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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1so that the saints [departed], in the element, became longing after the strong faith ; especially those [saints departed] that on earth had turned many to righteousness ; for as all men's works of faith follow after them, so also their will to turn more men, still followeth after them ; and therefore one faith (in the tincture of the holy element) caught the other, and so [miracles or] works of wonder were done at the memorials of the saints ; this God permitted for the heathen's sakes, that they might see, that the saints that were slain [or departed] 1 So that God were in God, and that there was another l life after is the God of-.,, iin -i i n i the living, this, that they should turn and be converted ; and dead. therefore God suffered these works of wonder to be done. 79. But in the ground of the originality it is not so, that one that is departed hath power to help one that is living into the kingdom of heaven ; or that they should undertake to bring and report the miseries of the living before God, and pray for them ; for that were a great disrespect to the Heart of God, which without intercession, or their prayer, poureth forth his mercy over all men with stretched-out arms ; and his voice is never any 2 Matt. xi. other than only thus : 2 Come ye all to me, ye hungry and thirsty, and I will refresh you. He said, Come to me, I will do it willingly. Also, It is delight to me to do well to the children of men.

280. Who is it that will presume to undertake to stand before the source [or spring] of the mercifulCh. 18] PROMISED SEED OF THE WOMAN 461 ness, and make intercession [or pray] for one that invocateth them ? As if the love in the Heart of God were dead, and did not desire to help those that call to him ; whereas his arms continually without end stand stretched out, to help all those that turn to him with their whole heart.

381. Thou wicked Antichrist, thou sayest, that faith alone doth not justify the soul, but thy invented works, (for thy avarice or covetousness), these must do the deed. Wherein wilt thou be regenerated ? In thy mausim [or belly-god] ? or through the birth of Jesus Christ ? Which is nearest of all to the Deity ? Thy works pass away, and follow thee in the shadow ; yet the soul hath no need of any shadow, but it must be earnest ; it must enter in through the gates of the deep, and must pass through the centre of the [grim] fierceness of death, through the wrath of the eternal band, to the meek incarnation of Jesus Christ, and become a member of the body of Christ, and receive of his fulness, and live therein ; his death must be thy death ; his essences must flow in thee ; and thou must live in his source, [property or virtue]. Thus thou must be regenerated anew in him, if thou wilt stand before his Father ; else nothing will help ; if there had been anything in the whole depth of the Deity, that could have helped, God would have bestowed it upon Adam, and would not have let his Heart (against the course of nature) to become man. But there was no counsel [or 462 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 18 remedy], neither in heaven, nor in this world, except God did become man. Therefore be thou in earnest, and do not seek by-ways to Babel.

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