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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189. Beloved mind, behold, consider this, this now is God and his heavenly kingdom, even the eternal element and paradise, and it standeth thus in the eternal original from eternity to eternity. Now what joy, delight, and pleasantness is therein, I have no pen that can describe it, neither can I express it ; for the earthly tongue is too much insufficient to do it ; [all that men can say of it] is like dross compared with gold, and much more inferior ; yea, although the virgin 2 bringeth it into 2 discovereth the mind, yet all is too dark and too cold in the ' whole man, so that he cannot express so much as one spark [or glimpse] thereof sufficiently. We will defer it till [we come] into the bosom of the 302 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Oh. 14 virgin ; we have here only given a short hint of it, that the author of this book may be understood ; for we are but a very little drop out of the fountain of the wisdom of God ; and we speak as a little sparkle [or glimpse], but [high] enough for our Or in respect, earthly [understanding], and1 for our weak knowledge here upon earth ; for in this life we have no need of any higher knowledge of the eternal substance [being or essence] ; if we do but barely and nakedly speak of what hath been from eternity, it is enough. THE FIFTEENTH CHAPTER Of the l Knowledge of the Eternity in the l Or UnderCorruptibility of the Essence of all Essences. 1. ~^TOW ^ we consider of the eternal will

2A.^1 of God, [and] of the 2 essence of all2 being of all essences; then we find in the originalness but substance of Q WV^V^HHftMi V» one [only being, substance or] essence, as is*1 mentioned above. Out of this [only] essence is generated from eternity the other [being, substance, or] essence, viz. the divine essence, and we find that both the [beings, substances or] essences stand in divine omnipotence, but not in one 3 source, 8 Or working neither do they mix together, nor can either ofpl them both be [destroyed, dissolved, corrupted, or] broken. 2. But yet they have two sorts of inclinations [or desires], each in itself for its own. Yet because the divine [being or] essence from eternity is generated out of itself, therefore it is inclined to help the weak, and is rightly called Barmhertzig-keit [mercifulness]. 3. And now seeing the virgin of the eternal wisdom hath 4 discovered herself in the eternal « Or shone. 303 304 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 15 original, and in the eternal mind in the sharp essence of the breaking of the darkness in the fireflash [hath found] the depth of the f1 very] image of God, and that the similitude of God is there in the eternal original, therefore she hath longed after the similitude, and that longing maketh the 2 Or presented attracting in the will, and the will stood [2 right]

3against the similitude ; and the Fiat in the attracting of the willing, created the will in the similitude, out of which came the angels all together. But now the eternal essences were in the similitude, and the wisdom discovered [or manifested] herself in the essences in many thousand thousands, that the eternal wonders might be revealed [or made manifest] ; and thereupon there went forth (according to every essence, as out of a fountain) many thousand thousands. 4. And from thence came the names of the thrones and principalities, as according to the 3 Or fountain, essences of the first and great 3 source, which in the discovering of the eternal wisdom of God goeth forth again into many thousand thousands, yet there is a certain number [of them], and in the centre of God none [or no number, but infiniteness] ; and thus out of the fountain of every essence are 4 Or throne- gone forth, first the * thrones, and in the throne many thousand thousands. 5. These the Fiat created to a similitude and image of God, and overshadowed the same in the Fiat with the overflowing virtue of God ; and the Ch. 15] KNOWLEDGE OF THE ETERNITY 305 will of God l set itself [right] against the image and x Or presented 1-1 11 1-1 -IT -n itself before.

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