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.

primarypage 322

123. And though there be such seeking in the Mystery by the instigation and driving of the spirit of God, yet every one seeketh (in his own » Or form. banner) in his field wherein he standeth, and there he also findeth, and so bringeth his invention to light, that it may appear, and this 9 Or decree, is the 2 purpose of the great God, that he may so be manifested in his wonders. And it is not all from the devil, as the world in Babel (in its » Or babble, great folly) doth 3 teach ; where they cast all down to the ground, and will make a bonfire of it, and set Epicurism in its place. 24. Behold, I give you a fit similitude in a sower ; a sower tilleth his ground the best he can, and soweth good wheat, but now there is other seed among the wheat, and though that were indeed wholly pure, yet the earth putteth forth weeds among the wheat, even thorns and thistles. And now what shall the sower do ? Shall he therefore reject the whole crop, or burn it, for the thistles and darnels sake? No, but he thresheth it, and fanneth it, he separateth the weeds and dross from it, and useth the good seed for his food, and giveth the chaff to his cattle or beasts, and with the straw 4 Or dung for he rnaketh 4 compost for his ground, and so maketh good use of his whole crop. 25. But to the mockery be it spoken, he is a weed, and shall be thrown to the beasts. And Ch. 27] OF THE LAST JUDGMENT 757

2now, though other seed be found among the wheat (when it is fanned and sifted) that he cannot get out, Shall h6 therefore not use his wheat for food ? Every kind of grain hath its virtue ; one strengtheneth the heart, the other the stomach, another the other members of the body ; for one essence alone inaketh no tincture, but all the essences together make the senses [thoughts] and understanding. 26. Go into a meadow, and look upon the herbs and flowers which grow all out of the earth, and always one is fairer and more fragrant in smell than the other, and the most contemptible [herb] hath many times the greatest virtue. Now then the physician cometh and seeketh, and often turneth his mind to the lustiest and fairest, because they thrive so in their growing, and smell strong ; then thinketh he, these are the best ; whereas many times a small regardless herb will serve his turn better in his physic for his patient, whom he hath under cure. 27. Thus I must tell you ; the heaven is a sower, and God giveth him seed, and the elements are the ground into which the seed is sown ; now the heaven hath the constellation, and receiveth also the seed of God, and soweth all together one among another ; now the essences of the stars receive the seed in the ground, and qualify [or are united] with it, and carry themselves along in the herb, till a seed also be in the herb. 758 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 27 1 all men's minds and opinions. 2 Or spirit.

328. Now since there are varieties of growth, according to the essences of the stars, and yet the seed of God (which was sown in the beginning) is in the ground, and so they grow together, Should God now therefore cast away the whole crop because all have not the same essences? Doth it not all stand in his wonders ? And is it not the joy of his life, and the quickening of his tincture ? [This is] spoken by way of similitude. 29. Therefore, my beloved mind, look what thou dost ; and judge not so hastily and unadvisedly, and do not turn beast because of the multitude of opinions, to whom belongeth only the chaff of the noble seed. ( The spirit of God sheweth himself in every one that seeketh him, yet according to the manner and kind of his essences ; and yet the seed of God is sown along in the essences ; and if the seeker seeketh in a divine desire, then he findeth the Pearl according to his essences, and so the great wonders of God are manifested thereby. ^

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.

primarypage 322

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