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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18. Then reason asketh : What was the rib [taken] out of Adam to be [made] a woman ? The gate of the depth : Behold, the virgin sheweth us this, that when Adam was overcome, and the virgin passed 228 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 13 into her ether, then the tincture (wherein the fair virgin had dwelt) became earthy, weary, feeble and weak ; for the powerful root of the tincture, from whence it had its potency without any sleep or 1 Or is the rest (viz. the heavenly matrix, which * containeth foundation of. v i i i • fi \ • i i paradise and the kingdom of heaven) withdrew in 2 air or Adam, and went into its 2 ether. receptacle. T-»I t iri • -i -i • 9. Reader, understand [and consider] it aright : 3 broken. the Deity (viz. the fair virgin) is not 3 destroyed and come to nothing ; that cannot be ; only, she is remaining in the divine Principle ; and the spirit, or the soul of Adam, is, with its own proper worm, remaining in the third Principle of this world : But the virgin, viz. the divine virtue [or power] standeth in heaven, and in paradise, and beholdeth 4 in the herself in the earthly quality of the soul, viz. * in noUnnthean the sun, and not in the moon; understand, thereof. pa ^ the highest point of the spirit of this world, where the tincture is noblest and most clear, from whence the mind of man doth exist.

210. And she would fain return again into her place to her bridegroom, if the earthly flesh, with the earthly mind and senses [or thoughts did not hinder, or] were not in the way, for the virgin doth not go into them, she will not be bound [to, or] in the earthly centre ; she finisheth the whole time (while the woman liveth in her stead) of her speculation with longing and much calling, admonishing and hearty seeking : But [to] the regenerate she appeareth in a high triumphing Ch. 13] OF THE CREATING OF THE WOMAN 229 manner, in the centre of the mind ; [she] also often diveth into the tincture of the blood of the heart, whereby the body, with the mind and senses, cometh to tremble and triumph so highly, as if it were in paradise ; it also presently getteth a paradisical will.

311. And there the noble grain of mustard-seed is sown, of which Christ saith, That it is at first small, and afterwards groweth to be like a great tree ; so far [or so long] as the mind persevereth in the will. But the noble virgin stayeth not continually, for her birth is [of a] higher [descent] ; and therefore she dwelleth not in earthly vessels ; but she sometimes visiteth her bridegroom at a time when he is desirous of her ; although she always with observancy preventeth and calleth him, before he [calleth] her : which is only understood in the lily. This the spirit speaketh in a high and worthy seriousness, therefore observe it, ye children of God, the angel of the Great Council cometh in the valley of Jehosaphat with a golden charter, which he selleth :or oil without money ; whosoever cometh shall ave it. 12. Now when the tincture was become thus earthy and feeble, by the overcoming of the spirit of the great world, then it could not generate [in a] heavenly [manner], and was also possessed with inability ; and then the counsel of God stood there, and said : Seeing he is become earthly, and is not able [to propagate], we will make a help for him ; 230 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 13 and the Fiat stood in the centre, and severed the matrix from the limbus : And the Fiat took a rib in the midst of Adam, out of his right side, and created a woman out of it.

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