Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence

As regards the question : Where does the soul go after death ? Boehme writes in his little book, Of the Supersensual Life : " It has no need to go ; it has heaven and " hell within itself. The kingdom of God is within you." — " Heaven and hell are within one another and are to " one another as a nothing."

"Wheresoever thou dost not dwell according to thy " Selfhood and thine own will, there do the angels dwell " with thee and everywhere; and wheresoever thou " dwellest according to thy Selfhood and thine own will, " there do the devils dwell with thee and everywhere."

And as he expressed in such words the nothingness of

THE THREE PRINCIPLES

space, so does he also express the nothingness of this temporal order of life in the verse he used to write in his friends' albums : —

" Weme Zeit 1st wie Ewigkeit
Und Ewigkeit wie die Zeit,
Der ist befreit
Von allem Streit."

(He is made free from all strife, to whom time is as
Eternity and Eternity as time.)

THE FIRST CHAPTER
Of the first Principle of the Divine l Essence. i Being or

Substance.

• 1. O^ EEING we are now to speak of God, what ^3 he is, and where he is, we must say, that God himself is the essence of all essences ; for all is generated or born, created and proceeded from him, and all things take their first beginning out of God ; as the Scripture witnesseth, saying, Through him, and in him are all things. Also, The heaven and the heaven of heavens are not able to contain him : Also, Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: And in Our Father is mentioned, Thine is the kingdom and the power ; understand all power.
• 2. But there is yet this difference [to be observed], that evil neither is, nor is called God ; this is understood in the first Principle, where it is the earnest fountain of the wrathfulness, according to which, God calleth himself an angry, wrathful, and zealous God. For the original of life, and of all mobility, consisteth in the wrathfulness ; yet if the [tartness] be kindled with the light of God, it is then no more tartness, but the severe wrathfulness is changed into great joy.

p. 2

1 Or materials, 3. Now when God was to create the world, and all things therein, he had no other l matter to make

2 essence, or it of, but his own 2 being, out of himself. But now, substance. /-. •• . .., .. i .,•• -i-iii

God is a spirit that is incomprehensible, which natn neither beginning nor end, and his greatness and depth is all. Yet a spirit doth nothing but ascend, flow, move, and continually generate itself, and in itself hath chiefly a threefold manner of form in its generating or birth, viz. Bitterness, Harshness, and s Or Scorch- 3 Heat, and these three manners of forms are none ingof them the first, second, nor third ; for all these 4begetteth, three are but one, and each of them 4generateth beareth, or bnngeth the second and third. For between 6 harshness and forth.

» astringency, bitterness, fire is generated : and the wrath of the or attracting. fife ^ ^ bitterness or sfcing itself} an(i the narshness is the stock or father of both these, and yet is generated of them both ; for a spirit is like a will, sense [or thought], which riseth up, and in its rising • infecteth, beholdeth, 6 perfecteth, and generateth itself.

impregnateth, .

ormixeth 4. Now this cannot be expressed or described, seed in itself. . . . n