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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126. These holy souls' works also follow them, in their tincture of the spirit of the soul, in the holy element, so that they see and know how much good they have wrought here ; and their highest delight and desire is still continually (in their love) to do more good ; although without the paradisical body (which they [shall then] first attain at the restoration) they work nothing, but their source [quality or property] is mere delight and soft 2 welfare. 2 Or well27. Yet you are to know, that the holy souls are not so void of ability [or power] ; for their essences are out of the strong might of God, out of the first Principle ; although (because of their great humility towards God) they do not use that [might], whereas they continually expect their bodies in that still rest with great humility, and yet their love and delight is so very great, that at several times they have wrought great wonders [or miracles], among the faithful upon earth ; which [faithful people] so vigorously set their love and desire in them, that one holy tincture took hold of the other, and so through the faith of the living, 484 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 19 wonders are thus done, for there is nothing impossible to faith. 28. And it is not hard for the holy souls, which Or upon. are departed from the body, to appear l to a strong

2faith of one that is living ; for the firm faith of the living (if it be born of God) reacheth also unto the kingdom of heaven, into the holy element, where the separated souls have their rest. 29. And now if the deceased (or separated) soul was here in this world a candlestick, and a declarer [of the name] of God, and that it hath turned many unto righteousness, then it appeareth also to the living saints, which incline their faith so strongly to them ; and it is not a jot harder now than in former times, when (in the times of the saints) great wonders were done ; for the faith of the living, and the love of the separated [souls] towards the believing saints, hath wrought them in the strong might of God ; and God hath permitted it for the conversion of people, that they might see the great might of those [that were] deceased in God, and that they are, and live, in another kingdom, that so they might be assured of the resurrection of the dead, by the great miracles of the deceased souls : All which, in general, were put to death for the witness of Jesus ; that the heathen and all people might thereby see what manner of reward the holy [people] had, when they laid down their life for the testimony of Christ ; by whose example many people also were converted. Ch. 19] ENTERING OF THE SOULS TO GOD 485

330. But now that a Babel of confusion is come out of this (in that it is come so far, that the saints departed are invocated [or worshipped], as intercessors to God, and that divine honour is done them) this the holy souls departed are not guilty of, neither here did they desire any such thing, neither do they present the miseries and necessities of men before God. But the fault lieth in the forged superstition of the wicked deceitful Antichrist, who hath founded his x stool of pride 1 chair or thereon ; not as a living saint, which (with the holy) inclineth himself to God ; but as an earthly god, he thereby arrogateth divine omnipotence to himself, and yet hath none, but is the greedy, covetous, proud Antichrist, riding upon the strong 2 beast of this world. 2 the arm 31. The souls departed do not present our wants power, before God ; for God is nearer to us than the souls departed are ; and [besides] if they should do so, then they must have bodies, as also paradisical sources [or flowing properties] springing up and working, whereas they are in the still humility and meek rest, and do not suffer our sour miseries to enter into them, but one holy tincture taketh hold

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