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 136

147. Then saith the mind, Wherefore doth God let it move so long in the anxiety ? Alas ! when will it be that I shall see the virgin? Hearken, thou noble and highly worthy mind, it must all enter in, [and serve] to the glory of God, and praise God ; as it is written, All tongues shall praise God ; let it pass till the number to the praise of God be full, according to the eternal mind. 48. Thou wilt say, How great is that [number] then ? Behold, tell the stars in the firmament ; tell the trees, the herbs, and every [spire of] grass, if thou canst ; so great is the number that shall enter in, to the glory and honour of God. For in the end all stars pass again into the element, into the mother ; and there it shall appear, how much good they haVe brought forth here by their working. For the shadow and the image of every [thing or] substance shall appear before God, in the element, and stand eternally ; in the same thou shalt have great joy, thou shalt see all thy works therein ; also all the afflictions thou hast suffered, they shall be altogether changed into great joy, and shall refresh thee indeed ; wait but upon the LORD ; the spirit intimateth, that when the time of the lily is 2expired, a Orcome then this shall be done. 49. Therefore it is that God keepeth it hidden so long (as to our sight) that the number of the glory 280 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 14

2of his kingdom may be great ; but before him it is but as the twinkling of an eye. Have but patience, this world will most certainly be dissolved, together with the fierceness which must abide in the first Principle ; therefore do thou beware of that. 1 figures or 50. My beloved Reader, I bring in my Hypes of parables. • « 5 > the essences of the incarnation in the mother s body, in a [colloquy or] conference of the spirit with the 2 Note. essences and elements. 2I cannot bring it to be understood in any easier way : Only you must know, that there is no conference, but it is done most certainly so in the essences, and in the spirit. Here you will say to me, thou dost not dwell in the 3 Wast incar- incarnation, and see it ; thou 3 didst once indeed nate in thy 111 mother's become man, but thou knewest not how, nor what womb. r . . [was done then] ; neither canst thou go again into thy mother's body [or womb] and see how it came to pass there. Such a doctor was I also ; and in my own reason I should be able to judge no otherwise, if I should stick still in my blindness. But thanks be to God, who hath regenerated me, by water and the Holy Ghost, to [be] a living creature, so that I can (in this light) see my great in-bred [native] vices, which are in my flesh. 51. Thus now I live in the spirit of this world in my flesh, and my flesh serveth the spirit of this world, and my mind [serveth] God : My flesh

34 kingdom or is generated in this world, and hath its 4 region [or dominion. government] from the stars and elements, which dwell in it, and are the master of the [outward] Ch. 14] BIRTH AND PROPAGATION OP MAN 281 1 life ; and my mind is 2 regenerated in God, and 1 Or body. loveth God. And although I cannot comprehend of°G0gde"eratod and hold the virgin (because my mind falleth into sins) yet the spirit of this world shall not always hold the mind captive. 52. For the virgin hath given me her promise, not to leave me in any misery, she will come to help me in the Son of the Virgin. I must but hold to him again, and he will bring me well enough again to her into paradise ; I will give the venture, and go through the thistles and thorns, as well as I can, till I find my native country again, out of which my soul is wandered, where my dearest virgin dwelleth. i rely upon her faithful promise, when she appeared to me, that she would turn all my mournings into great joy ; and when I laid upon the mountain towards the 3 north, so that all the 3 Or midnight trees fell upon me, and all the storms and winds beat upon me, and Antichrist gaped at me with his open jaws to devour me, then she came and comforted me, and married herself to me.

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 136

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