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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130. If now you desire to know the difference, and which is a false seed or herb, (understand a false spirit, in which the Pearl or the spirit of God is not), consider it in its fruit, smell, and taste ; if he be vainglorious, a seeker of his own honour, covetous, a blasphemer, a slanderer, and despiser of the children of God, which casteth down all under his feet, and would be lord of * all, then know, that such a one is a naughty 2 seed ; and he is a thistle, and shall be sifted out from the seed of God. Ch. 27] OF THE LAST JUDGMENT 759 1 Go out from such [a spirit], for he is a confounded l Or be at enmity with wheel, and hath no foundation, nor any sap or such a provirtue from God, for the growing of his fruit ; but self, saying he groweth as a thistle, which pricketh only, and who shall •i.i -, i deliver me bearetn no good seed. fr0m this body

231. The good smell in the herb (which should now look for in the many opinions) is only the new regeneration (out of the old corrupted Adamical mixed man) in the body of Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Ghost, viz. a new mind towards God in love and meekness ; which is not set upon pride, covetousness, and seeking his own honour, credit, and esteem, nor upon war, or any manner of stir, or insurrection of inferiors against their superiors, but groweth in patience and meekness, as a grain of wheat among thorns, and bringeth forth fruit in its season. And consider, that where there is such fruit [in thy mind], that is born of God ; and it is the noble virtue in that [man]. Go out from the other fruit, which teacheth uproars and dissension between inferiors and superiors, for such [fruits] are thistles, and will prick and sting [like nettles]. God will fan his wheat himself. 32. The lily will not be found in strife or wars, but in a friendly, humble, loving spirit, together with good sound * reason, this will dispel and drive » welli »i j a • i. • grounded, away the smoke of the devil, and nourish in its convincing, time. Therefore let none think, that when strife realon* °ry goeth on, and he getteth the upper hand, now 760 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 27

3it is well and right ; and he that is under, and subdued, let him not think, Sure I am found to be in the wroDg, I should now go to the other opinion or side, and help that party to persecute the other ; no, that is not the way, such a one is merely in Babel. 33. But let every one enter into himself, and labour to be a righteous man, and fear God, and do right, and consider that this his work shall appear in heaven before God, and that he standeth every moment before the face of God, and that all his works shall follow after him, and then the lily of God springeth and groweth, and the world standeth in its seculum. AMEN. THE END OF THE BOOK OF THE THREE PRINCIPLES AN APPENDIX OR FUNDAMENTAL AND TRUE DESCRIPTION OF THE THREEFOLD LIFE IN MAN First, Of the Life of the Spirit of this World in the Qualities and Dominion of the Stars and Elements. Secondly, Of the Life of the Originality of all Essences, which standeth in the eternal [indissoluble] Band ; wherein the Root of Man's Soul standeth. Thirdly, Of the paradisical Life in Ternario Sancto, viz. the Life in the new Regeneration, which is the Life of the Lord Jesus Christ ; wherein the angelical Life is understood, as also the holy Life of the new Regeneration.

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