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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124. For this world is like a field, wherein good seed is sown, into which the enemy casteth weeds [or tares], and goeth his way, which grow together until the time of the harvest, when all [the fruit] shall be gathered, and brought into the barn ; of which Christ also saith, That the tares [or weeds] shall be tied up in bundles, and cast into the fire, and the wheat shall be brought into the barn. Ch. 9] OF PARADISE, ETC. 139 The Holy Gate. 25. Reason (which is gone forth with Adam out of paradise) asketh, Where is paradise to be had [or found] ? Is it far off, or near ? Or, when the souls go into paradise, whither do they go ? Is it in this world, or without the place of this world above the stars ? Where is it that God dwelleth with the angels 1 And where is that desirable native country where there is no death ? Being there is no sun nor stars in it, therefore it cannot be in this world, or else it would have been found long ago. 26. Beloved reason, one cannot lend the key to another to [unlock] this [withal] ; and if any one have a key, he cannot open it to another, as Antichrist boasteth that he hath the keys of heaven and hell. It is true, he may have the keys of both in this [life] time ; but he cannot open with them for anybody else ; every one must unlock it with his own key, or else he cannot enter therein. For the Holy Ghost is the key ; when he hath that key, then he may go both in and out.

227. There is nothing that is nearer you than heaven, paradise, and hell, unto which of them you are inclined, and to which of them you tend [or walk], to that in this [life] time you are most near : You are between both. And there is a birth between each of them ; you stand in this world between both the gates, and you have both the 140 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 9 births in you : God beckoneth to you in the one gate, and calleth you ; and the devil beckoneth to you in the other gate, and calleth you ; with whom you go, with him you enter in. The devil hath in his hand power, honour, pleasure, and [worldly] joy, and the root of these is death and hell-fire. On the contrary, God hath in his hand, crosses, persecution, misery, poverty, ignominy, and sorrow ; and the root of these is a fire also, and in the fire [there is] a light, and in the light the virtue, and in the virtue [or power] the paradise, and in the paradise [are] the angels, and among the angels, joy. The l gross eyes cannot behold it, because they are from the third Principle, and see only by the splendour of the sun ; but when the Holy Ghost cometh into the soul, then he regenerateth it anew in God, and then it becometh a paradisical child, and getteth the key of paradise, and that soul seeth into the midst thereof.

328. But the gross body cannot see into it, because it belongeth not to [paradise], it belongeth to the earth, and must putrify, or rot, and rise in a new virtue [or power] (which is like paradise) in Christ, at the end of days ; and then it also may dwell in paradise, and not before : It must lay off the third Principle, [viz.'] this skin [fleece or covering], which father Adam and mother Eve are gotten into, in which they supposed they should be wise when they should wear all the three Principles manifested in them ; if they had rather worn two hidden Ch. 9] OF PARADISE, ETC. 141 in them, and had stayed in the l one, it had been » in the good for us ; of which further about the fall. Hght.lp 29. Thus now in the essence of all essences, there are three several distinct properties, which yet are not parted asunder, with one source [or property] far from the other ; but they are in one another as one only essence, and yet the one doth not comprehend the other. As these three elements, fire, air, water, are all three in one another, and neither of them comprehendeth the other ; and as one element generateth another, and yet is not of the essence nor source [or property] thereof ; so the three Principles are in one another, and one generateth the other, and yet no one of them all comprehendeth the other, and none of them is the essence [or substance] of the other. The Depth in the Centre [or Ground],

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