Boehme supplies his own summary — the page is headed "A SHORT CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK By the Author" — and in it he states the question the book exists to answer: "wherefore God, who is the highest Good, hath brought all things to light. Also wherefore one thing is contrary to another." Why anything exists, and why what exists is at odds with itself. He does not treat those as two questions.
Open to all
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.
page 1
The High and Deep Searching Out of
The Threefold Life of Man
through or according to The Three Principles
Jacob Boehme - Teutonicus Philosophus
Translated by John Sparrow 1909
A SHORT CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK
By the Author
Being a high and deep searching out of the Threefold Life of Man, through the Three Principles. Wherein is clearly shewn that which is eternal; and also that which is mortal.
And wherefore God, who is the highest Good, hath brought all things to light. Also wherefore one thing is contrary to another, and destroyeth it: and then what is right or true, and what is evil or false, and how the one severeth (distinguishes) itself from the other.
Wherein especially the Three Principles are founded, which are the only original or fountain whence all things flow and are generated.
Whereby the multitude of meanings and opinions about faith and religion may be known: and what is the cause of the multitudes of opinions among men concerning the essence and will of God; also what is best for man to do, that he may attain the highest and eternal good.
And then concerning the end and issue of all things; wherefore all things have appeared in such a property and essence as they have had; for the comfort of the poor wounded sick soul of man, and for the rebuilding or edification of the true Christian religion; wherein the Antichrist standeth quite naked and revealed.
Set down for a remembrance to ourself, and for a stay to uphold us in these distracted miserable times.
[ Editorial matter of the 2009 electronic edition withheld. ]
Boehme's work deserves to be available freely, after about four hundred years. It is still relevant today, because it is process oriented and process philosophy (Whitehead, Peirce, etc.) is getting more attention now, promising some solutions to philosophical problems, like ontological ones, that have plagued science for a long time since quantum mechanics.
Lastly, I wish you an inspirative study of this great work.
Martin Euser
Many more valuable documents (Boehme and other theosophicalkabbalistic sources, my free e-book) can be found at my main site: meuser.awardspace.com
An older site, but with a nice search facility and blog: members. tripod.com/m euser
My writers corner can be found at scribd: www.scribd.com/meuser
My e-book on integrative spirituality and holistic science can be found there too.
Threefold Life of Man
Jacob Boehme
CONTENTS
Introduction by George W. Allen
CHAP.
I. . Of the Original Matrix, or Genetrix
2.. Further of the Genetrix
3.. Concerning the Birth of Love
4.. Of the Wellspring of Light
5.. Of the Wisdom of God, and of the Angelical World
6.. Of the World, and also of Paradise
7.. Of the True Corner Stone
8.. Of the Transitory, and of the Eternal Life
9.. Of the Threefold Life
10. How Man may find himself
II. Of the True Knowledge, what man is
12. Of the True Christian Life and Conversation
13. Of Christ's most precious Testaments
14. Of the Broad Way, and of the Narrow Way
15. Of the Mixed World and its Wickedness
page 1
The High and Deep Searching Out of
The Threefold Life of Man
through or according to The Three Principles
Jacob Boehme - Teutonicus Philosophus
Translated by John Sparrow 1909
A SHORT CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK
By the Author
Being a high and deep searching out of the Threefold Life of Man, through the Three Principles. Wherein is clearly shown that which is eternal; and also that which is mortal.
And wherefore God, who is the highest Good, has brought all things to light. Also wherefore one thing is contrary to another, and destroys it: and then what is right or true, and what is evil or false, and how the one severs (distinguishes) itself from the other.
Wherein especially the Three Principles are founded, which are the only original or fountain whence all things flow and are generated.
Whereby the multitude of meanings and opinions about faith and religion may be known: and what is the cause of the multitudes of opinions among men concerning the essence and will of God; also what is best for man to do, that he may attain the highest and eternal good.
And then concerning the end and issue of all things; wherefore all things have appeared in such a property and essence as they have had; for the comfort of the poor wounded sick soul of man, and for the rebuilding or edification of the true Christian religion; wherein the Antichrist stands quite naked and revealed.
Set down for a remembrance to ourself, and for a stay to uphold us in these distracted miserable times.
[ Editorial matter of the 2009 electronic edition withheld. ]
Boehme's work deserves to be available freely, after about four hundred years. It is still relevant today, because it is process oriented and process philosophy (Whitehead, Peirce, etc.) is getting more attention now, promising some solutions to philosophical problems, like ontological ones, that have plagued science for a long time since quantum mechanics.
Lastly, I wish you an inspirative study of this great work.
Martin Euser
Many more valuable documents (Boehme and other theosophicalkabbalistic sources, my free e-book) can be found at my main site: meuser.awardspace.com
An older site, but with a nice search facility and blog: members. tripod.com/m euser
My writers corner can be found at scribd: www.scribd.com/meuser
My e-book on integrative spirituality and holistic science can be found there too.
Threefold Life of Man
Jacob Boehme
CONTENTS
Introduction by George W. Allen
CHAP.
I. . Of the Original Matrix, or Genetrix
2.. Further of the Genetrix
3.. Concerning the Birth of Love
4.. Of the Wellspring of Light
5.. Of the Wisdom of God, and of the Angelical World
6.. Of the World, and also of Paradise
7.. Of the True Corner Stone
8.. Of the Transitory, and of the Eternal Life
9.. Of the Threefold Life
10. How Man may find himself
II. Of the True Knowledge, what man is
12. Of the True Christian Life and Conversation
13. Of Christ's most precious Testaments
14. Of the Broad Way, and of the Narrow Way
15. Of the Mixed World and its Wickedness
The promise here — "clearly shewn that which is eternal; and also that which is mortal" — is the same division the Clavis defines term by term. Read that first if the vocabulary resists: it is Boehme's own glossary, written because his readers asked for one, and it is a few pages away on this shelf.
is glossed by The Clavis, or Key