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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1Ch. 20] ADAM AND EVE's GOING OUT OP PARADISE 525 kingdom of God worketh (in him) to righteousness ; and thus it is seen, as clear as the sun, what the cause is that the first man born of a woman became a murderer. 49. For as the tree was, so was the fruit ; and though the tree was not wholly evil [or false], yet as to the l becoming man, the tincture (by the ' Or incaraa. wrestling of the two 2 regions) became false [or evil], f'"^ And besides, afterwards Eve (his mother) helped do*s™ 8 him forward very much, because she sought after «cw*. an earthly lord and treader upon the serpent, and instructed him, [telling him] that he was the warrior [or soldier to overcome] against the devil, he must do it ; and so the wrath held him captive,' and his offering [or sacrifice] was not acceptable to God, because (in wrath) he built upon himself, and so his prayer reached not the gate of heaven' but the * driver did take it up, because it proceeded - the hunter out of self-pride (like the proud Pharisee), out of an tbe devi1' [evil or] false mind.

250. And 5here (thou lascivious whore in Babel' full of immodesty and lechery, in such whoredom) thou hast a gloss in thy [evil or] false copulation without the fear of God ; thou shouldst look [well to it] what thou sowest, that there groweth not a tree in hell-fire. Thou supposest that it is a small matter to commit whoredom. But I pray consider thyself, whither dost thou send thy tincture? Which, if it be true [or faithful], reacheth the element of God ; and now, if you pour it forth fruit. 526 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 20 thus, in such a false [or evil] way, in the impulsion of the region of the stars, with the infection of the devil, and also into such an unclean vessel, what dost thou suppose shall accept it ? Dost thou not know that the tincture in the seed is a blossom of the life, which qualifieth [or mingleth] with thy body and soul, which (as often as it is generated) is a figure before God? How dost thou think, whether doth it stand in the love, or anger of God ? 51. 0 thou Babylonish whore, when thou thus 1 Or destroy- committest whoredom, and * breakest afterwards est.

3the limbus, together with the matrix, wherein the figure of the image of God standeth, only for thy filthy lechery sake ; what dost thou think, how shall this figure appear? Seeing all (whatsoever is generated at any time out of the tincture) shall after the breaking of this world stand before God. And will not these figures appear in the anger of God ? Or hast thou an absolution for that which thou sowest in hell ? Look to it that this figure doth not qualify [or mingle] with thy body and soul ; for the tincture [then] is not yet become a spirit, it reacheth thyself; if thou art not newborn (through the blood of Christ) then thou must bathe [swim or swelter] therein eternally. It is i not I that say this, but the high spirit in the bosom of the virgin. 52. Therefore consider thyself, and say not, I 2 Or play a stand in the dark, and 2 exercise love ; none seeth youth. it. Thou standest before the clear countenance of Ch. 20] ADAM AND EVfi's GOING OUT OF PARADISE 527 God ; also thou standest before the abyss of hell, before the council of all devils, who mock at thee ; and besides, thou hast an evil [false] or unfaithful love, and it is no other than a [wanton] lechery ; if l it were faithful, thou wouldst not defile thy 1 the love. brother or sister ; both of you miserably defile the image of God, and are the worst enemies one of another ; you cast one another in the devil's murdering den, and are in the wrestling ; but the

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