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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1stand quite open [or naked] with all thy 2 secrecies ; 2 Or mysteries. for the spiritus majoris mundi [or spirit of the great world] hath found the tincture, and its roses blossom in the wonders. THE TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER Of the Cainish, and of the Abellish Kingdom; how they are both in one another. Also of their Beginning, Rise, Essence, and Drift; and then of their last Exit. Also of the Cainish Antichristian Church, and then of the Abellish true Christian Church; how they are both in one another, and are very hard to be known [asunder]. Also of the Variety of Arts, * States, and orders of this World. Also of the Office of Rulers [or Magistrates'], and their Subjects; how there is a good and divine 2 Ordinance in them all, as also a false, evil, and devilish one. Where the Providence of God is seen in all Things ; and the Devil's Deceit, Subtlety, and Malice, [is seen also] in all Things. 1. "\~X7^ ^nc^ ^7 the divine providence in all V V things, as also in arts and 3 states, that the things of this world are all good and profitable, and that only the devil's poison brought into them is evil ; and so we find also all states [or condi4 Or spring, tions], high and low, come out of one 4 only tree, 556 1 Conditions and Courses. 2 Or Order. 3 conditions of things. Ch. 21] THE CAINISH AND ABELLISH KINGDOMS 557

2and one always proceedeth out of the other, so that the divine providence cometh to help all things, and so the eternal wonders (in all the three Principles) are l manifested ; to which end God l Or disbrought to light the creation of all things, which from eternity in themselves stood only in the [flowing, budding, or] z springing up, but by the 2 AS the creation of this world are put into the wonders. the mind flow 2. Therefore now we can speak or write of01 nothing else but of his wonders ; for we have a great example of them in Cain, when the kingdom of the fierce wrath (after his murder) awaked in him, and would have 3 devoured him, that God 3 By making T i -, . .1 i- • • • hi™ despair came to help mm ; when the divine justice (in his in God. conscience) sentenced him to death, then the divine answer spake against it, [saying], No : Whosoever slayeih Cain, it shall be avenged sevenfold ; by which speech the fierce vengeance of the abyss of hell was driven away from him, so that Cain did not despair ; and though he was gone forth from God, yet the kingdom of heaven stood towards him, he might turn, and enter into repentance. God had not yet quite rejected him ; but his malicious, murderous, and false confidence he accursed, and would not 4 be therein. * Or consent

33. For God departed not from Cain, but Cain went himself from God : If he had been strong in faith and confidence in God, then he might have been able to enter into God again ; even as he thought before the fall [into the murder] that he 558 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 21 would break the head of the serpent, but there it was seen what man's ability was. If he had laid hold on the true Treader upon the Serpent, then he might have gone instantly (in the virtue of the Treader upon the Serpent) into God again. 1 Or was. 4. But Cain l had flesh and blood, and understood not the meaning of the eternal death ; yet when he was assured from God that none should slay him, he became cheerful again ; for the 2 his faculties 2 essences of his soul were refreshed again by God's doubt were recalling [him] ; for the door of grace stood open of God's8™ towards him, he should return, for God would not the death of a sinner.

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