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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185. Now see the lily, thou noble mind, full of anguish and afflictions of this world ; behold, the Holy Trinity hath an eternal will in itself, and the will is the desiring, and the desiring is the eternal essences, wherein then standeth the sharpness (viz. the Fiat) which goeth forth out of the heart, and out of the mouth of God by the Holy Ghost [or Spirit] of God. And the will [that is] gone forth out of the spirit, [that] is the divine virtue, which conceiveth [or comprehendeth] the will, and holdeth it, and the Fiat createth it [viz. that virtue], so that in it, as in God himself, all essences are, and [so that] the blossom of the light in it may spring up [and blossom] out of the Heart of God ; and yet this is not God, but [it is] the chaste virgin of the eternal wisdom and understanding, of which I treat often in this book. 86. Now the virgin is [present] before God, and 300 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 14 1 uniteth. 2 hovereth. 8 Or God's fruit

2Mnclineth herself to the spirit from which the virtue proceedeth, out of which she (viz. the chaste virgin) is ; this is now God's companion to the honour and joy of God ; the same appeareth or discovereth herself in the eternal wonders of God. In the discovery, she becometh longing after the wonders in the eternal wisdom, which yet is herself, and thus she longeth in herself, and her longing is the eternal essences, which attract the holy virtue to her, and the Fiat createth them, so that they stand in [or become] a substance ; and she is a virgin, and never generateth any thing, neither taketh any thing into her ; her inclination standeth in the Holy Ghost, who goeth forth from God, and attracteth nothing to him, but 2 moveth before God, and is the 3 blossom [or branch] of the growth. 87. And so the virgin hath no will to conceive [or be impregnated with] anything ; her will is [only] to open the wonders of God ; and therefore she is in the will in the wonders, to discover [or make] the wonders [appear] in the eternal essences ; and that virgin-like will createth the sour Fiat in the essences, so that it is [become] a substance, and standeth eternally before God, wherein the eternal wonders of the virgin of the wisdom of God are revealed. 88. And this substance is the eternal element, wherein all essences in the divine virtue stand open, and are visible : and wherein the fair and Ch. 14] BIRTH AND PROPAGATION OF MAN 301

3chaste virgin of the divine wisdom always discovereth herself according to the number of the infiniteness, out of the many thousand thousands without end and number. And in this discovering there go forth out of the eternal element, colours, arts, and virtues, and the Sprouts of the lily of bruits. God ; at which the Deity continually rejoiceth itself in the virgin of the wisdom ; and that joy goeth forth out of the eternal essences, and is called paradise, in regard of the sharpness of the generating [or bringing forth] of the pleasant fruit of the lily [in infinitum or] infinitely ; where then the essences of the lily spring up in wonders in many thousand thousands without number, of which you have a similitude in the [springing or blossoming earth.

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