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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1Ch. 9] OF PARADISE, ETC. 149 bring a small grain of mustard-seed (from the 1 tree of paradise) into your soul ; and if you l Or fruit or abide in patience, then a great tree will grow out of that [seed], as you may well think that the like hath come to pass with this author. For he is to be esteemed as a very simple person, in comparison of the great learned men: But Christ saith, My Power is strong in the weak : Yea Father, it hath so pleased thee to hide these things from the ivise and prudent, and thou hast revealed them to babes and sucklings ; and that the wisdom of this world is foolishness in thy sight. And although now the children of the world are wiser in their generation than the children of light ; yet their wisdom is but a corruptible substance [essence or thing], and this wisdom continueth eternally. 46. Therefore seek for the noble Pearl ; it is much more precious than this [whole] world ; it will never more depart from you : And where the Pearl is, there will your heart be also : You need not here ask any further after paradise, joy, and the heavenly delightfulness ; seek but the Pearl, and when you find that, then you find paradise, and the kingdom of heaven, and you will be so taught, as being without it you cannot believe. 47. It may be, you will turmoil yourself [with nard labour], and seek for it in art, supposing to

2find 2 it there : 0 no, you need not ; it lieth not » this deep therein. The doctor that is without this way wisdom, knoweth it not. But if he also hath found this 150 THE THREE PRINCIPLES then he is a [Ch. 9 person greater for the 1 Or a more Pearl, or Pubiicus. ' public benefit than I ; as St Paul was above the other Apostles, yet in one [and the same] way of gentle meekness, as becometh the children of God. Whatsoever is wanting here that you long after, seek further, and you will find the ground, according to the desire [or longing] of your soul. THE TENTH CHAPTER Of the Creation of Man, and of his Soul, also of God's l breathing in. The pleasant Gate. ]. ~T~ HAVE perused many master-pieces of -A- writing, hoping to find the 2 Pearl of the * The high and deep

3Ground of Man ; but I could find nothing of that wisdom of which my soul lusted after. I have also found very many contrary opinions. And partly I have found some who forbid me to search [or seek], but I cannot know with what ground or understanding, except it be that the blind grudge at the eyes of them that see. With all this my soul is become very disquiet within, and hath been as full of [pain and] anguish as a woman at her travail, and yet nothing was found in it, till I followed the words of Christ, when he said, You must be born anew, if you will see the kingdom of God : which at first stopped up my heart, and I supposed that such a thing could not be done in this world, but [that it should first be done] at my departure out of this world. And then my soul first was in anguish to the birth, and would very willingly have tasted 151 152 THE THREE PRINCIPLKS [Ch. 10 the Pearl ; and gave itself up in this way more vehemently to the birth, till at last it obtained a jewel. According to which [received jewel] I will write, for a Memorial to myself, and for a light to them that seek. For Christ said, None lighteth a candle and putteth it under a bushel, but setteih it upon a table, that all that are in the house may see by the light of it. And to this end he giveth the Pearl to them that seek, that they should impart it to the poor for their health, as he hath very earnestly commanded.

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