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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1and diligently, which he will find to be contained in it, when he is weighing and deliberating upon the matter as he readeth, and that without hard study, for it will rise in the mind of itself, with a ravishing sweetness and content. And he will find that the Threefold Life is tenfold deeper than this, and the Forty Questions to be tenfold deeper than that, and that to be as deep as a spirit is in itself, as the author saith ; than which there can be no greater depth, for God himself is a spirit.

2And accordingly there appear some glimpses of the most deep, mystical, oriential learning here and there, which is not discovered in any books, and therefore some of the learned men of Europe think it may be past their reach, but they may find that ground in him which will make such things easy to be understood ; for the time of disclosing those grounds so plainly was not till now, that the Mysteries which have been hid since the world began should be revealed. Those that had the spiritual understanding of the natural Mysteries, were called Wisemen ; and they that understood 1 saints. the divine Mysteries, were called l holy men, and they were Prophets, Preachers, Apostles, Evangelists, and Believers. The wise men of all nations did write darkly of their Mysteries, not to be understood but by such as were lovers of those things : And so the very Scriptures themselves, which contain all things in them, cannot be understood but by such as love to follow, practise, and endeavour TO THE READER XI

3to do those things which in them they find ought to be done. And those that led their lives in such a way, came to understand those Mysteries from which they were written. And in several nations their wisdom hath had several names, which hath caused our age to take all the names of the several parts of wisdom, and sort them into arts : Among which the Magia and Cabala are accounted the most mystical ; the Magia consisting in the knowing how things have come to be ; and the Cabala, in knowing how the words and forms of things express the reality of the inward Mystery : But he that knoweth the Mystery, knoweth both these, and all the branches of the tree of wisdom, in all real arts and sciences, and the true signification of every Idea in every thought, and thing, and sound, and letter, in every language. And therefore this author, having the true knowledge, could well expound the letters of the names of God, and other words and syllables, the signification of which he saith is well understood in the language of nature. And as one jot or tittle of the word of God shall not pass away till all be fulfilled, so there is no tittle of any l letter, that is proceeded from that i AS in the eternal essential Word, as all things are, but hath /«™ A and n, its weighty signification, in the deep understanding, in that word from whence it came, even in the voices of all men, and sounds of all other creatures : also the letters and syllables of a word, of some language, do express something of the Mystery

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