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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117. Here will the Prince and Arch-Shepherd pronounce his sentence, saying to the 2 Godly, 3 Come, "honest, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom that™uSS.m hath been prepared for you from the beginning ; 3 MatthI have been hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, in prison and misery, and you have fed me, given me drink, clothed me, comforted me, and visited me, and have come and helped me in my misery, therefore enter into eternal joys. And they will answer, Lord, when have we seen thee hungry, thirsty, naked, in prison, or in misery, and have served thee ? And he will say, What you have done to the least of these my brethren, you have done that to me. And to the wicked he will say, Away from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire ; for I have been hungry, thirsty, naked, in prison, and in misery, and you have never ministered unto me. And they will answer, Lord, when have we seen tbee so, and not ministered unto thee ? And he will say, What you have not done to the least of these my poor brethren, that you have not done to me ; and they must depart from him. 48 754 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 27 18. And in that moment of departing, there 'perisheth. l passeth away heaven and earth, sun, moon, stars, and elements, and thenceforth time is no more.

219. And there then in the saints, the incorruptible attracteth the corruptible into itself, and the death and this earthly flesh is swallowed up ; and we all live in the great and holy element of the body of Jesus Christ, in God the Father, and the Holy Ghost is our comfort ; and with this world, and with our earthly body, all knowledge and skill of this world perisheth ; and we live as children, and eat of the paradisical fruit, for there is no terror, fear, nor death any more ; for the Principle of hell together with the devils (in this last hour) is shut up ; and the one [Principle] cannot touch the other any more in eternity, nor conceive any thought of the other. The parents shall no more think of their wicked children that are in hell, nor the children of their parents ; for all shall be in perfection, and that which is in part shall cease. Note, Read 20. And there then this world shall remain more of this . in the answer standing in a figure and shadow in paradise, but to the thirtieth ~, Question, in the substance ot the wicked perisheth in that the Book of r „ , , , .. _. the Forty [ngure ot the world], and remaineth in the hell, concerning for the works of every one follow after them ; and there shall be eternal joy over the figures of all things, and over the fair fruit of paradise, which we shall enjoy eternally. Ch. 27] OF THE LAST JUDGMENT 755 To which help its, 0 Holy Trinity, God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

3What is wanting here, you may seek for in the other parts of my writings, especially concerning Moses and all the Prophets, and concerning the kingdom of Christ. In the fourth part of these writings, being the Forty Questions of the Original of the Soul, and what it is from Eternity to Eternity, this is clearly described. A true Information concerning the confounded Babel. To the Comfort of such as seek ; and set here for a Witness against the Mockers and Despisers. 21. Though now there be so many doctrines and opinions l manifested, yet the scorner (who is born i or broached. of this world only) ought not to fall on so, and cast all down which he cannot apprehend; for all is not false, there is much that is generated by heaven, which [heaven] will at present make another seculum or age, which discovereth itself highly with its virtue [or power], and seeketh the Pearl ; it would fain open the tincture in its substance, that the virtue [or power] of God might thereby appear in it, and that it might be freed from the irksome vanity ; this was done in all ages, as histories shew, and as is well known to the enlightened. 22. For now there are many that seek, and they find also : One gold, another silver, another copper, another tin ; but this must not be understood of 756 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 27 metals, but of the spirit, in the power, in the great wonders of God, in the spirit of the eternal power.

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