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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1The Difference [or Distinction] between the Virgin Mary, and her Son JESUS CHRIST. The Earnest and true Grate of Christian Religion ; and of the Articles of Belief, earnestly to be considered for the Sake of Man's Salvation, and because of the Inventions and Opinions of Heretics and Schismatics, forged by the confused Babel of Antichrist. The high and deep Gate of Aurora and Day-spring in the Eoot of the Lily. 57. The Mysterium [or IVIystery] which we knew not before, meeteth us, nor did we know the ground of it ; neither did we ever esteem ourselves worthy of such a revelation ; but seeing it appeareth unto us of grace, through the mercy of the gracious Son Ch. 18] PROMISED SEED OP THE WOMAN 449 of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, therefore we must not be so lazy, but labour in the garden of the lily, in love to our neighbour, and for the sake of the children of hope, especially for the sake of the poor sick Lazarus, who lieth wounded in Babel ; who (after his painful sickness) shall be healed, * in the 1 Or by. smell of the lily ; and when he shall begin to go out from Babel, we will set a root before him in Hebron, which shall afford him strength, to get quite out of 2 Babel for his health. 2 out of the -n r i -T r /N -i-i i -i contentious 58. tor the virgin [the wisdom ot God] hath wrangling graciously bestowed a rose upon us; of which we will °* write in such words as we behold in that wonder ;

2and we cannot [write] otherwise, but our pen is broken, and the rose taken from us, and then we are as we were before the time [of our knowledge] ; whereas yet the rose standeth in the centre of paradise, in the hand of the virgin, which she reacheth forth to us, in the same place where she came to us in the gate of the deep, and proffered us her love, when we lay on the mountain towards the 8 north, 3 Or midV+- in the strife and storm before Babel, which [virgin] D1 our earthly man hath never seen nor known. 59. Therefore we write out of a school, wherein the earthly body (with its 4 senses) never studied, * Or reason. nor ever learned the A, B, C ; for in the rose of the virgin we learned that A, B, C, which we supposed we could have learned from the 5 thoughts e senses. of the mind ; but that could not be, they were too rough, and too dark, they could not comprehend it. 29 450 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Oh. 18

3And therefore the earthly body must not learn in this school, and its tongue cannot raise itself up to it ; for the mind of this school stood hidden in the gate of the deep, in the centre. Therefore we ought not to boast of this school at all, for it is riot the proper one of the senses [or thoughts] and mind of the earthly man ; and if we go forth from the centre of the noble virgin, then we know as little from this school as others ; just as it was with Adam when he went out of the paradise of God, into the sleep of being overcome, then at his awaking in this world he knew no more of paradise, 1 The noble and he knew his loving l virgin no more. Sophia, the . ... . .. eternal wis- 60. Therefore we nave no ability, might, nor understanding (in our earthly will) to teach of the wonders of God, we understand nothing thereof, according to our in-bred nature ; and none ought to reqiure anything from our own will, for we have nothing [in it]. 2deciarethor 61. But the spirit 2 intiruateth, that if you shall go out from Babel into the meekness of Jesus Christ, then the spirit in Hebron will give you teachers with great power, at whose power the 8 Or the secret elements will tremble, and the 3 gates of the deep fly open : And thou shalt go out from Lazarus, his sicknesses [and sores], through the word and wonders of these men, for the time is near, the bridegroom cometh [to fetch home his bride].

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