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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122. For God generateth nothing else but his Heart and Son, and will never generate any other thing out of himself. Therefore that which is spoken forth before [or from] the will, is a virgin of chastity, which never generateth anything else either; but she discovereth herself in the Holy Ghost in infinitum [infinitely] in the deep of the wonders of the almightiness, and openeth them ; and she hath the strong Fiat of God for an instrument [to work with], whereby she createth, and did create all in the beginning, and she discovereth Ch. 18] PROMISED SEED OF THE WOMAN 433 herself in all created things, so that (by her) the wonders of all things are brought to the day-light. The Strong Gate of the [Incarnation or] becoming Man of Jesus Christ the Son of God. 23. And out of this Heart and Word of God the Father, (with and through the chaste virgin of God, of his wisdom of the omniscience), is proceeded the Treader upon the Serpent, in and with the Word of the promise of God the Father to Adam and Eve and their children, and it hath imaged [or imprinted] itself in Adam's and Eves mind, and espoused itself in eternity [therein]; and opened [for] the soul the gate to the kingdom of heaven ;

2and hath with the chaste * virgin set itself in the 1 the wisdom centre of the light of life, in the gate of God, and ° hath given the virgin to the soul for a perpetual companion, from whence man hath his skill and understanding, or else he could not have understanding. She is the gate of the 2 senses, and yet 2,0r thoughts, she 3 leaveth the counsel of the stars, because the 3 Or avoideth. soul liveth in the source [or quality] of the stars, and is too rough [crude, or sour], and therefore she cannot imprint [or unite] herself with the soul, yet she sheweth it the way of God. But if the soul become a hellish worm, then it withdraweth into her gate, and standeth before God, before his Word and Heart. 24. But because the souls of Adam and of Eve, (and of all the children of men), were too rough, 28 434 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 18 wild, and too hard kindled from the first Principle, so that they had the source of hell in them, being inclined to all evil [malice, or mischief], therefore the Word and the Treader upon the Serpent did not so instantly image [or imprint] itself in the soul of Adam, but stood opposite to the kingdom of the devil and of hell, and [against] their poisonous darts, in the mind ; and (in the mind of those men which incline and yield themselves to the Treader upon the Serpent) it breaketh the head of the serpent, the devil.

325. And so it was tried for a long time, whether it were possible that man should be recovered this way, so that he might yield himself wholly to God, that the soul might be born in the Word, and at last stand before God; yet all was in vain, the kindled soul could not stand, but there came to be man-slayers and murderers, also self-willed people, in mere lechery and un chastity of the flesh ; also aspiring in state, pride, and domineering, ac1 rule, or cording to the l regimen of the stars and elements, that driveth the body and the soul of man at all times ; and there were but few that did cleave to the Word of God. 26. Then God sent the deluge [or flood] upon the whole world, and drowned all flesh, except Noah, who did cleave to the Word of God ; he and his sons and their wives were preserved ; and so the world was tried, whether it would be afraid of the horrible judgment, and cleave to the Word, Ch. 18] PROMISED SEED OF THE WOMAN 435 but it was all in vain. Then God chose to himself the generation of Shem, (which did cleave to the Word), that so he might erect a light and office of preaching, that the world might learn from them. But all availed nothing ; the stars ruled men according to their source [or quality], in mere covetousness, unchastity, and pride ; which was indeed so very great, that they purposed to build a tower, whose top should reach to heaven. Such blind people they were as to the kingdom of God.

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