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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123. Now consider what thou lettest into thy mind by thy senses, for thou hast in each kingdom a maker, which there 1 maketh [an image of] whatsoever thou layest into the scales, by the senses ; for all lieth in the making [or formation], and thou art (in this body) a field [ground or soil] ; thy mind is the sower, and the three Principles are the seed ; what thy mind soweth, the body of that groweth, and that thou shalt reap to thyself, and so when the earthly field or soil doth break, then the new-grown body standeth in [its] perfection, whether it be be 2 grown in the kingdom of heaven, or in the kingdom of hell. 24. By this now you might find and understand the ground, how the kingdom of this world is generated, and how one kingdom is in the other, and how one is the chest and receptacle of the other, where yet there is no captivating at all, but all is free in itself ; and man standeth manifested in all three [Principles], and yet knoweth none of them in the ground, except he be generated out of the darkness into the light, and then that Ch. 21] THE CAINISH AND ABELLISH KINGDOMS 567

2^source knoweth the fierce eternity, as also the > or property. 2 out-birth [or issue] of the eternity. But he is «ch. third not able to search out the light, for he is environed SJS±T therewith, and it is his dwelling-house; whereas w°rldt yet he is (with his body) in this world, and with the originality of the soul in the ground of the eternal source, and with the noble blossom of the soul in the kingdom of heaven with God, and is thus rightly a prince in the heaven, over hell and earth ; for the fierce source [or torment] toucheth it not ; but the blossom maketh out of the fierce source [or quality] paradise, [viz.] the high exulting joy in the springing up. 25. And thus thou earthly man mayest see, how thou livest here in three Principles, if thy mind inclineth itself to God ; but if it give up itself to the 3 source of this world, then thou standest 3 kingdom, or 4 before heaven, and thou sowest two Principles, J0"™6'. viz. the spirit of this world, and the fierce source' of eternity. The Well-Spring [or Fountain'] of the Antichristian Kingdom. 26. Man possesseth this world, and hath built him a glorious kingdom for his own glory, as is plain before our eyes; yet he is not to be condemned therein, (though indeed that is cause of sins), because God (of his grace) hath sent his beloved Heart into the flesh, that man might (thereby) go out from the flesh again, and enter into the 568 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 21 1 Or permitted.

3kingdom of heaven. But now his earthly body must have sustenance, that it may live and propagate ; and all the governments and arts of this world stand in this necessity, for the earthly body cannot want them ; and they are l borne withal (by divine patience) that the great wonders may thereby be manifested. 27. But this is man's condemnation, that he soweth only the earthly and the hellish seed, and letteth the heavenly stay in his barn ; he stayeth without, before heaven, and entereth not in for the noble seed; but he giveth God good words, that he may be gracious to him, and receive him into his kingdom, and soweth nothing but the devil's weeds in body and soul. And then what new body shall there grow ? Shall it stand in the heaven in the holy element, or in the abyss ? Or shall the Pearl be cast before swine ? 28. If thy maker in thee doth not make the image of God, but the image of the serpent, how wilt thou then bring thy beast into the kingdom of heaven ? Dost thou suppose that God hath adders and serpents in the broken gate of the regeneration in the pleasant habitation ? Or dost thou suppose that he looketh after thy hypocrisy, 2 colleges, that thou buildest great 2 houses of stone for him, churches, or .11 monasteries, and therein dost exercise thy hypocrisy and pomp ? What careth he for thy songs and roaring noise, if thy heart be a murderer and devourer ? He will have a new-born man, who yieldeth himself up to

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