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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135. But what will the spirit of this kingdom say ? Art thou not shining in splendour ? Hast thou not taken possession of all ? Hast thou not the earth in possession freely as God ge-ve it thee ? Dost thou not right ? Dost thou not punish the wicked, and look to it, where the enemy breaketh it ? Dost thou not defend thy country ? Art thou not a light to the blind, and appointest teachers for them, which 2 drive them to patience? The 2 Or exhort, kingdom is thine indeed, thou hast purchased it ; the poor is thy servant indeed, that [in thy opinion] cannot fail [but be right]. 36. But the divine answer in the light of nature saith to me ; Behold, out of what art thou grown ? Have I planted thee ? Art thou not grown in my wild garden ? When Adam went into the wild garden, there he 3 planted thee. How art thou 8 grafted, or , n TTTI 1,1- • r inoculated. grown so great ? Who hath given thee virtue [or sap], thou wild tree ? My love never stirred thee up, all thy branches are wild, and thy fruit is wild. Dost thou think that my soul lusteth after thy food ? I will not eat of thy fruit : I am strong, and the kingdom is mine ; he that cometh under my * wings, I will shelter him, no storm can touch 4 Or fatness. him ; moreover, the country is mine. I have left 518 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 20

2it to you, to be used in unanimous love ; and have set you out of one [and the same] root, that you should be alike, and love one another, and prevent one another in chaste love. 37. Thou wild beast, how comest thou so great and strong ? Hast thou not trampled in my garden of roses, and there made thee a couch? Where are thy brothers and sisters ? How cometh it to pass, that they lie at thy feet, and that they are so lean, and thou only art strong [and lusty] ? Hast thou not devoured my branches, and brought , calves, forth young wolves, which devour thy l cattle etc.ep> a '' also? And thou art a beast with thy young ones ! Should I suffer thee in my garden of roses ? Where is the noble fruit which I did sow ? Have you not turned them all into wild branches ? And where now shall I seek for the fruit and profit of my garden of roses ? My soul would fain eat of the good fruit, but thou hast trampled all under-foot, and made it a den of murder. 38. Besides, I hear a great howling and lamentation, that all thy servants cry woe over thee, because thou plaguest them ; and moreover, thou hast shed my noble seed, and not sown it, but [thou hast sown] thy wild [seed] for [the promoting of] thy great devouring and pomp. Behold, I have spewed thee out towards Babel in the press of my fierce wrath, and there I will press thee ; and I will plant my lily-branch in my garden of roses, which bringeth me forth fruit, after which my

3Ch. 20] ADAM AND EVE'S GOING OUT OF PARADISE 519 soul lusteth, of which my sick Adam shall eat, that he may be strong, and may go into paradise. Of the thrusting Adam and Eve out of the Paradise of the Garden in Eden. 39. Aud when God had thus provided Adam and Eve a bestial garment to cover their shame, and to defend them against the cold, then he let them out of the garden, and set the Cherubim with a naked l two-edged sword before it, to keep the ] Or warning way to the Tree of Life, and he [man] must now sword.0 till the ground. But the understanding of us poor children of Adam and Eve is 2sunk so much, that 2 darkened, at our last old age we scarce reach [the understand- Up, or frozen ing of] any thing concerning the lamentable fall of s Adam and Eve, seeing we must seek very deep for it in the centre of the light of life ; for it is very wonderful which Moses saith, God set the Cherubim before the garden, to keep and guard the way to the Tree of Life. Who could understand it ? If God did not open our eyes, we should speak simply of a keeper with a sword ; and reason seeth nothing else. 40. But the noble virgin sheweth us the door, [and] how we must enter again into paradise, through the sharpness of the sword ; yet the sword cutteth the earthly body clean away from the holy element, and then the new man may enter into paradise by the way of life. And the sword is nothing else but the kingdom or gate of the 520 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 20

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