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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153. Therefore I am but the more cheerful, and care not for him ; he ruleth [and domineereth] over me no further than over the * house of sin, whose patron he * transitory himself is; he may take that quite away, and so I shall come into my native country. But yet he is not absolutely lord over it, he is but God's ape ; for as an ape (when its belly is full) imitateth all manner of tricks and pranks to make itself sport, and would fain seem to be the finest and the nimblest beast [it can], so also 282 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 14 1Note, i desire doth he. l His power hanoreth on the great tree of not to write ° . the exposition this world, and a storm of wind can blow it away. of this yet. . 54. JNow seeing I have shewn the Reader, how the true element sticketh wholly hidden in the outward kindled [elements], for a comfort to him, that he may know what he [himself] is, and that he may not despair in such an earnest manifestation [or revelation as this is], therefore now I will go on with my conference between the elements, sun, and stars, where there is a continual wrestling and overcoming, in which the child in the mother's body [or womb] is figured ; and I freely give the Reader to know, ^hat indeed the true element Heth hidden in the outward man, which is the chest of the treasure [or cabinet of the precious gem and jewel] of the 8 in. soul, if it be faithful, and yield itself up 2to God.

255. So now when the heart, liver, lungs, bladder, stomach, and spirit, together with the other parts [or members] of the child, are figured in the mother's body, by the constellation and elements, then the region or regimen riseth up, which at length figureth [fashioneth or formeth] all whatsoever was wanting : And now it exceedingly concerneth us to consider » Or senses, of the originality of speech, mind, and 3 thoughts, wherein man is an image and similitude of God, and wherein the noble knowledge of all the three Principles doth consist. 56. For every beast also standeth in the springing up of the life (formerly mentioned) in the mother's body, and taketh its beginning after the same Ch. 14] BIRTH AND PROPAGATION OF MAN 283 manner in the [dam's or] mother's body, and its spirit liveth also in the stars and elements, and they have their [faculty of] seeing from the glance of the sun : And in the same [beginning of the life] there is no difference between man and beast. For a beast eateth and drinketb, sinelleth, heareth, seeth, and feeleth, as well as man ; and yet they have no understanding in them, but only to feed and multiply. We must go higher, and see what the image of God is, which God so dearly loved, that he spent his Heart and Son upon it, and gave him to become man, so that he came to help man * be incarnate. again after the fall, and freed and redeemed him again from the bestial birth, and brought him again

3into paradise, into the heavenly 2 region. 2 kingdom or 57. Therefore we must look after the ground [of it], how not only a bestial man, with bestial qualifications [or condition] is figured [or formed], but also a heavenly, and an image of God, to the honour of God and [the magnifying of] his deeds of wonder ; to which end he so very highly graduated man, that he had an eternal similitude and image c of his own substance. For to that end he hath manifested himself by heaven and earth, and created some creatures to [be] eternal, understanding, and rational spirits, to live in his virtue and glory, and some to [be] figures ; so that (when their spirit goeth into the ether and dissolveth) the spirits which are eternal might have their joy and recreation 3with them. »in. 284 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 14 58. Therefore we must search and see, what kind of image that is, and how it taketh its beginning so, that man beareth an earthly, elementary, and also an heavenly image. And not only so, but he beareth also a hellish [image] on him, which is inclined [or prone] to all sins and wickedness ; and all this taketh beginning together with the beginning of the life.

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