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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1"ting. man (who is in strife with the earthly) doth many times overcome, but cannot swallow up the earthly ; for the earthly getteth up again, as we see by our anger ; for if my new man have the upper hand, he Ch. 25] CHRIST'S DEATH AND RESURRECTION 681 will have no anger, nor any evil desire ; but if this world's driver assaulteth him, then the fire of anger riseth up in the old man, and his desire is often kindled to do what he rejected and reproved a little before. 5. Now we cannot say, that the spirit of this world alone consenteth to, and doth that which is evil and wrathful ; for the whole man oftentimes runneth with all his thoughts, and his whole will after it And here we l find our great misery, for i or know, the poor soul (which lieth yet tied in the bands of anger) is often kindled, that it burneth like a fire, and runneth after [evil] ; for it is in the band of eternity, in the Father, and reacheth (in its most inward root) the anger of God ; and that is even the birth of its life, and its originality ; and the noble grain of mustard-seed (that was the new garment of the soul, which was new put upon it in its repentance) is many times destroyed ; therefore none should be secure, though he doth once attain the Garland of Pearl, he may lose it again ; for when the soul consenteth to sin, then it goeth forth from Christ into falsehood, and into the anger of God.

26. Now therefore as we know, that Christ (by his entrance into the incarnation) hath opened a door into heaven, into his holy body, so that we (through a true repentance and confidence) may come to him and put the new white garment of his innocency, in his love, upon our souls, so we 682 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 25 know also that the soul standeth yet fast bound with two chains. One is the birth of its own life, whose most inward root is poison and wrathfulness ; and so the soul being [sprung] out of the eternal source, and having its originality out of the 1 Or bring it eternity, none can 1 redeem it in its own root of b&ck. eternity, or bring it out of the auger, except there come One who is the love in itself, and be born in its own very birth, that so he may bring it out of the anger, and set it in the love in himself, as it was done in Christ. 7. The other gate or chain is the flesh and blood, with the region [or dominion] of the stars ; there the soul is fast bound, and swimmeth therein, as in a great sea, which daily so 2stirreth up the soul, that it is kindled. 8. Concerning these two chains, we know in our deep knowledge, and see them in the ground of the originality, and know very exactly, that we could not be redeemed, except the Deity did go Or regener- into the soul, and 3 bring forth the will of the soul &v6.

3again out of the fierceness in itself, into the light of the meekness ; for the root of life must remain, or else the whole creature must be dissolved. 9. But because the soul stood with its most inward root in the abyss of hell, and according to the kingdom of this world in the hard [frozen] death, so that (if the flesh and blood, as also the dominion of the stars, should leave it) then it 4 Or stiffness, would continue inwardly in a hardness, wherein 2 infecteth it, that it burneth. I Ch. 25] CHRIST'S DEATH AND RESURRECTION 683 there is no source [or active property], and itself, in its own property, would be but in the fierceness, of the originality, in great misery ; therefore it was necessary, not only for God to come into the soul, and generate it to the light (for there was danger, that the soul with its imagination might go forth out of the light again), but also for God to assume a human soul, from our soul, and a new heavenly body, (out of the first glorious body before the fall), and put it on to the soul, with the old earthly body hanging on it, not only as a garment, but really [united as one] in the essences ; so that it must be a creature, that is, the whole God, with all the three Principles.

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