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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1the many benefits mentioned that would arise from the studying this author's writings, which may there be read. Among the rest there is a hint about reforming the laws, by degrees, in every nation ; and there is no doubt, but if those in whose hands it is to make laws did but consider what the spirit of God is, and may be stirred up in them, they would stir him up and make a reformation according to that spirit of love, the Holy Ghost. And then they would be God's true vicegerents ; they would be the fathers of their country, and deal with every obstinate rebellious member in the kingdom as a father would do with a disobedient child. 1 First tell him lovingly and shew him his faults ; if that will not do, he will inquire the reason, and study some course to remedy the cause that hindereth his amendment. But if he should go beyond the bounds of reason and be beside himself, he would take care of his safety, livelihood and cure. v God taketh such care for us all, though we be most obstinate enemies against him ; and we should do so for all our brethren, the sons of Adam ; though they be our enemies, we should examine their wants in all things, and supply them, that necessity may not compel them to be our enemies still, and offend God, that they may but live. If they will not be quiet when they have their wants supplied, and their wrongs redressed, but will turn murderers, and so deserve to live no longer, in mercy let them TO THE READER XV11

2be provided for as other more friendly children of the Commonwealth, and removed to live by themselves, in some remote uninhabited country, where they may have no occasion to do hurt among those whom they would not suffer to live quietly." But let them not there want that which may give them honest subsistence, as others who are willing to transplant themselves. And for those that desire to live quietly and peaceably at home, let all their earthly things be so ordered that they may easily understand what right and wrong are, by having most brief, plain and easy laws to be governed by, and have their wants considered and supplied. Then all hearts will bless the hands of such reformers, and love will cover all the ends of the earthy and the God of love will give us his blessing of peace all the world over, and then the King of Glory will dwell with men, and all the kingdoms of the earth will be his. Who would not desire such a thing, with me, The unworthiest of the children of men ? J. S. THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THIS BQOK 1. ~T\ /TAN can undertake nothing from the be- -LV_J_ ginning of his youth, nor in the whole course of his time in this world, that is more profitable and necessary for him, than to learn to know himself ; what he is, out of what, from whence, and for what he is created, and what his l office is. In ^uty, emsuch a serious consideration he will presently find, business is. that he, and all the creatures that are, come all from

3God ; he will also find, among all the creatures, that he is the most noble creature of them all ; from whence he will very well perceive how God's intent is towards him, in that he hath made him lord over all the creatures of this world, and hath endued him with 2 mind, reason, and understanding, above 2 Or sense. all the rest of the creatures, especially with speech or language, so that he can distinguish everything that soundeth, stirreth, moveth, or groweth, and judge of everything's virtue, effect, and original ; and that all is put under his hand, so that he can bend them, use, and manage them, according to his will, as pleaseth him. xix XX THE THREE PRINCIPLES 2. Moreover, God hath given him higher and greater knowledge than this, in that he can penetrate into the heart of everything, and discern what essence, virtue, and property it hath, both in the creatures, in earth, stones, trees, herbs, in all moveable and immoveable things ; also in the stars and elements, so that he knoweth what substance and virtue they have, and that in their virtue, all 'growing. natural sensibility, Vegetation, Multiplication, 2orPLTe^0n and life, doth consist. 3. Above all this, God hath given him the understanding and perception to know God his Creator ; what and whence man is, how he is, and where he is, and out of what he proceeded, or

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