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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132. Behold, out of what are the Turks grown ? Out of thy * perverse sense ; when they saw that thou regardedst nothing but thy pride, and didst Ch. 26] OF THE FEAST OF PENTECOST 743 only contend and dispute about the Temple of Christ, that it must stand only upon man's foundation and inventions, then Mahomet came forth, and found an invention that was agreeable to nature. Because those others followed after 1 covetousness, and fell off from the Temple of ness of money Christ, as also from the light of nature, into a and gain, or confusion of pride, and all their aim was, how the antichristian throne might be adorned, therefore he also made laws and doctrines [raised] from reason. 33. Or dost thou suppose 2it was for nothing?2 the rising-up . . , i and doctrine

2It is most certain, that the spirit 01 the great world Of Mahomet. hath thus set him up in great wonders, because the others were no better ; and therefore it must stand in the light of nature in the wonders, as a god of this world, and God was near the one as the other. Thy symbols or signs in the Testament of Christ which thou usest (which Christ left for a covenant), they stood in controversy, and were in disputation, and thou didst pervert them according to thy pride, and thou didst bend them to thy institution, ordinances and appointment ; thou didst no more regard the covenant of Christ, but the custom of celebration or performance of it, the custom must serve the turn ; whereas wood that burneth not is not fire, though when it is kindled it conies to be fire ; so also the custom without faith is like wood that burneth not, which they will call a fire. 744 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 26 34. Or shall not the spirit set it down before thy eyes, thou lascivious filthy strumpet ? Behold, how hast thou broken the state of wedlock, and opened a door to whoredom, so that no sin is 1 upon thy regarded ; hast thou not ridden l upon thy beast, power, might . , , , . n . ..

3and authority, when every one gazed on tnee, and did ride alter thee [in thy train]? Or art thou not that fine painted [adorned] whore ? Dost thou suppose we set thee forth in vain ? The judgment standeth over thee, the sword is begotten, and it will devour. Go out [from] Babel, and thou shalt live : though 'the strife, L . contention, we saw a fire in Babel, and that Babel was burning, and warring . .. that is in it. yet it shall not burn those that go out from * it. THE TWENTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER Of the Last Judgment, of the Resurrection of the Dead, and of the Eternal Life. The most horrible Gate of the Wicked, and the joyful Gate of the l Godly. 1 Or saints _ and holy

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