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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1humble, chaste, modest, pure, courteous [mind], which inclineth itself with a longing desire and love to the Heart of God, that is the similitude of God; in which the fire-flaming spirit in the joy and meekness goeth forth out of the will, and for its brethren the will of its spirit (which goeth forth from it) readily inclineth towards them ; and as the Proverb saith, It imparteth the very heart to them, which is done in spirit, wherein the heavenly joy (in the eternal element) springeth up, and the wonders of God are manifested in the virgin, by a hymn of praise to the eternal mind of God; where the mind playeth upon the harp of David an hymn to God ; where then (in the eternal holy mind) there springeth up knowledge and colours in the [eternal] element, and in the spirit wonders, with works and powers [or virtues]. 45. And this is the image of God, which God created for his glory and joy, and no other; and let not the mad Antichrist persuade thee concerning any other [image of God], for there is no other. Thy body and soul convince thee of it, as also heaven and earth, the stars and elements ; look upon what thou wilt, all things convince thee ; and if thou dost not turn and enter into that image to which God created thee, then, in the breaking of thy body (when thy mind in the spirit of the soul shall stand naked without a body), thou shalt be ashamed before all creatures ; this we speak accord388 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 17

2ing to its high worth, as it is highly known in the will of God. 46. Thus it is highly [necessary] for us to know the miserable fall of our first parents ; wherefore it was so with God, that his anger is in us, and that we must die, and (if we apprehend not the Treader upon the Serpent) must also perish eternally. But that we may set down a short summary of the fall (because of our simple, cold, dull, and dark mind) for the Reader's understanding, who, it may be, doth not yet apprehend our sense and knowledge, therefore we will explain it briefly and clearly, and also readily impart our knowledge and mind to 'Or in. him, as indeed ^according to the divine image) we ought to do. 47. Adam stood forty days in an angelical image before his sleep, and there was neither day nor night in him, also no time ; though indeed he was not (as an angel) a mere spirit ; for his body 2 the inward was out of the 2 element, which is no understandelement. . . . . ing spirit, but [isj the attraction [concretion or •Ortheeter- congelation] in the will of God, or the zlimbus, nal earth. •> • •, i /-NT which standeth before God, wherein the chaste virgin, the divine wisdom dwelleth, which discovered and created the image out of the element by the Fiat. 48. And out of this lirtibus (at the time when the earth was corporized) went forth the four elements, as out of a fountain ; and that which was discovered [or manifested] by the virgin (the

3Ch. 17] OF THE FALL OF ADAM AND EVE 389 wisdom of God) in the innumerableness, was the stars, as a virtue [power] or procreation out of the limbus. And they are the quintessence 1 of the four 1 Or before, elements, not severed from the four elements, but qualifying [or mixing virtues] one with another, 2 and yet extracted from the four issues with their 2 The stars , , , i i • n • with their sharp essences ; and they are the seeking [longing or fierce property hunger] of the four elements, or, as I may express it out of the by a similitude, [they are] the man, and the elements are the woman ; and the heart of these things is the element, in one only substance, and the essences in that [one element] are the virtues [or powers] of the wonders of the wisdom of God, and are called paradise, an exulting joy.

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