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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1devil tickleth you, and stroweth sugar, that he may catch you and bind you fast ; and then he leadeth you 2 to Jericho, and scourgeth [woundeth], and 2 Or into the plagueth you sufficiently. 53. And then when the poor soul shall travel [home], there are great mountains in its way ; and then thy fair tincture will appear before the [holy] element like a defiled cloth ; and there standeth the devil and readeth the 3 law to you about it ; 3 Or the , sentence of and then the poor soul quaketh, and begmneth to the law concerning it. doubt ; and when it is to break through the bitter gate [of the Cherubim], then it continually feareth that the fierce anger of God shall seize upon it, [as upon hellish brimstone], and kindle it ; as it cometh to pass for certain, if it be not born anew in Christ, through earnest repentance. 54. Therefore, 0 man, consider what thou so west here, that thou shalt reap ; take an example in Cain. Or dost thou suppose, that it is an invented fable, [which I here write] ? Do but ask thy own mind, that will convince thee, except thou art too 528 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 20 1 mother or root. 2 Or their burning unchastity. 8 Or in. 4 Or every way.

2much captivated by the devil. Behold the horrible punishments from the anger of God, since the beginning of the world ; the Hood [or deluge] was a punishment for the unchastity [or uncleanness], whereby God would drown the Matrix of the burning lust of lechery ; and therefore he punished the world with water ; for the water is the l matrix of all things. 55. Therefore God established the state of wedlock with Adam and Eve, and bound it fast with a strong chain, in that he said, A man shall leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. And God tolerateth their Must, because it is to be bound with faithful chaste love, as one body 3and its members, and must aim (in the fear of God) at the getting of children ; or else the wantonness [or lust] in itself (without that true love of the state of wedlock) is * continually a bestial lust [infection], and sin. And if you (in the state of wedlock) seek nothing but the lust and lechery, then in such a condition, thou art not a jot better than a beast. And do but consider it rightly, that without this, thou standest [already] in a bestial birth [or generation] (contrary to the first creation) like all beasts. For the holy man in Adam was not fore-appointed to have propagated so, but in great modest love out of himself. 56. Therefore, 0 man, look to it ! [have a care] how you use the bestial lust; it is (in itself) an Ch. 20] ADAM AND EVE'S GOING OUT OF PARADISE 529

3abomination before God, whether it be in the state of wedlock, or out of it. But the right love and fidelity [or faithfulness] (in the fear of God) covereth it before the countenance of God ; and (through the Son of the virgin) it is regenerated to be a pure undefiled creature again, in the faith, if thy confidence be in God. 57. But for the whores and rogues (who run a-whoring without marrying in lustful lechery) we have no other language for 1 them ; neither can i Than that we find any otherwise in the light of nature, than mentioned a that it is an abomination [or loathing] in the anger l of God ; and if earnest repentance (with Mary Magdalene) be not there performed in the regeneration, then we find nothing else but the anger of God and hell-fire to be their wages. Amen. Of the innocent and righteous Abel. The Gate of the Christian Church. 58. Seeing then that Adam and Eve had yielded themselves to the spirit of this world, and did live in two [kingdoms], viz. in the holy element before God, and also in the out-birth, [yiz.~\ the four elements, which reacheth that which is most outward, [viz.'] the kingdom of the [sour, fierce] grimness, so there were also two sorts of children generated out of them, viz. one a mocker [or scorner], and another a plain honest man ; as is sufficiently to be seen by Isaac and Ishmael [the sons of] Abraham ; also by Jacob and Esau. 34 530 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