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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13 Or being, was created ; and how he is the image, 3 substance, inheritance 4 propriety, and child of the eternal, uncreated, and infinite God, and how he is created out of the substance of God, in which God hath his own substance and propriety, in whom he liveth and governeth with his spirit, by which God manageth his own work, and loveth him dearly as his own heart and substance ; for whose sake he created this world, with all the creatures that are therein, which for the most part, without the reason and government of man, could not live in such a 6 Or quaiifica- 6 condition [as they dol. tion, or man- . . J nerofiife, 4. Ihe divine wisdom itself standeth in such a high consideration, and hath neither number nor end ; and therein is the love of God towards man known, in that man knoweth what his Creator is, PREFACE XXI and what he would have him do, and leave undone. And it is the most profitable thing for man in this world that he can search for, and seek after ; for herein he learneth to know himself, what matter and substance he is of; also from whence his understanding [cogitation, perceptibility] and sensibility are stirred, and how he is created out of the Substance of God. And as a mother bringeth1 essence or being.

2forth a child out of her own substance, and nourisheth it therewith, and leave th all her goods to it for its own, and maketh it the possessor of them, so doth God also with man, his child ; he hath created him, and preserved him, and made him heir to all his eternal goods. In and by this consideration the divine knowledge buddeth and groweth in man, and the love towards God, as of a child to its parents, so that man loveth God his Father, for that he knoweth that he is his Father, in whom he liveth, is, and hath his being, who nourisheth him, preserveth him, and provideth for him ; for thus saith Christ our Brother, (who is begotten of the Father, to be a Saviour, and sent into this world), This is the eternal life, that they know thee to be tJie only true God, and whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ. 5. Now seeing we ourselves know that we are created out of God's own substance, and made his image, substance, and peculiar inheritance, it is therefore right that we should live in obedience to him, and follow him, seeing he leadeth us as a THE THREE PRINCIPLES father doth his children. And we have also his promise, that if we follow him, we shall obtain the light of the eternal life. Without such a consideration as this, we are altogether blind, and have no knowledge of God ; but we run on as dumb beasts, and we look upon ourselves and upon God's 1 which, creation as heifers look upon a l new door made to being strange, . , ~ , , , .

3they start their stalls, and set ourselves against God and his and are afraid will, and so live in opposition and enmity, to the perdition of body and soul, and of God's noble creatures. We fall into this terrible and abominable darkness, because we will not learn to know 2 Or matter, ourselves, what we are, of what 2 substance, what we shall be, whether we are eternal, or whether we are wholly transitory, as the body is ; or whether 3 substance, also we must give an account of our 3 matters and doings, seeing we are made lords of all creatures, and of the whole creation, and have all this in our power to manage. 6. Even as we see, know, and find undeniably, that God will require an account of all our doings, 4 Or creation, how we have kept house with his 4 works, and that when we fall from him and his commandments, he will punish us terribly, of which we have fearful examples, from the beginning of the world, and among the Jews, Heathen, and Christians, especially the example of the Flood, and in Sodom and Gomorrah ; also in Pharaoh, and the Children of Israel in the Wilderness, and ever since till this very time. Therefore it is indeed most necessary PREFACE XX111 that we learn wisdom, and learn to know ourselves, how great vice and wickedness we carry about us, how horrible wolves are amongst us, which strive against God and his will.

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