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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1he took all the vices (which stuck in flesh and blood) and cast them upon the soul, that he might entangle it with them, and hinder it from comprehending the virgin again ; he made a great mountain of the sins in the flesh and blood, and therewith covered and shut close up the 1 mercy of God, viz. the new man in Christ, and the gates of heaven, which stood open before, were shut up close : Misery and great trouble were heaped upon the soul, till at length once again, from the breath of God (which came into it again) it was moved to break the devil's chains in pieces, and it entered into combat with him, so that he was quite thrown to the ground, and its covering was rent in pieces, and then the soul saw its beloved virgin again. What 2 friendly welcoming there was then, I had rather the Reader might find by experience, than that I should write of it. 20. Thus the soul desired the Pearl again, but it was gone, and must be generated anew, and be sown as a grain of mustard-seed, which is small and little, and afterwards there groweth a great tree out of it ; and thus the Pearl groweth in the bosom of the 8 virgin in the soul. Therefore keep what thou hast, for misery is an ill guest ; regard not what sugar the devil stroweth, though the kingdom of this world seem as sweet as sugar, it is nothing else but gall ; consider that the poor soul in this world, and in the flesh and blood, is not in its true home, it must travel into another

2Ch. 24] OF TRUE REPENTANCE 669 country. Therefore suffer not the devil to cover it thus with the untowardness of the flesh, for great earnestness is requisite for the driving away of the devil ; though that would not be in our ability [and power], if the exceeding worthy Champion did not aid and assist us. 21. Therefore none should be so presumptuous, as to mock and despise the children of God, who are in the combat against the devil. But think that it will come to thy turn also ; if thou wilt not go about it when thou art well and in health, thou must come to it at thy death ; when the poor soul cometh to part from the body, then it must enter into the combat, there is no remedy ; for it must depart from the body out of the spirit of this world, and then two gates stand open, viz. heaven and hell, it must go in at one of them, there is no other place out of this world. 22. If now it be hard captivated in sins, and still goeth on in sinning from day to day, so that it is clothed with the anger of God, and hath loaded itself with mockiug the children of God, and so sticketh over head and ears in the anger of God, and scarce hangeth by a thread [to Christ], 0, how hard it is with that soul ! Must not that soul needs swelter a tedious while in the scorn which it hath put upon the children of God ? How can it suddenly reach the noble virgin in the love and mercy of God? And then where is the noble Tree of Pearl [in the meanwhile],

3670 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 24 which is sown as a small grain of mustard-seed, and in the growing of it cometh to flourish like a bay tree ? Whence hath it its sap, if the soul standeth thus in the bath of the anger? 0! it will (in many) not grow green in eternity. And therefore saith Christ, In the resurrection they shall excel one another in glory, as the sun, moon, and stars. 23. And what then will thy gold and silver, thy money, goods, honour, and authority, which thou hadst here, avail thee, when thou must leave all, and part from them ? What will it profit thee, that thou hast scorned and contemned the children of God ? Also, what will thy covetousness and envy avail thee, now thyself must swelter therein with great shame and anguish, where thou hast so great shame before the angels of God, and where all the devils mock thee, that thou hast been God's branch, and hast had so long a time [that thou mightest have been a great tree], and art now but a dry withered twig ? 24. Or what thinkest thou, if thy twig be thus very dry and withered, and that thou must eternally swelter in the anger of God, where instantly thy human image will be taken away,

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