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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163. For because man was to be eternal, therefore he must also come to be out of the eternal ; for nothing is created out of the fountain of the Heart of God. For that is the end of nature, and hath no such essences ; no comprehensible 334 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 15 [or palpable] thing entereth therein ; otherwise it would be a filling and darkness, and that cannot be : Also from eternity, there hath been nothing else but only the source [or working property] where the Deity continually riseth up, as is mentioned before. 64. And this source of the spirit' of the soul is eternal, and its tincture is also eternal ; and as »0rin. the source is [in it] at all times xof this world, (while it sticketh in the elementary house of flesh), so is the tincture also, and the dwelling-house of the soul ; and in which source the mind inclineth itself, whether it be in the divine, or hellish, in that [source] the worm liveth, and of that Principle it eateth, and is either an angel or a devil ; although its judgment is not in this [life's] time, for it standeth in both the gates, so long as it liveth in the flesh, except it dive [or plunge itself] wholly into the abyss, whereof (when I write of the sin of man) I shall treat deeply and exactly. Read of it concerning Cain.

265. The mind (which knoweth [or understandeth] nothing in the light of nature) will marvel at such writings, and will suppose that it is not true, that God hath extracted and created man out of such an original. Behold, thou beloved reason and precious mind, bring thy five senses hither, and I will shew thee whether it be true [or not]. I will shew thee [plainly] that thou hast not the least spark [of cause] to allow any other ground [to build upon], Ch. 15] KNOWLEDGE OP THE ETERNITY 335 except that thou wilt let thy heart be embittered by the devil in bestial reason, and except that thou wilt wilfully contemn the light of nature, which standeth in the presence of God. And indeed, if thou art in such a bestial way, leave my writings, and read them not, they are not written for such swine, but for the children [of wisdom] that are to possess the kingdom of God. But I have written them for myself, and for those that seek, and not for the wise and prudent of this world.

366. Behold, what are thy five senses ? In what virtue do they consist? Or how come they in the life of man ? Whence cometh thy seeing, that thou canst see by the light of the sun, and not otherwise ? Consider thyself deeply, if thou wilt be a searcher into nature, and wilt boast of the light of nature. Thou canst not say that thou seest only by the light of the sun, for there must be somewhat which can receive the light of the sun, and which doth mix with the light of the sun (as the star doth which is in thine eyes) which is not the sun, but consisteth of fire and water ; and its glance, which receiveth the light of the sun, is a flash, that ariseth from the fiery, sour and bitter gall, and the water maketh it soft [or pleasant]. Here you take the meaning to be only concerning the outward, viz. the third Principle, wherein the sun, stars, and elements are ; but the same is also true in every one of the creatures in this world. 67. Now what is it that maketh the hearing, 336 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 15

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