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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15. And we see also how instantly the mind raiseth up another form, and maketh it predominant, viz. the spirit of this world, in covetousness, pride, in the oppressing of the needy, and lifting up itself only, and so drawing all to it. Whereupon then instantly also the third form breaketh forth out of the eternal [indissoluble] band, as falsehood, envy, anger and malice ; so that the image of God is as it were dead and overcome, where then the mind (in this manner) 2 is in the anger of God, in death, 2 Or standeth. in the jaws of hell, over which hell in the anger of God insulteth ; for hereby its jaws are set wide open, and it becometh predominant. But when the divine form breaketh forth again, then the kingdom of hell is overcome, and as it were dead, and the kingdom of heaven cometh to be predominant and working again. 6. Therefore St Paul saith, To whom you yield yourselves as servants in obedience, his servants you are, 764 THE THREE PRINCIPLES whetJier of sin v/nto death, or of the obedience of God to righteousness. And that source or property we have, in that kingdom we live, and that kingdom with the property thereof driveth us. Seeing then here in this life all is in the sowing, and in the growing, therefore the harvest also shall one day follow, where then the one kingdom shall be separated from the other.

27. For there are in the mind of man Three Principles, all which three in the time [of tins four elementary life] he may open; but when the body is broken, then he liveth in one Principle only, and then he hath lost the key, and can open no other Principle more, he must continue eternally in that source [or quality] which he hath kindled here. For we know that Adam (with his going out of paradise into this world) brought us into death. And hell in the anger of God groweth from death, and so our soul is capable of [going into] the kingdom of hell, and standeth in the anger of God; where the jaws of hell then stand wide open against us, continually to devour us, and we have [made] a covenant with death, and wholly yielded ourselves up to it, in the sting of the anger, in the first Principle.

38. We not only know this, but we know also, that God hath regenerated us in the life of his Son Jesus Christ to a living creature, to live in him. And as he is entered into death, and again through death into eternal life, so must we enter into the death of Christ, and in the life of Jesus Christ go forth out of death, and live in God his Father ; and then our life, and also our flesh, is no more earthly, but holy in the power of God, and we live rightly in Ternario Sancto, in the Holy Trinity of the Deity. For then we bear the holy flesh (which is out of the holy element in the presence of God) which our loving Brother and Saviour, or Immanuel, hath brought into our flesh ; and he hath brought us in and with himself out of death into God his Father, and then the Holy Trinity of the Deity is substantially [or really] working in us. APPENDIX 765 9. And as the eternal Word in the Father is become true man, and hath the eternal light shining in him, and hath humbled [and abased] himself in the humanity, and hath put upon the image, which we here bear in this life, the image [which is] out of the pure unspotted element in the presence of God, which we lost in Adam, which standeth in the mercy of God, as is clearly mentioned in our l second book,- with all the circumstances : The Three of it, so must we also put on to us that image [which is] FnnciPlesout of the pure element, out of the body of Jesus Christ,

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