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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160. Behold, thou wicked Antichrist, thou art the same which thou hast always been ; thou art an old, and not a new [Antichrist], thy cunning policy is born in the anger of God; the devil teacheth thee to do what thou dost. Among princes and kings (who have their ground and foundation in nature) thou stirrest up to wars and dissensions, that thou mightest be advanced by them, through thy deceit, hypocrisy, and knavish subtle cunning policy ; this thou dost out of pride ; 1 Or holy men. thou pervertest the Scriptures of the * saints, to promote thy vapouring haughtiness, and art a murderer of souls ; thou causest mockings among the ignorant, so that they think (when they many times persecute a holy soul) that they do God good service in it ; thou teachest them so, or else they would not think any such thing ; thus thou workest confusion, and art Babel , a habitation of whores, and of all devils ; even so saith the spirit. 61. This is their course one among another, one Ch. 25] CHRIST'S DEATH AND RESURRECTION 705

2reproacheth and condemneth this, the other that, and it is a continual howling of devils ; all manner of love, charity,,,and union is extinct ; the mouth speaketh one thing, and the heart thinketh another ; they all cry out one among another, and none knoweth where the woe lieth. And Christ must thus take all this upon him. Many ignorantly cried (by the instigation of the high-priests), Crucify him, Crucify him, he hath made uproars and disturbances among the people ; and yet knew not any cause why they said so. And so it is at this day, if Antichrist 1 entrappeth any in his * findeth any fierceness, he crieth out upon him for a sectary, a eva anT0' schismatic, a disturber of the peace, and maker of w uproars ; and then all cry, A heretic ! A heretic ! and yet their hearts can say no evil of him. 62. Thus behold, thou false opposer of Christ, and author of all uproars, mischief, and disturbance upon earth, how many ignorant silly people are there under this thy reproachful blaspheming, which thou many times causest to lay aspersions upon a holy soul ? Behold, now if that persecuted soul shall cry to God for deliverance, then it all cometh to be a substance, 2 and an essence before * or in reGod. And now if those poor souls many times (which thus ignorantly have slandered a holy soul) come before God, and would fain be saved, then if Christ now had not taken all these false reproaches and aspersions upon him, and reconciled his Father

3in himself with his love, where would you poor 45 706 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 25 sinners abide? Therefore Christ commandeth us to forgive [others], as his Father in him hath forgiven us ; if we do not so, the same measure that we meet to others, we shall have measured to us. The Gate of a poor Sinner. 63. Therefore, thou beloved soul, if thou art fallen into heavy sins and blasphemies, through the deceit of the Antichrist, and the seduction of the devil and his followers, consider thyself instantly, continue not therein, do not despair in that condition ; forgive thy adversary his faults, and pray to God the Father, for Christ's sake, who hath borne all our wickedness and iniquities upon him as a patient lamb, and then they shall be forgiven thee. Nay, we should not in eternity have ever been able to come out of this evil and wickedness, 1 Bannhertz- if the l mercy of God (without our knowledge or igkeit, Merci- n \ii 111 fulness. desert) had not helped us out or it. 64. 0 how wholly of mere [mercy and] grace hath God the Father given us his Son, who hath taken upon him our transgressions, and reconciled

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