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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141. It is true indeed, the judges and kings, as also princes and rulers [or magistrates], are the officers of God in the house of this [four elementary] world, whom God (because of sin) hath set to punish secretly, that thereby the wicked drivers [and oppressors] might be stopped. 42. And their state [condition, jurisdiction, or authority] is founded in the originality of the essence of all essences, where God in the beginning created the thrones, according to his eternal wisdom ; where then (both in heaven and also in hell) there 1 Or throne- are l thrones and principalities, and also a region [or dominion] according to the seven spirits of the eternal nature, of which here much ought not to be said, for the world holdeth it impossible to know such things ; whereas yet a spirit born in God 2 Or hath 2 searcheth into the kingdom of heaven. 43. But a true judge, who judgeth according to righteousness, he is God's steward [viceroy or vicegerent], in the kingdom of this world ; and that it might not be needful that God should always pour forth his wrath upon the people [and nations], therefore he hath put the sword into their hands to protect and defend the righteous, and to punish the evil. And if any do so, in earnest uprightness (in the fear of God, and nothing partially 3 Or for par- for 8 favour) then he is great in the kingdom of heaven ; for he beareth the [sword] for righteousness, and he shineth, as the sun and moon, exceeding the stars.

2Ch. 21] THE CAINISH AND ABELLISH KINGDOMS 575 44. But if he turneth tyrant, and doth nothing but devour the bread of his subjects, and only adorneth his state and dignity in pride, to the oppression of the needy, and hunteth after nothing but covetousness, accounting the needy to be but Kis dogs, and placeth his office only in voluptuousness, and will not hear the oppressed, then he is an insulting, tormenting prince and ruler in the kingdom of Antichrist, and is of the number of the tyrants, and he rideth upon Antichrist's horse. 45. And we are to consider how the true Christian Church is environed with the Cainish antichristian church, and how they live in one only kingdom in this world. As the first Principle encloseth all, and yet can comprehend or hold nothing, but the kingdom of heaven is (from eternity) brought forth out of the anger, as a fair sweet-smelling flower, out of the earth, so also the holy Church standeth in the antichristian ; where they both together go to pray before God, and one is accepted by God, and the other [is accepted] by the spirit of this world ; each image goeth into its own region [or kingdom].

346. There is nothing more secret in this world than the kingdom of Christ, and also nothing more manifest than the kingdom of Christ; and it is often so, that he who supposeth he hath it, and liveth therein, hath it not, but hath the kingdom of Antichrist, and he is an hypocrite and scorner and hath the serpent's ' figure; and his heart also' 576 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 21 is but the heart of a greedy wolf, and he standeth 1 Or image, not in the angelical * figure. 47. On the contrary, many a one is in great 2 the kingdom anguish, and longeth after 2 it, and generateth very of Christ. painfully, he would fain have 2it; but then the devil rusheth upon him, and after stirreth up irksomeness [vexation] and discontent, and also overwhelmeth him with great sins, so that he knoweth not himself, and then dejecteth him with impatience and doubting ; and his heart standeth continually in anguish, it would fain get out of evil, and endeavoureth continually for abstinence 3 forgiveness, or 3 forbearance, many times with groans, sighing, rest. and longing : But then the devil holdeth his sins before him, and barreth up the door of the grace of God, that he might despair.

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