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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1But if they be words [that are to be expressed] then it bringeth them to the roof of the mouth, and there the five counsellors distinguish [or separate] them according to the will of the mind ; and further [the spirit bringeth them upon the tongue, and there the senses divide or] distinguish them in the flash [glance, or in a moment], 23. And there stand the three Principles in strife. The first Principle, viz. the kingdom of sternness [or wrathful fierceness] saith, Go forth in the midst of the strong might of the fire, it must be [so] ; then saith the second [Principle] in the mind, stay and consider, God is here with the virgin, fear the abyss of hell ; and the third [Principle], viz. the kingdom of this world, saith, Here we are at home, we must have it [so], that we may adorn and sustain the body, it must be [so] ; and it taketh the region of the air, viz. its own spirit, and bringeth that [region] out at the mouth, and keepeth the l distinction according to the kingdom » difference, Of this WOrld. or separation 24. And thus there goeth forth out of the earthly

22 senses and mind, lies and folly, deceit and false- » o thought*, hood, [also] mere subtlety, [with lust and desire] to be elevated ; many [to be elevated] in the might of the fire, as by force and anger ; and many by human art and 3 policy of this world, * which is8 Or virtue, but a knave in the sight of God, yet wrestleth [or 4 worl<L holdeth fast] till it hath prevailed ; many in the form of a tame and gentle beast, very cunningly 356 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 16 1 Or colour of alluring, and drawing to itself, under a l fair pretence ; many in pride, and stateliness of body [in carriage] and manners, which is a right diabolical beast, who contemneth all that doth not please him, and elevateth himself above all meekness and humility, and over the image of God ; yea, there is so very much of false untowardness, that I may not mention it ; every one followeth the region [rule or dominion] of the stars, even that which serveth most to the voluptuousness of the earthly life. *insumma. 25. 2 In brief, the regimen of the stars [or starry 30rgener- region] 3 maketh not a holy man; and although ateth no holy i 11-1 ^i man. men may converse under a holy show, yet they are but hypocrites, and desire to get honour [and esteem] thereby, their mind sticketh nevertheless in covetousness and pride, and in fleshly pleasure, in mere base lechery and lust, and they are in the

34 win or lust, sight of God (according to the 4 desire of this world) no other than mere knaves, proud, wilful, [selfconceited] thieves, robbers, and murderers. There is not one, who (as to the spirit of this world) is righteous, we are altogether children of deceit and falsehood ; and according to this image (which we have received from the spirit of this world) we belong to eternal death, but not to paradise ; except it be, that we become regenerated anew, out of the centre of the precious virgin, who with her rays averteth the mind from the ungodly ways of sin and wickedness. 26. And if the love of God (which so dearly Ch. 16] THREEFOLD SPIRIT AND WILL 357 loved the image of man, that itself is become man) did not stand in the centre of the mind in the [midst or] l point of separation, then man had been l Or parting a living devil, and he is indeed such a one, when he despiseth the regeneration, and 2goeth on accord- 20rdeparteth. ing to the inbred nature of the first and third Principles.

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