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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1(like Lucifer) for their haughtiness [or pride's] sake, God in their remained in the flash of fire and anxiety. 10. This birth [or active property] with the indissoluble band, is generated in every soul ; and there is no soul before the kindling of the light in the child in the mother's body. For with the kindling the eternal band is knit [or tied], so that it standeth eternally, and this worm of the three essences doth not die, nor sever itself ; for it is not possible, [because] they are all three generated out of one [only] fountain, and have three qualities, and yet are but one being [or substance] ; as the Holy Trinity is but in one only essence [or substance] ; and yet they have three originalities in 262 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 14 one mother, and they are one [only] being [or substance] in one another. Thus also (and not a whit less) is the soul of man, but only one degree in the first going forth ; for it is generated out of the father's eternal will (and not out of the heart of God), yet the heart is the nearest to it of all.

211. And now it may very exactly be understood by the essences and property of the soul, that in this house of flesh (where it is as it were generated) it is not at home ; and its horrible fall may be also understood [thereby]. For it hath no light in itself of its own, it must borrow its light from the sun ; which indeed springeth up along with it in its birth, but that is corruptible, and the worm of the soul is not so ; and it is seen that when a man 1 the light of dieth lit goeth out. And if then the divine light man's faculty be not again generated in the centre, then the soul thateiightmg remaineth in the eternal darkness, in the eternal anguishing [source or] quality of the birth, where nothing is to be found in the kindled fire, but a horrible flash of fire, in which [source, property, or] quality, also the devils dwell ; for it is the first Principle. 12. And the soul here in this world useth the light of the third Principle, after which the soul of Adam lusted, and thereupon was captivated by the spirit of the great world. But if the soul be regenerated in the Holy Ghost, so that its centre 2 in true to the regeneration springeth 2 forth, then it seeth with two lights, and liveth in two Principles. And Ch. 14] BIRTH AND PROPAGATION OF MAN 263

3the most inward [Principle] (viz. the first) is shut up fast, and hangeth but to it, in which the soul is tempted and afflicted by the devil ; and on the contrary, the l virgin (which belongeth to [and is » the virtue or .-,,". .,, . 1-1 power of God. mj the tincture of the regeneration, and in the departure of the body from the soul, shall dwell [in the same tincture]) is in continual strife and combat with the devil, and trampleth upon his head in the virtue [and power] of the [soul's] Prince and 2 Champion (viz. the Son of the Virgin), when 8 Saviour or n r -i f i Conqueror. a new body (out of the virtue [or power] 01 the soul) shall 3 spring forth in the tincture of the soul. 30rbe 13. And that (when the soul is4 departed from f the body) it might no more possibly be tempted ated< by the devil and the spirit of this world ; there is a quiet rest for the soul included in its centre in its own tincture, which standeth in paradise, betwixt the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of hell, to continue until God shall put this world into its 6 ether, when the number of men, and * or reoepfigures (according to the depth of the eternal mind of God) shall be finished. 14. And now when we consider how the temporary and transitory life is generated, we find that the soul is a cause of all the 6 members [or • organs or instruments.

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