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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1deep into everything, if it be not given thee, as it is to this pen ; this pen writeth in the counsel of God (that which the hand knoweth not, and scarce understandeth the least spark of it) and yet very deeply, as thou seest, that the things to come are shewn in a very difficult depth, which God alone will discover in due time, which is 2 unknown to us. « One copy 70. Thou knowest that God himself is all, and known 'to us. there are but three Principles (viz. three births •« Weiche von2' of distinction) in his essence ; or else all things ut3"— CJ.B.] would be one thing, and all were merely God ; and if it were so, then all would be in a sweet meekness. But where would be the mobility, kingdom, power, and glory ? Therefore we have often said, The anger is the root of life ; and if 3 it be without ' the anger. the light, then 3 it is not God, but hell fire ; but if the light shineth therein, it becometh paradise and fulness of joy. 71. Therefore we can say no otherwise of the soul of Christ, but that he commended it into 710 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 25

2his Father's hands, and the Father took it into his divine power ; it stood with its root therein before ; but its own root was (without the light of God) in the anger. And now the soul of Christ came with the light of God into the anger; and then the devils trembled, for the light took the anger captive, and the Father (understand ; his anger) in the kingdom of heaven was paradise, and in hell remained to be anger still. For the light shut up the Principle of hell, so (to be understood) that no devil dareth to take one glimpse [of light] in thither, he is blind before the light, and [the light] is his terror and shame. 72. And so thou must not think that the soul of Christ was then gone a great way from his body. For all the three Principles were on the cross, why also not in the grave? At that very moment when Christ laid off the kingdom of this world, the soul of Christ pressed into death, and into the anger of God, and in that very moment the anger was reconciled in the love in the light, and became paradise ; and the devils were captivated in the anger in themselves, together with all wicked souls : and so instantly the life did spring up through death, and death was destroyed, and made a scorn ; yet to the wicked (which remain in the anger) it is a death, but in Christ it is a life. 73. Thus the soul of Christ rested in the grave, in the Father, forty hours present with its body ; for the heavenly body was not dead, but the

3Ch. 25] CHRIST'S DEATH AND RESURRECTION 711 earthly only, the soul sprang up in the heavenly through death, and stood forty hours in rest ; these were the forty hours in which Adam was asleep, when his wife was taken out of him ; and also the forty days when Moses was on the mount, [and Israel was tempted to try] whether it were possible to live in the virtue or power of the Father in the kingdom of heaven. But when it was found to be impossible, then presently the people fell away from the law of the Father, viz. from the law of nature, and worshipped a calf that they had made, to be instead of God ; and Moses brake the Tables of the Law. 74. And God spake further to Israel in the fire, that they should see that it was not possible to enter into the Land of Promise, [into] paradise, till the right Joshua or Jesus came, who should bring them through death into life. Consider this further; I will set it down very clearly in the other books concerning the Tables of Moses ; search for it, and you will find the whole ground of whatsoever Moses hath spoken and done. Of Christ's Resurrection out of the Grave. 75. As Adam went out of the clear light of God into the dark kingdom of this world, and the soul of A dam stood between two dark Principles (as between death and hell) and grew up in the body, so also would Christ (in his growing body) rise up from the dead at midnight, and make the night in 712 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 25

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