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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1Xii THE THREE PRINCIPLES more exquisitely than of another, and therefore I conceive the author useth sometimes to expound words borrowed from the Hebrew and Greek, and some Latin words, and other words of art, as well as German words, and not always words of his own native language only, according to their signification in the language of nature : For that language doth shew, in every one's mother tongue, the greatest mysteries that have ever been in the nature of any thing, in the letters of that word by which it is expressed ; therefore let every one esteem those expositions of his according to their high worth : for the knowledge of that language is only taught by the spirit of the letter. Some think it is unnecessary to know such Mysteries ; indeed every one's nature is not fitted with a capacity for the highest depths, therefore they need not search so far, nor trouble themselves to look for the understanding of that they desire not to know ; but that they may see how necessary his writings are, let them read the author's own Preface to this book, and there they may find the e necessity of l knowing themselves, for else they can CLUiOV.

2never know God, and then they cannot know the way to God, though they read it never so plainly set down in the Scriptures. And besides, the way to God is, in his writings, more easy to be understood by those of our age, than in the Scripture, because that hath been so veiled by doubtful interpretations, expositions, inferences TO THE READER Xlll

3and conclusions ; and therefore it must needs be highly necessary that such a foundation be laid as may assure us of the true meaning of the Scriptures, which teach that which is so absolutely necessary to salvation. Moreover, his grounds will teach us the way to get such understanding, that we shall know and feel, as well as they to whom the Apostle John wrote, that we shall not need any man to teach us anything, for we shall know and get that unction, which teacheth all things, and leadeth into all truth ; though it is thought people cannot have that now, by such as know not what is in man, for want of examining what is in themselves. Yet they may well perceive, that the ground of what hath ever been lieth in man ; for whatsoever any man hath been, or can be, must needs be in that man that attaineth to it, as the ground of the most excellent flower is in the root from whence it groweth. And then sure the ground of all that was in Adam, or any that have been since, or shall be, is in any one of us ; for whatsoever ground lay in God, the same lieth in Christ, and in him it lieth in us, because he is in us all. There is nothing but may be understood, if we do but consider how everything that ever was, or shall be known truly, is feelingly understood, by and in him that knoweth it as he ought. And he that thus knoweth God within him, cannot but know the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, angels, men, and all other creatures, even the devils, and may well be able to speak the

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