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.

primarypage 161

120rgoeth. [earnest] and highly desirous kindled spirit 2 is as a fire, to which the earthly body ought to be subject, and will grudge no pains to serve the desirous fiery mind. And although it hath nothing to expect for its labour but scorn and contempt from the world, yet it must be obedient to its lord, for its lord is mighty, and itself is feeble, and its lord leadeth, [driveth], and preserveth it, and yet in its [ignorance, or want of] understanding, it knoweth nothing of what it doth, but it liveth like all the beasts. And yet its will is [not] to live thus, but it must follow the worthy mind, which searcheth after the wisdom of God ; and the mind must follow the light of nature; for God manifesteth [or revealeth] himself in that light, or else we should know nothing of him. Ch. 16] THREEFOLD SPIRIT AND WILL 341

23. And now when we consider our mind, in the light of nature, and what that is, which maketh us zealous [or earnest], which burneth there [in] as a light, and is desirous [thirsty or covetous] like fire, which desireth to receive from that place where it hath not sown, and would reap in that country where the body is not at home [or dwelleth not], then the precious virgin of the wisdom of God meeteth us, in the middlemost seat in the centre of the light of life, and saith, The light is mine, and the [power or] virtue and glory is mine, also the gate of knowledge is mine, I live in the light of nature, and without me you can neither see, know, nor understand anything of my virtue [or power]. I am thy bridegroom in the light ; and thy desire [or longing] after my virtue [or power] is my attracting in myself ; I sit in my throne, but thou knowest me not ; I am in thee, and thy body is not in me. I distinguish [or separate], and thou seest it not. I am the light of the senses, and the root of the senses is not in me, but near me. I am the bridegroom of the root, but she hath put on a rough coat. I [will] not lay myself in her arms till she putteth that off, and then I will rest eternally in her arms, and adorn the root with my virtue [and power], and give her my beautiful form, and will espouse myself to her with my Pearl.

34. There are three things which the mind hath in it, and which rule it, yet the mind in itself is the desirous will. And those three things are three 342 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 16 kingdoms, or Principles ; one is eternal, and the second is eternal, but the third is corruptible ; the one hath no beginning ; the second is without beginning, eternally generated ; and the third hath a beginning and end, and corrupteth again [or perisheth]. 5. And, as the eternal mind in the great unsearchable depth, is from eternity, so is the indis1 Or perpetual soluble baud, and the spirit in the l source, which perty. continually generateth itself, never decay eth, and

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.

primarypage 161

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