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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195. And there the Word, or the Treader upon the Serpent, stood in the new regenerated element, in the soul of Abel, in the centre, in the gate of the deep, and did break the serpent's head (that is, the kingdom of the fierceness) of its might ; for the head signifieth the strong might of the fierce anger. And there the love of God (out of the Heart of 4 Or put. God) 4 let itself into the hell of the anger, and did smother the kindled fire of the poor soul in the love again ; and here the first work was proved, according as was promised from God to Adam and Eve. 96. Secondly, also the terrible work of the entering into the fierceness [or anger] was proved in Cain, for each kingdom proved its own. And now when Cain went into the anger, then the love of God stood in the centre before him, wholly hidden ; there Cain (as a champion) should have broken the serpent's head, which he before supposed that he was the man that should do it, and would do it in his own power and might ; and here it was rightly tried, whether it were possible in one's own self-power (through the lustre of the Father in the fire) to possess the kingdom of God. 97. But it was miserable, and all in vain, for Cain (in his tender humanity) cried, Woe, woe is Ch. 20] ADAM AND EVE'S GOING OUT OF PARADISE 545 me. His sins were greater than l he, he could not l Or above his in his own power press in to God; he trembled,1" and at length stood amazed before the abyss of hell,

2which had captivated him, and held him in it; he 2 severed himself now also from [the company 2 separated. of] men, and said, Now whosoever shall find me will slay me, for I must flee from thy face. 98. And here is seen the separating of the Christian Church from the Cainish, where God expelled Cain, that he must dwell in another place; and the true understanding of these high hidden secrets sticketh wholly in the word, under the veil [of Moses], and was almost never known [yet], but (in the time of the lily) it shall 3 stand3 Or be in the wonders. And thou antichrist! an church known' on earth shouldst know, that all (whatsoever thou inventest without the spirit of God for thy trimming and pride, also for thy strength and power) is gone forth with Cain from Abel, out from the Church of Christ, beyond Eden, into the Land of Nod ; if thou art so highly learned, and dost understand 4this in the language of nature, 4 this speech what it is, as thy flatterers in their bonnet [or pro- °f motion] suppose [they do]; but they apprehend nothing but the 5four elements in the going forth6 Or the with Cain, and not the [one] element before God ; S&nTSd therefore the same is the Babel of confusion and d^aC of various opinions, and not the ground 8in the "in the [one] element, which standeth in one alone, and not in multiplicity. 35 546 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 20

3'Or example. 99. Thou hast been a clear l glass (in him) of men's own conceits [or opinions], what one's own good meaning (without the spirit of God) is. Cain went not into the sheepfold at tfee door (which God made for Adam and Eve, with the Word, and Treader upon the Serpent), but climbed into it another way, by his strong lionish mind, and would be a lord over the sheep, and became a thief and murderer of the sheep, and the sheep followed him not, but they went (with Abel) through the sword of the angel [or Cherubim] (out of this frail and corruptible life) with the Treader upon the Serpent, into their resting sheepfold, where there is not one wolf ; for the Cherubim will let none of them in. And if any of them do come, then he cutteth their wolfs heart of the fierceness of the kingdom of this world clean away, and then they also become sheep, and lay themselves patiently among the sheep, and seek no more after the * the wolf. wolf, for 2he is beyond Eden, in the Land of Nod ; but they are gone through the sword of the Cherubim into paradise, where no wolf entereth in ; 3 Or a great there is B, wall of a Principle and whole 3 birth cliff or gulf , - before para- before it.

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