep ; although it Mysteries. be plain that we have nothing else to expect, in

2this world, for this revelation [or manifestation], from Antichrist and his beast, but scorn [contempt], disgrace, and danger of our temporal life, yet we comfort ourselves with the eternal conquest in our Saviour Christ, wherein we have to expect our great recompense, the glimpse of which appeareth 2 Or in great to us here, 2 in the great wonder ; for which cause we will proceed, and not look upon this world, but esteem that which is to come greater than all. 2. Our writing also will serve in its due time, 502 Ch. 20] ADAM AND EVE'S GOING OUT OF PARADISE 503 when the 1 lily-rose shall blossom ; for in these l the blossom of the sweet [writings] there is many a noble rose-bud, which at smelling present (because of the great darkness in Babel) cannot be known ; but there is a time, wherein it shall 2 stand according to its spirit. 2 Or be . , . •• known. 3. Now if we here discover the Antichrist, the devil (8in his beast) will mightily resist us, and3 Or by. cry out upon us, as if we would stir up [sedition] tumults and uproars ; but that is not true. Do but earnestly consider what a Christian is; it belongeth not to him to make uproars, for he is a sheep, in the midst among wolves, .and must be in the form and mind of a sheep, and not of a wolf.

34. Though indeed the spirit of God (in zeal and in the great might of the Father) armeth many in the fierceness [or wrath], as may be seen by Elias ; where sometimes the sword of the wrath of God is given to the angel, for the slaying of Baal's priests in Babel by Elias. Also, where Moses brake the tables, and employed the sword against the sin of the worshippers of the calf ; which neither Moses doth, nor Elias ; but the fire of the wrath of God, by Elias, on the mount. 5. Now when God the Lord had pronounced Adam and Eve's sentence, about their earthly misery, labour, cares, and hard burthen, which they must bear, and [that he had confirmed them] husband and wife, and also bound them in the oath of wedlock, to keep together as one [only] body, and to love and help one another, as the members 504 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [CL 20 of one [and the same] body, they were then wholly naked, they stood and were ashamed of their earthly image, and especially of the members of their 1 Or privities. l shame ; also [they were ashamed] of the 2 excredung< ment of the earthly food of their bodies, for they saw that they had a bestial condition, according to the outward body with all its substance ; also heat and cold fell upon them, and the chaste image of 8 Or lost. God was 3 extinct; and now they must propagate after a bestial manner.

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