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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118. But the spirit of the great world overcame Adam, and put itself in with force, in quintam essentiam [into the quintessence], which there is the fifth form, the extract out of the four elements and stars ; and there must God create a woman [or wife] for Adam out of his essences, if he must be to fill the kingdom, according to the appearing [discovering, shining, or sparkling] of the noble virgin, [with many thousand thousands], and build [or propagate] the same. And thus man 'became earthly, and the virgin departed from him in paradise ; and there she warned [called and told] him that he should lay off the earthliness, and then she would be his bride and loving spouse. And now it cannot be otherwise in this world with 1 begotten, man, he must be * generated in the virtue of the m! nourish- outward constellation and elements, and live Lrved. pre therein till the earth li ness falleth away. 19. And thus he is in this life threefold, and the threefold spirit hangeth on him, and he is generated therein, neither can he be rid of it, except he [corrupt or] break to pieces ; yet he can be rid of paradise, whensoever his spirit imagineth in the fierceness [or wrath] and falsehood, and giveth up himself thereto, that so he might be above meekness and righteousness in himself, as a lord, like Lucifer, [and] live in pride [and stateliness] ; and Ch. 15] KNOWLEDGE OF THE ETKRNITY 311 then paradise l falleth [away], and is shut up ; ' ceaseth, vanisheth, or

2and he loseth his first image which standeth in the disappeared. hidden element in Paradise. 20. For the Adamical 2 however (according to the 2 though he it_ • -L • j \ tne inward element which standeth open in the mind) four elements. can live in paradise, if he striveth against evil, and wholly with all his strength give himself up to the Heart of God, then the virgin dwelleth with him, (in the inward element in paradise), and enlighteneth his mind, so that he can tame the Adamical body. 21. For these 3 three births are [inbred or]3 Or these , , three propergenerated together with every one in the mother s ties, darkness, -i i -I i i T lights an£l th® [womb or] body, and none ought to say, 1 am foar elements. not elected ; for it is a lie, [and he] belieth the element, (wherein man also liveth) ; and besides [he] belieth the virgin of wisdom, which God giveth to every one which seeketh her with earnestness and humility. So [likewise] the possibility of seeking is also in every one, and it is inbred [or generated] in him with the all -possible hidden element [to which all things are possible] ; and there is no other cause of perdition in man, than [was in or] with Lucifer, whose will stood free ; he must either reach into God in humility, chastity, and meekness, or into the dark mind, in the climbing up of malice and fierceness [or grimness], which yet (*in its flowing forth) desireth not to lift itself 4 the fierceness

3up above God, but it inclineth itself only above the would not lift meekness, in the fire-flash, in the stern [or fierce] God.8* regeneration : But the devils would (as creatures) 312 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 15 be above all, and be lords wholly [of themselves], 1 Note, the and l so it is also with man here. evil of nature . is not in fault, 22. The pride of nature indeed mclmeth one but the crea- . tureisin fault, man more strongly than another, but it forceth [or compelleth] none that they must be proud ; and if there be a force [or strong compulsion upon any], then it is when man willingly, for temporal honour and pleasure sake, lets the devil into his eternal essences ; and then he [the devil] seeth presently how that man is inclined [or led] by the spirit of this world, and in that way tempteth him accordingly ; if man letteth him but in, he is then a guest very hardly to be driven out again ; yet it is very possible, if that man entirely and sincerely purposeth to turn, and to live according to the will of God, then the virgin is always ready [before-hand] in the way to help him.

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