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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1and live in that bodily substance, and in that source [condition] and virtue wherein he liveth. 10. We do not here mean his creature, that we must enter into that, but we understand his source, for the depth and breadth of his life in his source is unmeasurable ; and as God his Father is unmeasurable, so also is the life of Christ so ; for the pure element in the source of God the Father in his l mercy, is the body of Christ ; 2 Barmhertzand as our earthly body standeth in the four elements, fu so the new man standeth in a pure element, out of which this world with the four elements is generated; and the source of the pure element is the source of the heaven, and of paradise, and so also it is [the source] of our body in the new regeneration. 11. Now that element is in the whole Principle of God everywhere, in all places, and so is unmeasurable and infinite, and therein is the body of Christ and his quality, and in that is the Trinity of the Deity ; so that the Father dwelleth in the Son, viz. in the body of Jesus Christ, and the Son in the Father, as one only God ; and thus the Holy Ghost goeth forth from the Father in the Son, and is given to us, to regenerate us to a new life in God, in the life of Jesus Christ ; and the earthly man, in his image and source [or quality and property], hangeth but to us in this [life] time, [which is] well understood, if we be born of God with our mind.

212. For as God the Father in his own substance comprehendeth all the Three Principles, and is himself the 766 THE THREE PRINCIPLES substance of all substances, wherein both joy and sorrow are comprehended, and yet goeth forth in itself out of the source of the anguish, and maketh the kingdom of joy to himself, inconceivable to the sorrow, and incomprehensible to the source of his anger in the anguish, and generateth to himself his Heart in the love, wherein the name of God taketh original, so also the mind hath in it all the three Principles. And therein the soul is 1 the soul. comprised, viz. in the band of life, l which must enter again into itself, and create a will in the life of Jesus Christ, and endeavour after it, desiring it with a strong will and purpose ; and not stay merely in the history, or in the knowledge of it, and being able to speak of it, and suppose the words and discourse make a sufficient Christian, when the mind is still in mere doubt in Babel. No, that is not the regeneration, but it must be an earnest resolution ; the mind must in itself go forth into the humility towards God, and enter into the will of God, in righteousness, truth, and love.

313. And though indeed the mind is not able to do this in its own ability, because it is captivated with the spirit of this world, yet it hath the purpose in its power ; and God is presented with [and in] the purpose, and receiveth it in his love, and soweth therein the seed of love in his virtue [or power], out of which the new man in the life of Jesus Christ groweth. Therefore all lieth in the true earnest [purpose], which is called true repentance; for the receiving of the Word of God, in the obedience of love, groweth not in the earthly life, but in the new-born, in the life of Jesus Christ. 14. Therefore the kingdom of heaven is a bestowed bounty of grace for all those that earnestly desire it. Not that it is enough to say to one's self, I have indeed a will to yield myself earnestly to God, but I have need to have this world for a while, and afterwards I will enter into the obedience of God. That continueth from one time to another, and from one day to another, APPENDIX 767 and in the meanwhile the l evil man groweth ; if you 1 Or the child defer it to the end, and then desire [and think] to be a of P«rditionheavenly fruit or birth, when all the time of your life you have grown in the anger of God, in the abyss of hell : No ; that is deceit, thou deceivest thyself.

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