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.

primarypage 123

1and desire the 3 fulness of the world, viz. 1. [In] • Or its fill, the [sour] harshness [desire] much wealth [or riches], to eat and drink much, and to fill themselves continually. 2. In the bitterness [desire] great power, authority, and might, to rise high, to rule powerfully, and extol themselves above all, and put themselves forth to be seen like a proud bride. And 3. in the * source of the fire [desire] 4 in the active a fierce cruel power, and by kindling of the fire wrath, [of anger], supposing in the lustre thereof to be brave, and so are much delighted in themselves ; 246 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 13 1 imageth or then cometh the flatterer and liar, and x formeth representeth

2himself. or ngureth himself also in the spirit of the great world, as [he did] in the Garden of Eden, and leadeth the soul : 1. In covetousness, to eating and drinking [too much], and saith continually, thou shalt [want and] not have enough, get more for thyself how thou canst, by hjook or by crook, that thou mayest always have enough [to serve thy turn]. And 2. in the bitter form he saith, Thou art rich, and hast much, aspire and lift up thyself, thou art greater than other people, the inferior is not like thee [or so good a man as thou]. And 3. in the might or power of the fire, he saith, Kindle [or stir up] thy mind, make it implacable and stout, yield to none, terrify the simple, and so thou shalt be dreadful, and make thy authority continue, and then thou mayest do what thou listest, and all whatsoever thou desirest will be at thy service : And is not this a fine brave glory ? Art thou not indeed a lord on earth ? 2 That the 45. And as soon as this is 2 brought to pass, then and yieideti/ the tincture becometh wholly false : For as the spirit

3V1 ' in a thing is, so is also the tincture ; for the tincture goeth forth from the spirit, and is the habitation thereof. Therefore, 0 man ! whatsoever you sow here, that you shall reap, for your soul in the tincture remaineth eternally : And all your fruits stand in the tincture, manifested in the clear light, and follow after you ; this the virgin saith in sincerity [for a warning], with great longing after the lily. Ch. 13] OF THE CREATING OF THE WOMAN 247 46. And now if we consider of the tincture, [and search] how various it is, and [that it is] many times so wholly false ; then we may [be able] fundamentally to demonstrate the falsehood of the many various spirits, [and] how they are generated. Therefore we will make a short entrance, concerning the propagation of the soul, which we will enlarge [when we speak] about the fall of Adam, and the birth of Cain. For the seed (as is above-mentioned) is sown in the lust of the tinctures, where the sour [or] harsh Fiat receiveth it, and supposeth that it hath received the virgin ; there both the tinctures (the masculine and the feminine) then strive together about it, and there the spirit of the great world, viz. the spirit of the stars and elements, figureth [imageth or imprinteth] itself also in it, and he filleth the tinctures with his elements, which the tinctures in the Fiat receive with great joy, and suppose they have the virgin.

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.

primarypage 123

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