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. 10] THE CREATION OF MAN, AND HIS SOUL 165 is in a house, it must then be within that house ; for from hearsay, without seeing it oneself, there is always doubting whether a thing be as is related. But what the eye seeth, and the mind knoweth, that is believed perfectly, for [the eye and the mind] apprehendeth it. 27. The mind searcheth wherefore man must be tempted, whereas God had created him perfect ; and seeing God is omniscient [and knoweth all things], the mind therefore always layeth the blame upon God ; and so do the devils also ; for the mind saith, If the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil had not sprung up, then Adam had not fallen. 28. 0 beloved reason ! if you understand no more than so, then shut up the eyes [of your mind] quite, and search not ; continue under patience in hope, and let God alone [he will do well enough], or else you will fall into the greatest unquietness, and the devil will drive you into despair, who continually [pretendeth or] giveth it l forth, that God » The devil did will evil, [and that] he willeth not that all men mind, should be saved, and therefore he created the tree of anger.

229. Beloved mind, put such thoughts away from thee, or else thou wilt make of the kind and loving God, an unmerciful and hostile will, but leave off such thoughts of God, and consider thyself what thou art ; in thyself thou shalt find the Tree of the Temptation, and also the will to have it, which made it spring up ; yea the source [lust or quality] 166 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 10 whence it sprang up standeth in thee, and not in God ; [this must be understood] that when we will speak of the pure Deity (which mariifesteth itself in the second Principle through the Heart of God) it is thus, and not otherwise. 30. But when we consider [or mean] the original of the first Principle, then we find the [nature, property, or] species of the tree, and also the will to the tree. We find there the abyss of hell and of anger [and wrath] ; and moreover we find the will of all the devils, we find the envious will of all the creatures of this world, wherefore they all are the enemies of one another, and do hate, bite, worry, kill and devour one another. My beloved reason, here I will shew you the Tree of the Temptation, and you shall look Moses in the face : Keep your 1 fixed, or mind * stedfast, that you may apprehend it. upon it. TIP- -i

331. 1 nave often giyen you to understand in this book already, what the essence of all essences is ; but because it is most of all highly necessary in this place to know the ground [thereof], there2 Or explain, fore I will 2 set it you down all at large, and very fundamentally, so that you shall know it in yourself; yea you shall understand it in all creatures, and in all things that are, or that you look upon, or at any time may possibly think on ; all these shall be witnesses. I can bring heaven and earth, also the sun, stars, and elements for a witness, and that not in bare words and promises only, but it shall be set before you [very convincingly and] Ch. 10] THE CREATION OF MAN, AND HIS SOUL 167 very powerfully in their virtue and essence ; and you have no virtue [or power, or faculty] in your body, that shall not [convince you and] witness against you ; do but not suffer the lying spirit, the old serpent, to darken your mind, who is the inventor of a thousand l tricks. » Or sleights, ,,,, , , r shifts, fetches, 32. \\hen lie seeth that he cannot catch [or arts, overcome] man, by making him 2 doubtful of the 2 Or despair, mercy of God, then he maketh him careless, so that he accounteth all as nothing. He maketh his mind very drowsy, so that he esteemeth very lightly of himself, as if all were not worth the looking after : Let things be as they will, he will not break his heart [or trouble his head] with it. Let the 3 Pope 3 priest,

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