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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1512 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 20 both of them, and only evil, and being they did live in the Father's fierce anger, therefore the anger and severity of God lusted also to devour his wrath, them, because they continually kindled 1it. 24. Therefore he said to Joshua, Pass over Jordan, and destroy that people; and leave none of them among you, that you be not polluted. This (saying of his) proceeded not out of his love, when he bid him kill the heathen ; as also the Prophets did not all speak from his love, but from his anger, which was awakened by the wickedness of man ; so also he speaketh many times through the spirit of the Prophets in the great world (in the Prophets and in Moses) in the fire, or in other terrors, in an angry zeal. 25. And should we therefore say, that God is well pleased with anger and strife ? No, the Prophets complained often (in the Holy Ghost [or spirit] of God) that this evil people offended their God, when they moved him to anger, so that accordingly his severe wrath went forth and devoured them. David saith, in the fifth Psalm, Thou art not a God that art pleased with wicked ways. 26. Now if man awaken sin, then the fierce anger [or severity] of God is stirred in himself, viz. in man, which otherwise (if man did stand in humility) would rest and be turned into great joy, as was often mentioned before. But now when he burneth [in wrath], then one people devoureth the other, and one sin destroyeth another. If Israel

2Ch. 20] ADAM AND EVE'S GOING OUT OF PARADISE 513 had been l upright, they had not been put to make l honest, war, but they should have entered in with wonders, taYfXd° and have converted the people ; Moses should have th led them into the [Promised] Land with his [miracles or] deeds of wonder. But because they were wicked, they could not enter in (with the brightness of Moses, with deeds of wonder, in the lustre [or glance] of the Father) to convert the heathen ; but Moses (with his deeds of wonder) must stay in the wilderness, and the whole people was consumed and devoured in the wrath ; and Joshua must war with the heathen, and destroy them, for one 2 wrath devoured the other. 2 ^ one 8in 27. Whereas Joshua was an image and similitude, that Israel (because they could not subsist in the Father's clarity and love) should be led by the second Joshua (or Jesus) out of the wrath into the love, through the breaking of his body, and entering into death. Moses must enter through death into life, and bring his clarity through death into life ; even as he appeared with Elias on mount Tabor to the second Joshua (or Jesus), in the clarity of the Father, and shewed him the pleasure of the Father, [viz.] that he (the second Joshua) should bring Israel through his death and clarity into the Promised Land of paradise. 28. Yet it could not be (how vigorously soever it was sought after) that man (in his own power) could enter into paradise. And therefore poor

3captive man must sit in this world in the devil's 33 514 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 20 1 From the grim wrath the devil's weeds or tares are sown among the wheat. murderincr den : where now the devil hath built O ' his chapel close by the Christian Church, and hath quite destroyed the love of paradise, and hath in the stead thereof set up mere covetous, proud, selfwilled [or self-conceited], faithless, sturdy, malicious blasphemers, thieves and murderers, which lift themselves up against heaven and paradise, and have built themselves a kingdom (according to the dominion of the fierce sour [stars or] constellations), wherein they domineer (with silver and gold) and consume the sweat one of another ; whosoever is but able, oppresseth the other to the ground. And though he flee before him, yet then he only putteth forth his dragon's tongue, and spitteth fire upon him ; he terrifieth him with his harsh voice, and plagueth him day and night. 29. What can be said of thee, 0 Cain1* Dost thou suppose that God doth not see thee ? Thou monstrous beast, thou shalt stand naked, as the spirit in the wonders doth signify, that thy ornament may be made known. How art thou become thus? 0 Eve\ are not all thy children, which thou hast brought forth, all come out of thy loins ? Was it then the purpose of God that the evil should domineer among the good, and one plague another ?

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