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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1the source of love, humility, meekness, and l mercy, ! Barmhertz- • 11 /•/-*! i i i u , Merci111 the friendly will of God ; and so ne should /w have ruled over the stars and elements, and there should have been no death or frailty or corruption in him. 93. Therefore, ye Turks and other superstitious people, you should observe and understand aright, wherefore Christ gave us such laws, as command 720 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 25us not to be revengeful ; and that when any strike us on the one cheek, we should present the other to him ; and so further, that we should bless them that curse us, and do well to them that hate ua and hurt us. Understand ye this ?

294. Behold, a true Christian (who liveth in the spirit of Christ) must also walk in the conversation of Christ ; he must not walk in the fierce stern revenging spirit of this world, but as Christ lived and conversed in this world after his resurrection, and yet not in the source or property of this world. And though it is not possible for us (while we live in the source of this world) to do so, yet in the new man in Christ (whom the devil hideth and obscureth) we may ; if we live in meekness, then we overcome the world in Christ ; if we recompense good for evil, then we witness that the spirit of Christ is in us ; and then we are dead to the spirit of this world, for the sake of the spirit of Christ which is in us ; and though we are in this world, yet the world doth but hang to us, as it hung to Christ after his resurrection ; and yet he lived in the Father in the heaven, even so do we also, if we be born in Christ. 95. Therefore let this be told you, ye Jewsr Turks, and other nations ; you need not look for any other, there is no other time at hand, but the time See vers. 82. of the lily ; and the sign of that [time] is the l sign of Elias. Therefore take heed in what spirit you live, that the fire of anger do not devour you, and Ch. 25] CHRIST'S DEATH AND RESURRECTION 721

31 eat you up. It is high time to cast Jezabel with J Or consume her whoredoms out of the house, lest you receive the wages of Jhe whore, and as you revile one another, so you devour one another. Truly, if the contentious disputations be not suddenly stayed [and these courses mended] the fire will burn out aloft over Babel ; and then there will be no remedy, till the anger eat up and consume all whatsoever is in it. 96. Therefore let every one enter into himself, and not speak of another, and hold his way to be false ; but look that he turn himself, and have a care, that he be not found in anger of the devourer ; else if he should hoop, and halloo, and laughing say, Look how Babel burneth ! then he must be burnt and consumed also, for he is fuel for that fire ; and whosoever feeleth a thought in himself, that doth but wish for the anger [to devour], 2 that 2 and he is proceedeth from Babel. 97. Therefore it is very hard to know Babel ; every one supposeth that he is not in it ; and yet the spirit sheweth me, that Babel 8 encloseth the 3 inciudeth • « i 111- ai'd encomwhole earth ; therefore let every one look to his passeth. own ways, and not hunt after covetousness, for the * driver destroyeth it, and the stormer eateth * the wrath it up and consumeth it ; the counsel of the wise that covetousman will not help then ; all the wisdom of this together. er< world is folly ; for that 6 fire is from the anger 6 Or the /^ • -11 devouring

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