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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1of Peter ; and if thou art void of l that, thou hast no keys. 26. As the confession is, so is the absolution. Is the patient an historical Christian ? so is the physician too. And in them both there is a mouth-hypocrisy. But hath the patient any virtue [or power] ? Then the voice bloweth that virtue [or power] up, not from the power of the physician, but in the virtue [or power] of God, who with his power even in a thorn-bush maketh it to grow, which is the power in all things : and so also in a voice, which in itself hath no ability. 27. Thus it became a 2 custom, that every one was bound [to come] to the temple made of stones, and the Temple of God in Christ stood and stands very empty ; but when they saw the desolation in contention, they called councils, and made laws and canons, that every one must observe upon pain of death. Thus the Temple of Christ was turned into temples made of stones, and out of the testimony of the Holy Ghost a worldly law was made. Then the Holy Ghost spake no more freely, but he must speak according to their laws. If he reproved their errors, then they persecuted him ; and so the Temple of Christ in man's knowledge became very obscure ; if any came that was born of God, and taught by the Holy Ghost, and was not conformable to their laws, he must be a heretic. 28. And so their 4 power grew, and every one had great respect to it ; and they strengthened their Ch. 26] OF THE FEAST OF PENTECOST 741

2laws still more and more with the power of St Peter, till they raised themselves so high, that they impudently set themselves as lords over the doctrine of the Apostles before God, and gave forth, that the word of God and the doctrine of the saints must receive their value, worth, and authority from their councils, and what they ordained and instituted, that was from God, they were God's dispensers of the word ; men must believe their ordinances, for that was the way and 1 means for the poor sinner to be justified 1 means of . - salvation. before God. 29. But where then is the new regeneration in Christ through the Holy Ghost? Art thou not Babel, a habitation of all devils in pride? How hast thou adorned thyself? Not for Christ, but for thy own pride, for thy 2idol the belly's sake, a god M and thou art a devourer. But thy 3 belly is become 3 Or idoL a stink, and hath gotten a horrible source ; there is a great fire of * anguish in thy source, for thou * terrible art naked and manifest before God, thou standest in that which as an impudent whorish woman. Why do you, laity, hang [and depend] on such a strumpet ? go ' Her own 6 usurped authority is her beast whereon 8 usurped ... TIIT T • i i • i T» i she rideth ; behold, and consider her in the Kevelation of John, how the Holy Ghost setteth her forth in her colours.

330. Wilt thou be an apostle of Christ, and wilt be but a minister for the belly, and teach only according to thy art ? From whom dost thou 742 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 26 teach ? From thy belly, that thou mayest fatten thyself thereby. It is true, thou shouldst be fed, and thou shouldst have subsistence from men, if thou art Christ's disciple ; but thy spirit should not stick in covetousness, but in Christ ; thou shouldst not rely only upon thy art, but shouldst give up thyself to God, that God may speak from thee, and then thou art in the Temple of God, and not in the temple of the institution of man's inventions. 31. Look upon St Peter, on the Day of Pentecost, who converted three thousand souls at one sermon, he spake not from the appointment of the Pharisees, but out of the Spirit of Moses and the Prophets, out of the Temple of the Holy Ghost, that pierced through and enlightened the poor sinners. But thou teachest persecution only, consider thereby whence thou didst grow, viz. out of that first stock, where they fell from the Temple of Christ to human conceits and inventions ; where they sent forth teachers according to man's itching ears, for a fair show, that thereby thou mightest grow great in thy pride ; and because thou hast sought nothing else, therefore God hath suffered 1 reprobate thee to fall into a l perverse sense, so that out of confounded sense. thee there come those that blaspheme the true doctrine of Christ.

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