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.

primarypage 286

111. All malicious captivated men (whom he hath captivated) are his hounds, which hunt the poor soul with haughtiness, bravery, covetousness, unchastity, anger, cursing, and wrongful oppression, so that the poor soul is infected with these things, and is very often set upon the devil's horse, as one of the [devil's] captives, and then the devil will ride with it into hell into the anger of God. 0 how often doth he rob the poor soul of her fair garment 664 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 24 (of the knowledge of God) ! How doth he rend away the word of God from their ears and hearts, as Christ saith clearly ! Now if it will not do as he willeth, and that it breaketh out of his garden, then he casteth his dirt and filth upon it ; and then he stirreth up all his blood-hounds, they must bawl at it, and cast more disgrace upon it ; and then it standeth as an owl among the birds, who one and other will have a fling and a pluck at it ; and so it is also with the poor soul, which steppeth, through earnest repentance (out of the devil's net), into the new regeneration.

212. On the contrary, those others (who feed upon the weeds of the devil in vices and sins) are in peace ; for he fasteneth them in the anger of God, and they are his blood-hounds wherewith he hunteth the hind, the poor soul, which would escape and storm his hellish kingdom. The devil would be well contented, though some souls should escape (though he had rather increase than weaken his kingdom) but that his kingdom would be broken by it, which he cannot like. 18. For as he goeth a-hunting in his kingdom, and catcheth the poor souls which way soever he can, and layeth wait for them by his servants, with all manner of vice and wickedness, and so continually setteth such looking-glasses before the soul, that it should behold itself in its own wickedness, and tickleth it also with fair promises of great honour, power, and authority, he setteth the poor despised Ch. 24] OF TRUE REPENTANCE 665 sort before the soul, and saith, Wilt thou only be the fool of the world, come along with me, I will give thee the kingdom of this world for a possession, as he said to Christ ; so in like manner, when the soul hath put on the kingdom of heaven, and yet sticketh in the dark valley in flesh and blood, and seeth the devil's l murdering of its brethren and » Or mass&crinflr sisters, then it cometh to be armed of God to fight against the devil, and to discover his 2 burrow. For 2 trap, snare, ... . . , or pitfall

3the love to its neighbour constrameth it to do so, because it would help to increase the kingdom of heaven ; therefore it teacheth and reproveth thus, it warneth against sin, and teacheth the way to the kingdom of heaven ; which indeed the bestial body doth not understand ; it goeth away, like the rude ass, and thinketh with the starry and elementary mind, as followeth. 14. 0 ! what mischief I do to myself, in making myself the fool of the world ! What do I get by it but scorn and disgrace ? I am not sure of my life, thereby I bereave me and mine of our daily bread and livelihood, and must always be expecting of death, and swelter in the scorn of people. 0 ! how suddenly thou committest a fault, and then thou art persecuted, and art thrown away like a rotten apple ! And what reward have those thou leavest behind thee, but to suffer [the more] for thy sake? 15. Thus man in flesh and blood judgeth, and when the devil understandeth it, how soon is he 666 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 24 1 Or order. J the devil.

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.

primarypage 286

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