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 324

1All searched out, very fundamentally, in the Light of Nature, and set down for the Comfort of the poor sick wounded Soul, that it might seek the holy Life in the new Regeneration, wherein it goeth forth out of the earthly, and passeth into the Life of Jesus Christ the Son of God. By the same AUTHOR. 1. 1 BECAUSE in our foregoing writings, there are J The Aurora JL) some words which the Reader may not perhaps apprehend, especially where we have written, that in the resurrection of the dead, we shall be in the body 761 762 THE THREE PRINCIPLES 1 The Three Principles. * Or a substance or reality. of Christ, in Temario Sancto, where we call the Ternarius Sanctus holy earth, which must not be understood of earth, but of the holy body out of the holy virtue [or power] of the Trinity of God; and by that body, Ternarius Sanctus, is properly understood in our writings the gate of God the Father, from whence all things proceed as out of one only substance ; therefore we will instruct the Reader of the l second book of our writings a little more fundamentally, that he may not hang so to the bare letter, and make an historical matter of our writings, but that we may observe the mind and spirit, what that [spirit] meaneth, when it speaketh of the divine life, and useth not always the same words and names.

22. For if we look into the creation of God, we find very wonderful things, which yet in the beginning proceeded out of one only fountain ; for we find evil and good, life and death, joy and sorrow, love and hate, weeping and laughing ; and we find that it all sprang out of one only substance, for that may very well be seen in all creatures, especially in man, who is the similitude of God, as Moses writeth, and the light of nature convinceth us. Therefore we ought to consider of the threefold life in man, which is found so also in the gate of God the Father. 3. If we consider of the alteration, how the mind is changed as it is, how suddenly joy is turned into sorrow, and sorrow into joy, then we ought well to consider from whence that taketh its original. For we find it all to be in one and the same mind; and if one form [property or quality] riseth and getteth above the other, then there presently 2 something f olloweth, so that the mind collecteth all its thoughts together, and sendeth them to the members of the body, and so the hands, the feet, the mouth, and all go to work, and do something, according to the desire of the mind. And then we say, that form [or property that driveth the work] is predominant, qualifying and working above other forms, APPENDIX 763

3wherein yet all other forms of nature lie hidden, and are subject to that one form. And yet the mind is such a wonderful l thing, that suddenly (out of one form, that l essence or is now predominant and working more than all others) SD it bringeth forth and raiseth up another, and qucncheth the [form] that was kindled before, so that it becometh as it were a nothing, as may be seen in joy and sorrow. 4. Now therefore when we consider whence all taketh its original, we find especially three forms in the mind. We speak not here of the spirit of this world only, for we find that our mind hath also a desire [or longing] after another mind ; and that it is anxious for that which the eyes of the body see not, and which the mouth tasteth not, and the feeling of the earthly body doth not perceive, neither doth the earthly ear hear it, nor the nose smell it ; which yet the noble mind can see, taste, feel, perceive and hear, if the form of the divine kingdom in that mind be predominant, or qualifieth more than the other two ; there then instantly the other two are as it were half dead and overcome, and the divine [form] riseth up alone, and then it is in God.

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 324

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