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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1continually ride l after thee ; he will still sit upon ' use all the thy beast, and be lord also, and ride over the authority he bended knees, and thus the kingdom of this world dost.*8 is a right den of thieves, and in the presence of God a lake of abominations. 113. The spirit of thy stout beast is the hellish * worm ; the crowned bride that sitteth upon it is 2 dragou or the false woman [or whore] of Babel : She drinketh be only out of the cup of whoredom and abominations, her drink in that cup is the fierceness of the anger of God, of which the people [or nations] drink, and become drunk, and so in their drunkenness they become murderers, robbers, thieves, false perfidious mockers, jesters, scorners, proud, high-minded, selfhonourers, stern malicious people ; there is no end of the number of those that hate one another; every one supposeth his way is right, and that he walketh in the right path ; if his brother and sister go not in the same way with him, he scorneth them, and calleth them heretics ; and so one wolf biteth another ; his way is in his own opinion, as his master teacheth him, who yet never regardeth anything but his 3 belly-god, that his esteem and3 his own i i elected god

2glory may be great among men ; thus one hypocrite mautinZ deceiveth the other, and they are scorners and persecutors one of another among themselves ; and one is a wolf as well as another ; and the poor Abel (who standeth in true resignation, and relieth upon God) must continually be 4 their footstool, he is 4 as the dust ,• n , , . under their continually murdered in a twofold manner. seat. 554 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 20 114. One is, that he is deceived, and goeth along into Babel, and is murdered, as to the kingdom of heaven. The other is, that if he remain constant, then the devil (with Cain) will not endure him, but nmrdereth him outwardly, as to the body, or taketh away his good name and credit, 1 with ail and l covereth him so that he may not be manner of . . slanders and known, that so the kingdom oi Cam and the Antichrist may remain in Babel ; of which we know well how" to speak by our own experience, if wrath and auger did please us. But it fareth very well with our Abel, and our being scorned springeth up in the blossoming of the lily, whereat we will rejoice well enough, when we return again from Jericho to Jerusalem to our father Abel.

3115. And now what hast thou to expect, thou proud bride of Babel, for thy stately pride, from the spirit of this world, that thou servest it so faithfully ? Behold, thou hast a threefold [reward to expect] ; First, that the spirit of this world leave thee, and depart from thee, and tear away thy proud body from thee, and turn it to dust and ashes ; and it taketh thy goods, power, and pomp, and giveth them to another, and tormenteth him for a while therein. 116. And secondly, that it receive all thy purposes and deeds, and set them in the tincture of thy soul, and make of it another dwelling-house for thy soul, that it may not send thee so naked away from it. Ch. 20] ADAM AND EVE'S GOING OUT OF PARADISE 555 117. And then, thirdly, that it hath brought thy soul out of heaven into the pleasures of this world, and now leaveth it in its misery, wholly naked and bare, sitting in its filthiness, and goeth away and regardeth no more where the soul is, or how it is with it, if it l were in the abyss of hell [it were all » Or should one to the spirit of this world] ; this thou hast to g° expect for thy recompense from the spirit of this world, because thou hast so truly served it. 118. Therefore, 0 Cain I flee away from the spirit of this world, there is a fire (out of the root of the originality) from the Lord of heaven in it ; thy swelled secret kingdom is kindled, that men may see [or know] thee in every place ; thou shalt

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