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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1the third centre of the 2 great desire springeth up * Or hot zeal, along with it, out of which the fierceness [grimness, or wrath], and the house of flesh, are generated. For the pure love, which reacheth the element, and consequently the paradise, hath a wholly modest 1 perfect or complete. 2 Text, Menschen. 3 Or flower. 4 mixeth or uniteth. 5 Or marry. ' Or brand, or last burnt to ashes, as it were a firebrand. 7 Or warm. 8 wanton lust. 318 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Oh. 15 and chaste centre, and it is * fixed in itself, of which I here give you a true example. Diligently and deeply to be considered. 34. Behold two young 2people, who have attained unto the 3 blossom of the noble tincture in the matrix and limbus, so that it be kindled, how very hearty, faithful, and pure love they bear one towards another, where one is ready to impart the very heart within them to the other, if it could be done without death ; this now is the true paradisical blossom, and this blossom * qualifieth, with the [one] element and paradise. But as soon as ever they

26 take one another, and copulate, they infect one another with their e inflammation [or burning lust] which is generated out of the outward elements and stars, and that reacheth the abyss ; and so they are many times at deadly enmity [or have venomous spiteful hatred] one against another. And though it happen that their complexions were noble, so that still some love remaineth, yet it is not so pure and faithful as the first before copulation, which is 7 fiery, and that in the burning [or burnt] lust, [is] earthly and cold, for that must indeed keep faithful while it cannot be otherwise ; as it is seen by experience in many, how afterward in wedlock they hunt after whoredom, and seek after the devil's 8 sugar, which he stroweth in the noble tincture, if man will let him. 35. Whereby then you see here, that God hath Ch. 15] KNOWLEDGE OF THE ETERNITY 319 not willed the earthly copulation. Man should have continued in the fiery love which was in paradise, and generated out of himself. But the 1 woman was in this world in the outward elementary l the divided kingdom, in the inflammation of the forbidden fruit, and wantonof which Adam should not have eaten. And now he hath eaten and thus destroyed us ; therefore it is now with him [the Adamical man] as with a thief that hath been in a pleasant garden, and went out of it to steal, and cometh again and would fain go into the garden, and the gardener will not let

3him in, he must reach into the garden with his hand for the fruit, and then cometh the gardener and snatcheth the fruit out of his hand, and he must go away in his burning lust and anger, and come no more into the garden, and instead of the fruit there remaineth his desirous burning lust with him ; and that he hath gotten, instead of the paradisical fruit, of that we must now eat, and live in the 2 Woman. 2 in the divid36. Thus I give you accurately to understand in the earthly what man is, and what man soweth, and what and feed and groweth in the seed, viz. three kingdoms, as is above-mentioned ; and seeing the three kingdoms are thus sown, so are they in like manner before the tree of temptation ; and there beginneth the struggling and great strife ; there stand the three kingdoms in one another. The element in paradise will keep the pure mind and will, which standeth in the love in the tincture of the seed ; and the 320 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 15

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