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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1Concerning The Three Principles of The Divine Essence Of the Eternal, Dark, Light, and Temporary World Concerning The Three Principles of The Divine Essence By Jacob Boehme Translated by John Sparrow Reissued by C. J. B. With an Introduction by Dr Paul Deussen Professor of Philosophy in the University of Kiel LONDON JOHN M. WATKINS 21 CECIL COURT, CHARING CROSS ROAD IQIO £~ PREFATORY NOTE THE kind reception accorded by the public to my recent issue of the Threefold Life of Man has enabled me to proceed further with the proposed reprint of the complete works of Jacob Boehme, and I trust the present volume will be received with equal favour. If such be the case, I propose to issue next the Forty Questions of the Soul, together with the Clavis. For the prospectus giving a list of these questions, and stating the subscription price of the volume, etc., applications should be sent to the undersigned, or to the publisher.

2A complete list of Boehme's writings will be found in the Threefold Life, Appendix A. I regret to say that, in correcting the proofs of that Appendix, I inadvertently allowed it to appear that the Three Principles was written in the same year as the Aurora. The former belongs to 1618-19, the latter to 1612. The Introduction to this volume is a translation, by my friend Mrs D. S. Hehner, of the paper 195026 VI THE THREE PRINCIPLES on Jacob Boehme: His Life and Philosophy, by Professor Deussen, who has kindly allowed me to use it in the present work. To both author and translator I desire to offer my most cordial thanks. C. J. BARKER. HILL CROFT, RUSSELL HILL, PURLBY, SURREY, January 1910. The Second "Book. CONCERNING The Three Principles OF The Divine Eflence Of the Eternal, Dark, Light, and Temporary World. SHEWING What the Soul, the Image and the Spirit of the Soul are ; as alfo what Angels, Heaven, and Paradise are. How <Adam was before the Fall, in the Fall, and after the Fall. AND What the Wrath of God, Sin, Death, the Devils and Hell are ; How all things have been, now are, and how they shall be at the Last. Written in the German Language by yacob Ttehmen; <iAlias Teutonicus Thilofophus LONDON; Printed by M. S. for H. Elunden at the Castle in Cornhill. 1648. TO THE READER

3SINCE the publishing of this author's Forty Questions in English, the minds of several persons have had divers thoughts concerning his writings, and yet have been of searching apprehensions. I would they were well acquainted with his writings, and then they would not only be able to find out the truth in their own thoughts, but also in the written words of him and others, as in the Articles and Confessions of Faith, or any other writings. And it may be, these thoughts they have, though they be true, if rightly understood, yet if they may perhaps be misapprehended, they may hinder themselves of inestimable eternal benefit. Some have complained of the hardness to understand his writings, and therefore I have endeavoured the Englishing of this book of the Three Principles, which, the author saith, is the A, B, C to all his writings ; and if they read it carefully, they will find it, though hard at first, easy at last, and then all his other books easy, and full of deep understanding. A man cannot conceive the wonderful knowledge before he hath read this book throughly X THE THREE PRINCIPLES

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

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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