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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145. Now if thou hast had an envious [spiteful] dogged mind, and hast grudged everything to others, (as a dog doth with a bone which himself cannot eat), then there appeareth such a doggish mind, and according to that source [or property] is its worm of the soul figured, and such a will it keepeth in the eternity, in the first Principle. And there is no revoking, all thy envious wicked proud works appear in thy * source, in thy own i or active 2 tincture of the worm of the soul, and thou must live eternally therein ; nay, thou canst not conceive or apprehend any desire [or will] to abstinence [or forbearance of it], but thou art God's and the holy souls' eternal enemy. 46. For the door of the deep to the light of God appeareth to thee no more ; for thou art now a perfect creature in the first Principle. And now though thou dost elevate thyself, and wouldst break open the door of the deep, yet that cannot be [done] ; for thou art a whole spirit, and not merely in the will only, wherein the door of the 366 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 16 1 Or limit of separation. 2 Or figured therein. 3 Or second birth. 4 Or unite or give up thy mind. deep can be broken open ; but thou fliest out aloft over the kingdom of God, and canst not enter in ; and the higher thou fliest, the deeper thou art in the abyss, and thou seest not God yet, who is so near thee.

247. Therefore it can only be done here in this life (while thy soul sticketh in the will of the mind) so that thou breakest open the gate of the deep, and pressest in to God through a new birth ; for here thou hast the highly worthy noble virgin of the divine love for thy assistance, who leadeth thee in through the gate of the noble bridegroom, who standeth in the centre in the parting l mark, between the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of hell, and generateth thee in the water and life of his blood and death, and therein drowneth and washeth away thy false [or evil] works, so that they follow thee not [in such a source and property], that thy soul be not 2 infected therein, but according to the first image in man before the fall, as a new, chaste, and pure noble virgin's image, without any knowledge of thy untowardness [or vices], which thou hadst here. 48. Thou wilt ask, What is the New 3 Regeneration ? Or how is that done in man ? Hear and see, stop not thy mind, let not thy mind be filled by the spirit of this world, with its might and pomp. Take thy mind, and break through [the spirit of this world] entirely, 4 incline thy mind into the kind love of God ; make thy purpose Ch. 16] THREEFOLD SPIRIT AND WILL 367 earnest and strong, to break through the pleasure of this world with thy mind, and not to regard it ; consider that thou art not at home in this world, but that thou art a strange guest, captivated in

3a close prison, cry and call to him, who hath the key of the prison ; yield thyself up to him, in obedience, righteousness, modesty, chastity, and truth. And seek not so eagerly after the kingdom of this world : it will stick close enough to thee without that; and then the chaste virgin will meet thee in thy mind, highly and deeply, and will lead thee to thy bridegroom, who hath the key to the gate of the deep ; thou must stand before him, who will give thee to eat of the heavenly manna, which will J refresh thee, and i or quicke thou wilt be strong, and struggle with the gate of the deep, and thou wilt break through as the May-break; and though thou liest captive in the night, yet the rays of the break of will appear to thee in the paradise, in which place day"star> thy chaste virgin standeth, waiting for thee with the joy of the angels, who will very kindly receive thee in thy new-born mind and spirit. 49. And though indeed thou must 8walk here 'swim or with thy body in the dark 4 night among thorns bathe* , * ° * In contempt and thistles (so that the devil and also this world and dis* esteem. doth rend and tear thee, and not only buffet, despise, , deride, and vilify thee outwardly, but also many times stop thy dear mind, and lead it captive in the lust of this world into the bath [or 368 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 16 lake] of swine), yet then the noble virgin will help thee still, and will call upon thee to desist

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