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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1formed itself, creation of Eve in the springing up of her life, and so in like manner in all men, so that we can, in our first mind, through the word and virtue of God in the Treader upon the Serpent, who in the time became man [or was incarnate], trample upon [or Ch. 15] KNOWLEDGE OF THE ETERNITY 325 break] the head and will of the devil, and if this might [or power] were not xin this place, then we » viz. in the were in the eternal death. Thus the mind is its iJJiS^Jp own, in the free will, and moveth in the virtue [of ** power] of God, and in his promise, in the free substance [or being].

245. Seeing then that the shriek of joy in the virtue of God (which breaketh the doors of the deep darkness) thus springe th up in the heart, and flieth with its glimpse [or sparkling] into the head, then the virtue of the joy setteth itself above, as being the strongest, and the flash [or glance] beneath, as being the weakest; and so when the flash [or glance] corneth into the head into its seat, then it maketh itself two open gates. For it hath broken the' doors of the deep darkness, and therefore it continueth no more in the darkness, but it must be free as a victorious prince [or conqueror], and will not be held captive. And this signifieth to us the resurrection of Christ from the dead, who is now free, and will not be held [therein], which in its due place shall be very deeply described. And those gates which the glance holdeth open, they are the eyes, and the spirit of joy is their root, which [spirit] springeth up at first in the kindling of the life. 46. Thus then the strong re-conceived will (to fly out from the darkness and to be in the light in the heart) generateth itself; and therefore we cannot know [or apprehend] it to be any other 326 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 15

3than the noble virgin, the wisdom of God ; which thus springeth up in joy, and in the beginning marrieth herself with the spirit of the soul, and helpeth it to the light, which after the springing up of the soul (viz. after the kindling of the virtue of the sun in the essences) putteth herself into its paradisical centre, and continually warneth the 1 of the ways soul, l of the ungodly ways, which are held before of the un- . . n , .. .. .. godly. it by the stars and elements, and brought into its essences. Therefore the virgin keepeth her throne thus in the heart, and also in the head, that she may defend and keep them off from the soul, all over.

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