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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11 scandaiizeth the new man, yet it giveth 3 offence ; and we must with the new man live to God [and serve him], though it is not possible to be perfect in this world, yet we must continually go on and hold out ; and the new man is in a field, where the ground is cold, bitter, sour, and void of life. 37. And as an herb (by the pleasant sunshine) groweth out of the earth, so our new man in Christ groweth out of the old, sour, cold, harsh man of our earthly flesh [and blood]. And that is the true light of the Pearl, when we apprehend it truly and really (in the knowledge) in the new man ; and it is the sword wherewith we can fight against the devil. Only we must take the sword of the death of Christ into our hand, which cutteth so sharply, that the devil must fly away. THE TWENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER The Suffering, Dying, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ the Son of God: Also of his Ascension into Heaven, and sitting at tJie Right hand of God his Father. The Gate of our Misery ; and also the strong Gate of the Divine Power in his Love.

21. ~TF we consider ourselves in our right reason, -L and behold the kingdom of this world, in which we stand with our flesh and blood, also with our reason and senses, then we find very well, that we have the substance and stirring of it in us ; for we are its very proper own. Now all whatsoever we think, do, and purpose in the outward man, that the spirit of this world doth in us men ; for the body is nothing else but the instrument thereof, wherewith it performeth its work ; and we find, that as all other instruments (which are generated from the spirit of this world) decay, corrupt, and turn to dust, so also our earthly body, wherein the spirit of this world worketh [and acteth] for a while. 2. Therefore none should scorn or despise another, though he leadeth not the same course 679 680 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 25

3that he doth himself ; or though he be not of that way in his mind and will which himself is ; or that another cannot learn and follow the same stately courtly manners and behaviour with himself. For the natural heaven maketh every one, according as its form (in its influences) is, at all times ; and so every creature getteth its condition, form [or shape], inclination and will, which cannot wholly be taken away from the outward man, till the [natural] heaven breaketh its beast. Therefore we ought to consider the great strife in us ; when we are regenerated out of the eternal, then the eternal strive th against the corruptible, against the malice and falsehood of the corruptible. 1 worketh or 3. And now each kingdom l effecteth its will ; p«rformeth. . the inward goeth right forward, and consenteth not to the wickedness of the outward, but it 2 it aimeth at. runneth to its 2 mark ; and the outward also goeth forward with its desire, and performeth its work according to the influence of its constellation. 4. But if it happeneth, that the outward doth not what its desire willeth, that proceedeth not from its wisdom, but the heaven hath altered it by •Or aspect, another 'conjunction; but if 4it be compelled to maneou leave off that which is evil, that is not 5by the •from the course of the heavens, but the new regenerated influence or

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