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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17. For there is none that can excuse himself, and plead ignorance, because the will of God is put into, and written in our minds, so that we very well know what we should do ; and all the creatures bear witness against us. Moreover, we have God's Law and Commandments, so that there is no excuse, but only our drowsy, lazy negligence and carelessness, and so we are found to be slothful, unprofitable servants in the Lord's vineyard. 8. Lastly, it is in the highest measure most needful for us to learn to know ourselves, because the devil dwelleth with us in this world, who is both God's enemy and ours, and daily misleadeth us, and entrappeth us, as he hath done from the beginning, that we might fall away from our God and Father, that so he might enlarge his kingdom, and bereave us of our eternal salvation ; as it is written, He goeth about as a roaring lion, and seeketh whom he may devour. 9. Seeing therefore we are in such horrible danger in this world, that we are environed with enemies on every side, and have a very unsafe pilgrimage or journey to walk ; and above all, we carry our worst enemy within us, which we ourselves hide, and desire not to learn to know it, THE THREE PRINCIPLES

2i viz. our evil though l it be the most horrible guest of all, which nature""? casteth us headlong into the anger of God ; yea inclined to ail itself is the very anger of God, which throweth us into the eternal fire of wrath, into the eternal, unquenchable torment ; therefore it is most needful for us to learn to know this enemy, what he is, who he is, and whence he is ; how he cometh into us, and what in us is his proper own ; also what right the devil hath to us, and what access of entrance into us ; how he is allied with our own enemy that dwelleth in us, how they favour and help one another, how both of them are God's enemies, and continually lay wait for us to murder us, and bring us to perdition. ] 0. Further, we must consider the great reasons why it is very necessary to learn to know ourselves, because we see and know that we must die and perish for our enemy's sake, which is God's enemy and ours, which dwelleth in us, and is the very half of man. And if he groweth so strong in us, that he get the upper hand, and be 2 predominant, then he throweth us into the abyss to all devils, to dwell there with them eternally, in an eternal, unquenchable pain and torment, into an eternal darkness, into a loathsome house, and into an eternal forgetting of all good, yea into God's contending will, where our God and all the creatures are our enemies for ever. 11. We have yet greater reasons to learn to know ourselves, because we are in good and evil and have the promise of eternal life, that (if we overcome our own enemy and the devil) we shall

3PREFACE XXV be the children of God, and live in his kingdom, with and in him, amoug his holy angels, in eternal joy, l brightness, glory, and welfare, in meekness l clarity, and favour with him, without any touch of evil, and without any knowledge of it, in God eternally. Besides, we have the promise, that if we overcome and bury our enemy in the earth, we shall rise again at the Last Day in a new body, which shall be without evil and pain, and live with God in perfect joy, loveliness, and bliss. 12. Also we know and apprehend, that we have in us a reasonable soul, 2 which is in God's love, 2 Or which God hath a and is immortal ; and that it it be not vanquished love to. by its adversary, but fighteth as a spiritual champion against its enemy, God will assist it with his Holy Spirit, and will enlighten and make it powerful, and able to overcome all its enemies ; he will fight for it, and at the overcoming of the evil, will glorify it as a faithful champion, and crown it with the 3 brightest crown of heaven. 3 Or fairest. 13. Now seeing man knoweth that he is such a twofold man, in the 4 capacity of good and evil, 4 9r potentiality of being and that they are both his own, and that he him- good or evil.

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