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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1root of the fierceness) against the Word ; for his spirit went out of the gate of the centre of heaven, and stood in the source [or active property] of the original of the creation in the fierce root of the fire, and desired the out-birth out of the holy element (which also stood in the kindling in the fierceness) viz. the four elements. 104. His anger against Abel came from hence, because Abel l stood not in his birth, and his spirit i Or took no would not endure the kingdom of Abel in hisfe^om kingdom ; for he would rule (as by his own power) ofthis worldin the 2two Principles wherein he stood; and « the tint and therefore he slew Abel. the third. 105. Yet God would not have it so, but

28 kindled the anger in Cain, which rested before in » Or awakened the swelled kingdom of the four elements, and vaB^S"*** only climbed up in great and mighty joy, whereas Cain did not know the anger, nor understand anything of it; only the essences of the soul knew that they dealt falsely, but they knew not the fierce source in the kindling of the fire, till they went forth from the centre of God into the 4 false- 4 Or wickedhood, and there they felt the fire of the anger with great horror, trembling, and crying ; for they were gone out from God, and neither saw nor felt the heavenly source any more ; and therefore they despaired, because they found [or felt] themselves in the source of the wrath ; and the body with all its essences cried, My sins are greater than that they can be forgiven. ness. 550 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 20 106. And here is apparently seen the glass of the abyss of hell, and [of the] eternal despair; when the anger of God riseth up in the source, that the malice [and wickedness] is made stirring, and there beginneth trembling, galling, and crying, and despair in itself as to God ; there the soul seeketh abstinence in the kingdom of this world, 1 Or no and findeth * none ; and then it leaveth the comfort.

3kingdom of this world also, and runneth into the originality, into the root of the eternal birth, and seeketh abstinence, and yet findeth nothing ; and then casteth itself into the abominable deep, supposing to reach the original. of the abstinence, or the gate of the breaking in ; but it mounteth only above the heaven, out (into the most outermost) into the fierce [wrathful, grim] eternity. 107. Then it beginneth venomously to hate the body, wherein it hath borne the image of God ; and many run headlong into the water, or take a rope, or a sword, and murder the body, which hath bereaved it of the image of God, through temporal pleasure, through false confidence, relying upon itself, to contemn and scorn its brother and sister, to murder him, to take away his daily bread, and also to odve occasion of wantonness to their brethren o and sisters. 108. And thou Cainish church, here thou hast a glass, in thy rising up in pride, and self-power, also in thy voluptuous self-honouring life, behold thyself [in it]. For thou art gone into the spirit Oh. 20] ADAM AND EVE's GOING OUT OF PARADISE 551

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