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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157. Behold, the worm is the eternal, and in itself peculiarly [a Principle], the other two [Principles] are given to it, each by a birth ; the one to the right, the other to the left. Now it is possible for it to lose both the forms and births- that are given to it ; for if it reach back into the strong [or tart power, or] might of the fire, and become false to the virgin, then she departeth from it, and [she] continueth as a figure in the centre, and then 1 Or wisdom the door of the l virgin is shut. of Gou. -.-y • /» i »i r~ T i •• • 58. Now if thou wilt [turn] to the virgin again, then thou must be born anew through the water in the centre, and [through] the Holy Ghost ; and then thou shalt receive her again with greater honour and joy ; of which Christ said, There will be more joy in heaven for one sinner that repenteth, than for ninety and nine righteous, who need no repentance ; so very gloriously is the poor sinner received again of the virgin, that 2it must no more be a shadow, but a living and understanding creature, and [an] angel of God. This joy none can express, only a regenerate soul knoweth it ; which the body understandeth not ; but it trembleth, and knoweth nob what is done to it. 59. These two forms, or Principles, the worm loseth at the departing of the body ; although indeed it continueth in the figure, which yet is but 3 Or gnawing, of a serpent, and it is a 3 torment to it, that it was Ch. 12] OPENING OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURE 223

2an angel, and is now a horrible fierce poisonous worm and spirit ; of which the Scripture saith, That the worm of the wicked dieth not, and their plague [torment or source] continueth eternally. If the worm had had no angelical and human form, then its source [torment or plague] would not have been so great ; but that causeth it to have an eternal anxious desire, and yet it can attain nothing ; it knoweth the shadow of the glory [it had], and can never more live therein. 60. This therefore in brief is the ground of what can be spoken of the fall of Adam, in the highest depth. Adam hath lost the * virgin by his lust, » Divine and hath received the 2 woman in his lust, which is 2 Or wife a 'cagastrish person, and the virgin waiteth still 3 Subject to n f i • r nil i MI corruption, continually tor him [to seej whether he will step and mingled again into the new birth, and then she will receive him again with great glory. Therefore, thou child of man, consider thyself; I write here what I certainly know, and he that hath seen it witnesseth it ; or else I also should not have known it. 1 Schleppen, begirt, surrounded. 2 With fragility, or with the earthly tabernacle. 3 The divine brightness. Of the Creating of the Woman out of Adam. The fleshly, miserable, and dark Gate.

31. ~T~ CAN scarce write for grief, but seeing it J- cannot be otherwise, therefore we will for a while wear the garment of the woman, but yet live in the virgin ; and although we receive [or suffer] much affliction in the [garment of the] woman, yet the virgin will recompense it well enough. And thus we must be * bound with the 2 woman till we send her to the grave, and then she shall be a shadow and a figure ; and the virgin shall be our bride and precious crown. She will give us her 3 pearl and crown, and clothe us with her ornaments, for which we will give the venture for the lily's sake. And though we shall raise a great storm, and though Antichrist tear away the woman from us, yet the virgin must continue with us, because we are married to her ; let every one take its own, and then I shall have that which is mine. 2. Now when Adam was thus in the Garden of Eden, and the three Principles having produced such a strife in him, his tincture was quite wearied, 224 Ch. 13] OF THE CREATING OF THE WOMAN 225

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