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 134

1eternally in the virgin, and to generate the virgin again out of himself, and so generate an angelical kingdom. 36. But seeing it could not so be (because of the spirit of this world) therefore was the outward temptation first taken in hand by the tree of the fruit of this world. And there Adam became 2 Or at length. 2 perfectly a man of this world, and did eat and drink of the earthly essences, and infected [or mingled] himself with the spirit of this world, and became that [spirit's] own ; as we now see by woeful experience, how that [spirit] possesseth a child in the mother's body in the incarnation : For he knoweth not any where else to seek the virgin, but in man, where he first of all espied her. 37. Therefore he doth wrestle in many a man (that is of a strong complexion, in whom the virgin doth often behold herself) so very hard, continually supposing he shall get the virgin, and that she shall be generated for him : And the more the soul resisteth him, and draweth near to the Heart of God, and panteth to yield itself over thereto (where the amiable virgin not only freely looketh upon it, but dareth even for a long time even to sit in its nest [viz. in] the tincture of the soul), the more Ch. 14] BIRTH AND PROPAGATION OF MAN 275 strong and [eciger or] desirous doth the spirit of this world come to be.

238. Where then the king (viz, the light of the sun) is so very joyful in the spirit, and doth so highly triumph, exult, and rejoice, that he moveth all the essences of the stars, and bringeth them into their highest degree, to generate her ; where then all centres of the stars fly open, and the loving virgin beholdeth herself in them. Where then the essences of the soul (in the light of the virgin) can see in the centres of the stars, what is Mn its » in the onoriginal and source. gbaiand well-spring of 39. Of which my soul knoweth full well, andtbesou1' hath also received its knowledge thus, which 2 the learned master in the 8hood of his degree » the great cannot believe, because he cannot apprehend it ; iSflhet™60 therefore he holdeth it to be impossible, and SSJghtb? the ascribeth it to the devil (as the Jews did by the Holy Ghost' Son of the Virgin, when he in [the virtue of] the virgin shewed signs and wrought miracles) which my soul regardeth not, neither esteemeth their pride, it hath enough in the Pearl; and it hath a longing to shew the thirsty [where] the Pearl [lieth] : The crowned hood [or cornered cap] may play merrily behind the curtain of Antichrist, 4 till « They that the lily groweth, and then the smell of the lily will [cause some to] throw away the hood [or cap], saith the virgin; and the thirsty shall drink of the water of life ; and [at that time] the Son of the Virgin will rule in the valley of Jehosaphat. 276

3THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 14 40. Therefore seeing the mystery in the light of the virgin thus wonderfully meeteth us, we will here, for the seeking mind (which in earnest hope seeketh that it might find the Pearl) open yet one gate, as the same is opened to us in the virgin. For the mind asketh, Seeing that the sun, stars, and elements were never yet in the second Principle (where the virgin generateth herself out of the light) therefore how could they be able to know the virgin in Adam, so that they labour thus eagerly with longing after the virgin ? The Depth in the Centre.

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 134

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