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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1comforted him and bade him be at rest; moreover, he went fearlessly to the angry parson, and begged him in the friendliest possible manner to forgive the young fellow, promising himself to find and pay down the interest on the borrowed thaler; the young man, he added, had done his best, and he thought he had done enough ; yet, if the reverend gentleman were not satisfied, let him say what he required and it should be paid. Thereupon the parson, who, while Jacob stood, was himself seated in a comfortable chair, assumed an arrogant and pompous attitude, and flew into a violent rage. Why did the busybody come to him ? What had he to do with the matter ? Let him mind his own business and take himself off. Jacob, however, earnestly went on pleading for pardon and for permission to settle the debt, till the parson, plainly ashamed, yet unwilling to say how much he wanted, shewed him the door: and as the simple, humble and gentle intercessor turned on the door-step with a kindly parting word, " God bless your Reverence," the enraged parson, angrier than ever, seized one of his slippers and threw it at him, exclaiming : " How dare you wish me good-night or anything else, you Godless villain ! Do I ask for your blessings ? " and so on. The excellent man, unmoved, picked up the slipper, placed it quietly at the parson's feet, and answered : " Do not be angry, sir ! I am doing you no harm. May God protect you ! " And he then left him.

2It was no doubt shortly after this that a copy of the Aurora fell into the hands of the proud and naturally irritable cleric. Boehme had written at the close of his work: "Should Peter or Paul (seem to) have written " otherwise, then look to the essence, to the heart [to the " interior meaning]. If you lay hold of the heart, you " will find the essence well enough " [xxvi. 152], And these words were quite sufficient to mark him as a heretic. The priest certainly determined openly to brand him as such. On Sunday, 21st July 1613 (according to Wiesner's xliv THE THREE PRINCIPLES account), the preacher, speaking from the pulpit, violently denounced the meek and gentle man of God, indulging in startling and shocking f ulminations ; threatening the town with downfall, unless this agitating, mischievous, heretical disturber of the peace were promptly removed ; and calling upon the members of the Town Council to use their powers against him for resisting ecclesiastical authority, annoying preachers in their own houses, and writing heretical books. He further declared that unless the offender were punished, the anger of God would fall upon them all, and the town would be swallowed up by the earth, as happened to Korah, Dathan and Abiram, after they resisted Moses, the man of God.

3Jacob Boehme, who was a regular church-goer, heard all this from his usual seat facing the pulpit, and after the service waited in the churchyard for the parson, approached him, and quietly asked what he had done to offend; if he only knew of his fault, he would gladly make amends. The parson, instead of answering, looked at him as if he meant to kill him with his glance ; then broke out into fearful abuse and curses. " Get thee " behind me, Satan ! Go back to thy hell and leave me " alone ! Seest thou not that I am a priest, and go "about my office?" -"Yes indeed, Reverend Sir," answered sadly the deeply-injured man, "I do see it, " and therefore have I listened to you in church, as is " meet and proper; and now I come to ask you, as a " priest, to tell me what I have done to you." Turning then to the chaplain, Boehme begged for his help, that he might entreat the preacher to explain the cause of his wrath. Exasperated at this insistence, the priest, beside himself with rage, would there and then have had Boehme arrested and sent to prison, had not the chaplain's counsels prevailed, so that Jacob was after all allowed to return home. The next day (here Wiesner's account is inaccurate), Boehme was called before the Town Council in order to justify himself. The chief pastor was also invited, but INTRODUCTION

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