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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1Or figure, and thou wilt be in the * shape of the most abominable beasts, worms, and serpents, all according to thy deeds and practice here, where then all thy deeds will stand in the figure in the tincture eternally before thy eyes, and will gnaw thee sufficiently, so that thou wilt continually think, if Ch. 24] OF TRUE REPENTANCE 671 thou hadst not done this or that, thou shouldst have attained the grace of God ? Thy mocking standeth before thy eyes, and thou art ashamed to let the least good thought into thy soul ; for good is as an angel before thee, and thou darest not (for great shame) so much as touch it with thy mind, much less look upon it. But thou must eternally devour into thyself thy great scorning, with all thy vices and sins, and thou must eternally despair ; and though thou thinkest to go forth after 1 abstinence, yet the light striketh thee down J ease or «- again, and so thou goest but forth aloft (in thy forbearance of devouring fretting worm, in thyself) without the6' thrones of God ; and it is with thee, as with one who standeth upon a high stony cliff of a rock, and would cast himself into a bottomless gulf ; and the further he seeth, the deeper he falleth. Thus thy own sins, scornings, deridings, cursings in contempt of God, are thy hell-fire, which gnaweth thee eternally ; this I speak in the word of life.

225. Therefore, 0 dear soul, turn, and let not the devil captivate thee, and regard not the scorn of the world ; all thy sorrow must be turned into great joy. And though in this world thou hast not great honour, power, and riches, that is nothing ; thou knowest not, whether to-morrow will be the day it will come to thy turn [to die]. Doth not a bit of bread taste better to the needy, than the best dainties to the great ones? What advantage hath the rich man then, but that he 672 THE THREE PEINCIPLES [Ch. 24 seeth much, and must be tormented and vexed in many things, and in the end must give an account of all his doings and stewardship, and how he hath been a planter in this world ? He must give an account of all his servants, and if he hath been an evil example to them, and hath been a scandal to them, so that they have walked in ungodly ways, 1 woe be then their poor souls cry eternally l for vengeance superiors. upon those their superiors ; there all standeth in the figure in the tincture. Why then dost thou contend and strive so much after worldly honour that is transitory ? Rather endeavour for the Tree of Pearl, which thou carriest along with thee, and shalt rejoice eternally in its growing and fruit.

326. 0 ! is not that a cheerful welfare, when the soul dareth to look into the Holy Trinity, " Or faculties, where with it is filled, so that its 2 essences grow [flourish and blossom] in paradise, where always the Hallelujahs or songs of praise break forth in God's deeds of wonder, where the perpetual growing fruit springeth up [in infinitum] endlessly, according to thy will, where thou enjoy est all, where there is no fear, envy, nor sorrow, where there is mere love one of another, where one rejoiceth at the form and beauty of another, where the fruit groweth to every one according to his essences [and taste or relish], as there was a type of it in the manna to the children of Israel, where it tasted to every one according to their essences [or desire] ? Ch. 24] OF TRUE REPENTANCE 673 Of ike, Way [or Manner] of the Entrance. 27. Beloved, mind, if thou hast a desire to this way, and wouldst attain it, and the noble virgin in the Tree of Pearl, then thou must use great earnestness ; it must be no lip-labour, or flattery with the lips, and the heart far from it. No, thou canst not attain it in such a way. Thou must collect thy mind, with all thy thoughts [purposes] and reason, wholly together in one will [and resolution] to desire to turn, and resolve that thou wilt forsake thy abominations, and thou must set thy thoughts upon God [and goodness], with a steadfast confidence in his mercy, and then thou wilt obtain it.

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