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 328

121. For such also his covenant with us is, both in the Baptism and in" the Last Supper. He took not the flesh of his creature and gave it to his disciples, but he took the body of the pure element [that is] before God, wherein God dwelleth, which is present in all creatures, but comprised in another Principle, and gave it to his disciples to eat and to drink under earthly bread and wine. So also he baptized the outward man with earthly elementary water, but the inward new man he baptizeth with the water in the holy pure element of his body and spirit; which substance appeareth only in the second Principle, and is present everywhere, yet is hidden to the third Principle, viz. to the spirit of this world. 22. For as we know, that our mind reacheth all over this world, and also into the kingdom of heaven to God, so also the life of the pure element (wherein the creature / Christ, and our new man in Christ standeth) reacheth everywhere all over; and it is all over full of the fullness of the life of Jesus Christ, but only in the [one pure holy] element, and not in the four elements, in the spirit of the stars.

223. Therefore there needeth not in our writings much toil, nor hard consideration or study. We write out of another Principle, no Reader understandeth us rightly in the ground, except his mind be born in God. There ought f no historical skill and knowledge to be sought for in our writings ; for as it is not possible to see God with earthly eyes, so also it is not possible that an unenlightened mind, in the earthliness, can comprehend *it. l tho ground Heavenly thoughts and meaning can comprehend x it : of ?." like must be comprehended by like. 24. Indeed we carry the heavenly treasure in an earthly 2 vessel, but there must be a heavenly 3 receptacle hidden 2 Or recepin the earthly, else the heavenly treasure is not comprised tacle' nor held. None should think or desire to find the lily * ^ V688eL of the heavenly bud with deep searching and studying, 49 770 THE THREE PRINCIPLES 1 of what spirit it is generated. 2 materia, or material. « like gall. 4 Or Vulcan. 6 Or friend. if he be not entered by earnest repentance in the New Birth, so that it be grown in himself ; for else it is but a history, where his mind never findeth the ground, and yet itself supposeth it hath comprehended it; but his mind maketh it manifest * what spirit's child it is ; for it is written, They are taught of God.

325. We know that every life is a fire that consumeth, and must have somewhat to feed its consuming, or else it goeth out ; so also we know that there is an eternal band of life, where there is a matter whereon the eternal fire feedeth continually, for the eternal fire maketh that matter for food to itself. 26. So also we know that the eternal life is twofold, in a twofold source [quality or property], and each standeth in its own fire. The one burneth in the fierceness, and in the woe, and the matter thereof is pride, envy, and anger, its source is like brimstone spirit ; for the rising up of the pride, in covetousness, envy, and anger, maketh together a brimstone, wherein the fire burneth, and continually kindleth itself with this 2 matter ; for it is a great 3 bitterness, wherein the mobility of the life consisteth, as also the 4 striker up of the fire.

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 328

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