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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1" From time to time, however, an opening took place " within me, as of a growth. I kept this to myself for " twelve years (1600-1612), being full of it, and experi- " enced a vehement impulse, before I could bring it out " into expression ; but at last it overwhelmed me like a " cloud-burst ; what it smites, it smites indeed. And so " it went with me : whatsoever I could grasp sufficiently " to bring it out, that I wrote down." This book, which saw the light in 1612, and which the author meant to write only for himself, was entitled Morning Redness; later, a friend gave it the title Awrvra. xlii THE THREE PRINCIPLES

2The MS. of the unfinished (and never-to-be finished) work having been entrusted as a loan to a follower of Schwenkfeld, a nobleman named Karl von Ender, he caused a number of copies to be taken and further circulated. In this wise the book came under the notice of the Pastor Priiuarius, or chief pastor of Gorlitz, Gregorius Richter, an orthodox and fanatical Lutheran, who took great offence thereat, and resolved to make of Jacob Boehme an example to frighten the many sectaries of the time ; all the more as he had to deal with a simple workman, of whom moreover he had no very pleasant remembrance, owing to an incident that had taken place presumably some time previously. The story is so characteristic of both the men concerned, that we cannot afford to overlook it. True enough, we must not forget that the report comes from one of Boehme's friends (Dr Wiesner of Breslau), and cannot claim to be an original or direct statement of facts; yet, discounting all possible exaggeration or distortion, enough is left to be of interest.1

3It would seem that a young baker, a relative of Boehme, being short of money, had borrowed one thaler from the chief pastor in order to buy wheatmeal for Christmas cakes. He made one of these fairly large, and presented it as a sort of thank-offering. Soon after the holidays he returned the money, hoping that the reverend gentleman would require no interest, since the loan had been only for a fortnight. The reverend gentleman, however, meant nothing of the sort. He threatened the young man with God's anger and terrible curse, and frightened him to such an extent that for several days afterwards the poor simple fellow went about in great despondency, and in fear for his soul's eternal welfare, sighing deeply and speaking to no one. His wife at last implored the intervention of her cousin, Jacob Boehme ; and the latter, having inquired into the whole matter, spoke kindly to the troubled young man, 1 See Dr C. Wiesner's Epistle Narrative, in The Remainder oftlie Books of Jacob Boehme. Sparrow, 1662. INTRODUCTION xliii

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