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. 1 3] OF THE CREATING OF THE WOMAN 243 many in [their] marrow and bones, by their 1 incantation, for which they shall receive their 1 exorcisms, wages, with Lucifer, who would fain have raised adjuration?' his tincture to be above God. 38. But know that the tincture is in menkind somewhat diverse from that in womenkind ; for the tincture in menkind goeth out of the limbus, or man, and the tincture in womenkind goeth out of the matrix. For the virtue of the soul frameth [imprinteth, fashioneth or imageth] itself not only in the tincture, but in the whole body ; for the body groweth in the tincture, 39. But thus the tincture is the longing, the great desire after the virgin, which belongeth to the tincture ; for it is subtle, without understanding ; but it is the divine inclination, and continually seeketh the virgin, [which is] its playfellow ; the 2 masculine seeketh her in the a manly. 8 feminine, and the feminine in the masculine ; s womanly, especially in the delicate complexion, where the tincture is most noble, clear, and vigorous ; from whence cometh the. great desire of the masculine and feminine sex, so that they always desire to copulate, and the great burning love, so that the tinctures mingle together, and [try, prove, or] taste one another with their pleasant taste ; whereas one [sex] continually supposeth that the other hath the virgin. 40. And the spirit of the great world now supposeth that he hath gotten the virgin ; he

2244 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 13 graspeth with his clutches, and will mingle his infection with the virgin, and he supposeth that he hath the prize ; it shall not now run away from him, he supposeth now he will find the Pearl well enough. But it is with him as with a thief, driven out of a fair garden of delight, where he had eaten pleasant fruit, who cometh, and goeth round about the enclosed garden, and would fain eat some more of the good fruit, and yet cannot get in, but must reach in with his hand, and yet cannot come at the fruit for all that ; for the gardener cometh, and taketh away the fruit ; and thus he must go away empty, and his lust is changed into discontent. Thus also it is with him [viz. with the spirit of this world], he soweth thus in his fiery [or burning] grain, or lust the 1 seed into the matrix, and the tincture receiveth it with great joy, and supposeth that to be the virgin ; but the [sour] harsh Fiat cometh thereupon, and attracteth the same to it, while the tincture is so well pleased.

341. Now then the feminine tincture cometh in to aid, and striveth for the child, and supposeth that it hath the virgin : And the two tinctures wrestle both of them for the virgin, and yet neither of them both hath her, and which of the two overcometh, according to that the fruit getteth the mark of distinction of sex. But because that the feminine [tincture] is weak, therefore it taketh the blood also to it in the matrix, whereby it supposeth it shall retain the virgin. corn. Ch. 13] OF THE CREATING OF THE WOMAN 245 The Secret Gate of Women. 42. Hence I must shew the ground to them that seek ; for the doctor cannot shew it him with his anatomy, and though he should kill a thousand men, yet he shall not find that [ground]. They only know that [ground] that have l been » Or attained . it upon it. 43. Therefore I will write from the virgin, which knoweth well what is in the woman. She is as subtle as the tincture. But she hath a life, and the tincture hath none : The tincture is nothing else but an exulting joyful mighty will, and a house [or habitation] of the soul, and a pleasant paradise of the soul, which is the soul's propriety [or own portion] so long as the soul with its imagination 2 dependeth on God. 2 sticketh to , God and 44. But when it becometh false, so that its goodness, essences flatter with the spirit of the great world,

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