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 319

17. Thus we give you to understand, that this world (when the will was moved) was created out of the darkness, and the outgoing out of the will in itself is God ; and the outgoing out of God is spirit, which hath discovered itself in the dark will ; and that which was 2 Or the discovered were the essences, and the 2 Vulcanus fire, which was the wheel of the mind, that divided itself striketh up the thoughts into seven forms. of the mind. , . _ . . , 8. And as is mentioned belore, these seven .forms divide themselves again every one in itself »£0r spark ling, into an infinity of forms, according to the 3 discovery of the spirit, and therein standeth the essence of all essences, and it is all a great wonder ; and our whole teaching doth but aim at this, that we men might enter into the light holy wonders ; for at the end of this time all shall be manifested, and everything shall stand in that wherein it is grown; and then when that substance (which at present it possesseth and bringeth forth) perisheth, then it is all an eternity. 9. Therefore let every one have a care how he useth his reason, that he may therewith stand in great honour in the wonders of God. "We know that this world shall perish in the fire ; it shall be DO fire of straw or wood, (that would turn no Ch. 27] OF THE LAST JUDGMENT 749

2stones to ashes, and further to nothing), neither will there any fire gather together, into which this world shall -be thrown ; but the fire of nature kindleth itself in all things, and will melt or dissolve the body of everything (or whatsoever is palpable), and turn it to nothing. 10. For as all in the Fiat was held and created according to the [will of the] * fashioner, which was i framer or the sole and total workmaster in all things, in al the seven spirits of nature, which brake nothing when he fashioned it, nor threw one [part] from the other when he had made it, but everything separated itself, and stood in the source of its own essences, so there shall not need much blustering, thunder and lightning, and breaking, as this world in Babel teacheth, but everything 2 perisheth 2 Or passeth in itself; the source [or flowing forth] of the away' elements ceaseth, as a man when he dieth [ceaseth from working], and all passeth into its ether [or receptacle]. 11. And at the time (before this fabric [of heaven and earth] perisheth and passeth into its ether) cometh the Judge of the living and the dead ; there all men must see him in his, and in their flesh ; and all the dead must rise through his voice, and stand before him ; and there the angelical world shall be manifested. And all the generations of the earth (which are not comprehended in the body of Christ) shall howl, and then they shall be separated into two flocks ; and

3750 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 27 the sentence of Christ passeth over all, both good and bad ; and there will be howling, trembling, yelling, roaring, and cursing themselves, the children cursing their parents, and wishing that they had never been born. 12. Thus one of the wicked curseth the other, who hath caused him to commit such wickedness ; the inferior his superior that hath given him offence, [and been a stumbling-block to him] ; the 1 ministers or laity curse the clergy or l priests, who have given them evil examples, and seduced them with false doctrine ; the wicked curser, swearer, and blasphemer, biteth and gnaweth his tongue, which hath so murdered him; the mind beateth the head against the stones ; and the ungodly hide themselves in the caves and holes of the earth, before the terror of the LORD ; for there is great quaking and stirring in the essences of the anger and fierce wrath of the LORD ; and the anguish breaketh the heart, and yet there is no dying ; for the anger is stirring, and the life of the ungodly floweth up in the anger. There the ungodly curseth the heaven and the earth that did bear him, as also the constellation [or stars] that led him, and the hour of

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 319

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