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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1of the fulness of the joy and springing up of the light in the re-impregnating of the will, and to generate the virtue of the eternal omniscience and Ch. 14] BIRTH AND PROPAGATION OF MAN 297 wisdom in the love, that is God ; and the outgoing from him is his willing [or desiring], which the essence (viz. the sharp Fiat) createth ; and God dwelleth in the second Principle, which is eternally generated out of the eternal centre out of the eternal will, [and this] is the kingdom of God without number and end, as it further followeth. The Gate of the Son of God, the pleasant Lily in the Wonders. 81. Therefore as the will doth thus impregnate itself from eternity, so also it hath an eternal willing [or desiring] to * bring forth the child with i generate, which it is big [impregnated, or conceived]. And that eternal will to * bring forth, doth bring forth eternally the child which the will is conceived withal ; and this child is the eternal virtue [or power] of meekness, which the will conceiveth again in itself, and expresseth [or speaketh forth] the depth of the Deity, with the eternal wonders of the wisdom of God.

282. For the will [is it] that expresseth ; and the child of the [eternal] virtue, and the eternal meekness, is the Word which the will speaketh ; and the going forth out of the spoken Word, is the spirit, which in the sharp might of God, in the centre of the regeneration, out of the eternal mind, out of the anxiety in the fire-flash in the sharpness of the [destroying or] breaking of the 298 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 14 1 opening or darkness, and l breaking forth of the light in the unshutting. meekness, out of the eternal will from eternity, goeth forth out of the Word of God, with the sharp Fiat of the great might of God ; and it is the Holy Ghost [or Spirit] of God, which is in the virtue [or power] of the Father, and goeth eternally forth from the Father through the Word, out of the mouth of God. The Gate of God's Wonders in the Rose of the Lily. 83. Now reason asketh, Whither goeth the Holy Ghost, when he goeth forth out of the Father and Son, through the Word of God? Behold, thou sick Adam, here the gate of heaven standeth open, and very well to be understood, by those that will [or have a mind to it]. For the bride saith, Come, and whosoever thirsteth, let him come, and whosoever cometh, drinketh of the fountain of the knowledge of the eternal life in the smell and virtue of the lily of God in paradise.

384. As is mentioned above, so the ground of the Holy Trinity is in one only divine and undivided essence [being, or substance], God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ; from eternity arising from nothing, always generated from and out of itself from eternity ; not beginning nor ending, but dwelling in itself; comprehended by nothing, having neither beginning nor end ; subject to no locality, nor limit [number], nor place. It hath no place of its Cl). 14] BIRTH AND PROPAGATION OF MAN 299 rest, but the deep is greater than we [can perceive or] think, and yet it is no deep, but it is the unsearchable eternity ; and if any here will think [to find] an end or limit, they will be confounded [or disturbed] by the Deity, for there is none ; it is the end of nature. And whosoever [goeth about to] think [or dive with his thoughts] l deeper, doth 1 Or further. like Lucifer, who in [high-mindedness or] pride, would fly out above the Deity, and yet there was no place, but he went on himself, into the fiery fierceness, and so he perished [withered, or became dry as] to the fountain of the kingdom of God.

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