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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1have no knowledge or perception, yet their soft operation in the water maketh a seething, flowing forth, or boiling up one of another, and in the tincture of the blood, they cause a rising, seeing, feeling, hearing, and tasting. Therefore consider from whence the tincture proceedeth, wherein the noble life springeth up, that thus becometh sweet from harshness, bitterness, and fire, and you shall certainly find no other cause of it than the light : But whence cometh the light, that it can shine l in a dark body ? If you say it cometh from the light of the sun, then what shineth in the night, and enlighteneth your 2 senses and understanding so, that though your eyes be shut, you perceive and know what you do ? Here you will say, the noble mind doth lead you, and it is true. But whence hath the mind its original? You will say, the 3 Or thoughts 3 senses make the mind stirring ; and that is also senses. true. But whence come they both ? What is their birth or offspring? Why is it not so with the beasts ?

230. My dear Reader, if you be able, * break open all, and look into the pith, yet you shall not find it, though you should seek in the deep, in the stars, in the elements, in all living creatures, in stones, plants, trees, and in metals ; also in heaven and earth, you shall not find it. Now you will say, Where then shall I find it ? Dear Reader, I cannot so much as lend you the key that will lead you to it. But I will direct you where you shall find it ; 4 Or answer this question. Ch. 4] OF THE TRUE ETERNAL NATURE 45 it lieth in the third chapter of the Evangelist St John, in these words : You must be born anew, by water, and by the Holy Ghost. This spirit is the key : When you attain it, receive it, and go before the first Principle, out of which this world and all creatures are created, and open the first root, from which such visible and sensible things did spring. 31. But you will say, this is only God, and he is a spirit, and hath created all things out of nothing. Tis very true, he is a spirit, and in our sight he is as nothing : And if we had not some knowledge of him by the creation, we should know nothing of him at all. And if he himself had not been from all eternity, there could nothing have ever been.

332. But what do you think there was before the times of the world, out of which the earth and stones proceeded, as also the stars and elements ? That out of which these proceeded was the root. But what is the root of these things ? Look, what do you find in these things ? Nothing else but fire, bitterness, and harshness [or astringent sourness], and these three are but one thing, and hence all things are generated. Now this was but a spirit before the times of the world, and yet you cannot find God in these three forms. The pure Deity is a light which is incomprehensible, and unperceivable, also almighty and all-powerful. Where is it then that men may find God? 33. Here open your noble mind, see, and search further. Seeing God is only good, from whence 46 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 4 cometh the evil ? And seeing also that he alone is the life, and the light, and the holy power, as it is undeniably true, from whence cometh the anger of God? From whence cometh the devil, and his [evil] will? Also hell-fire, from whence hath that its original ? Seeing there was nothing before the time of this world, but only Goo!, who was and is a spirit, and continueth so in eternity, from whence then is the first materia, or matter of evil ? For reason giveth this judgment, that there must needs have been in the spirit of God a will to generate the source or fountain of anger.

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