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.

primarypage 236

1from the fire [therewith] out ol the anger into the love, and so it should be generated [to be] another creature in the love? St Paul saith, Whom he hath foreseen, those he hath sanctified, that they may be like his image ; the foreseeing is in his election ; he always electeth [or chooseth] his sheep. Those who come to him, he assureth them the eternal life. But that he hardeneth those that desire 6 sincerely, or 6 earnestly to come to him, and will not foresee imfeignedly. . [predestinate or elect them], that is not so. His will is to help all men. And Christ himself saith, Ch. 20] ADAM AND EVfi'S GOING OUT OF PARADISE 533 Come ye all to me that are weary and heavy laden, (here it is, those that are laden with sins) / will refresh you ; that is, certainly foresee [or elect] and draw [them] to me ; and there wanteth but to come. 67. What is it now that lieth in the way of the wicked, that he cannot come ? It is the angry sword of the angel (or Cherubim) which he will not break ; the fair, glistering, hypocritical, dainty world in his bosom, [malice or wickedness] in flesh and blood pleaseth him too well ; he will not break his mind, which yet he is able to do ; and if he doth break it, then he is drawn of God (by Christ) to the Father, and instantly is chosen to [be] a child of God ; and out of the image of the serpent there cometh [to be] the image of an angel.

268. For so long as the image standeth in the anger, it is the image of the serpent ; but if it goeth forth [from the lust of sin, or desire of evil] into the breaking [or destroying thereof], then a heavenly image is figured (by the Treader upon the Serpent), and * the serpent's head is broken ; the * the evil is two kingdoms fight [or wrestle] one with another, wlthgood. and that which overcometh, figureth the image. 69. Whereby it is seen, how great the anger was in Adam and Eve, in that the wrathful kingdom sooner overcame than the kingdom of heaven ; and the scorner is sooner generated than the 2 upright. But yet the fault of this was in 2 honest or the parents; had they not sinned, and let theiunocent< 534 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 20 anger into them, then it had not been so, as at this day. 70. Although indeed nature taketh hold of the child in the mother's body [or womb], and 1 Or dominion, [shapeth, figureth, or] image th it; yet the l region 2 Or the four of the stars hath no other than the 2 image in the elementary i-i-i-iiii images in the four elements, and not [that] in the holy element. And although indeed it image [or frame] a man in the outward bestial mind, with a little understanding many times, yet that is no matter; the outward man is the beast of the stars, but the inward in the [one] element is the image of God ; and the divine framing [figuring or imaging] is not 8foureie- performed in the 3 outward, but in the inward

3ments, but in the one holy element. element. . 71. .bor a man is many times (in the outward) so very evil-natured [or malicious, froward condi4 Or angry or tioned], from the stars, that he becometh 4loathand abhorreth some to himself ; but when he considereth himself, then he entereth into himself, into the inward man, and reacheth after abstinence [or forbearance of evil], and yet cannot be quite loosed from [or rid of] the outward wicked malicious man, but must continually (with the inward) break the head of (the outward) the serpent. 72. For the serpent stingeth many in the out- » Or over- ward ; but if it 6 get the inward man, then the inward. image of God is gone. The evilness [or malice] of the stars driveth many [strongly] to murder, steal, • Or cheat, lie, and 6 deceive, till they come to the gallows, 20] ADAM ? gmen s not Tin body; the gate °f • open towards him' while z:/tr 2:f cshT;tm the leatn Of Uhnst) b wluch thread he mus . And it is all vain and idle fwhicli is aMl 536 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 20 4 Or void of understanding. 6 Note what free-will is. 1 the eternal wholly in the l eternal life ; but if thou be once in heavenly life, the eternal life, then thou art perfect [or fully there], whether it be in the heaven or in the hell, out of that there is no redemption, for it is the 1 eternal life. 75. But while we are thus speaking of the 2 innocent. 2 upright Abel, we cannot say, that the kingdom

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.

primarypage 236

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