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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110. Man s image born of a woman, here in tnis life, is in a threefold form, and standeth in three Principles [or beginnings] ; viz. the soul, that hath its original out of the first Principle, out of the strong and sour might of the eternity ; and it swimmeth [or moveth] between two Principles, begirt with the third [Principle] ; it reacheth with its original root into the depth of the eternity, in the source [or quality] where God the Father from eternity entereth (through the gates of the breaking through, and opening) in himself, into the light of joy ; and it is in the band, where God calleth himself a jealous, angry, and austere God, and is a sparkle out of the almightiness, 2 appearing in the a sparkling great wonders of the wisdom of God, through the discovered. 476 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 19 dear virgin of chastity ; and with the form of the first Principle [it standeth] in the gate of the sourness of eternity, [mingled, united, or] qualified with the region of the sun and stars, and begirt with the four elements ; and the holy element (viz. the root of the four elements) that is the body of the soul, in the second Principle, in the gate [before or] towards God ; and according to the spirit of this world, the region of the stars is the body of the soul ; and the issue of the four elements is the source-house [conduit-house, or workhouse], or the spirit of this world, which kindleth the region, so that it [springeth forth or] worketh.

211. And thus the soul liveth in such a threefold source [or working quality], being bound 1 Or reins. with three l cords, and is drawn of all three. The first cord is the band of eternity, generated in the rising up of the anxiety, and reacheth the abyss of hell. The second cord is the kingdom of heaven, generated through the gates of the deep in the Father, and regenerated out of the birth of sins, through the humanity of Christ, and there Or becoming the soul also (in the 2 incarnation of Jesus Christ \ar\ * the Son of God) is tied up, and is drawn by the dear virgin, in the Word of God. The third cord is the kingdom of the stars, qualifying [or mingling] with the soul, and it is hard drawn and held by the four elements, and carried and led by them. 12. But the third kingdom is not also in the eternity, but is generated out of the one element 2 man. Ch. 19] ENTERING OF THE SOOLS TO GOD 477 in the time of the kindling of the Fiat • that now is corruptible, and hath a certain seculum, limit and time [how long it shall last] ; and so this region in the soul (when the light of life kindleth itself) th also a certain seculum, and time of its breakg; and that kingdom 'bringeth man up, aod- *«*««•. giveth h,m the source of his manners [conditions "* and dmposition], will and desires to evil and good and setteth him in beauty, glory, riches and honour' and maketh him an earthly god ; and it openeth to him the great wonders 'in him, and runneth along M.

3h,m inconsiderately to the end of his seculum, term, and end, and then it departeth from him • and as ,t helped man to his life, so it helpeth him to death, and breaketh off from the soul. 13. First, the four elements break off from the [one] element, and then the source [or working faculty] of the third Principle ceaseth ; and that £ most horrible thing [of all], when the four iments break in themselves; and that is the leath, when the brimstone-spirit (which hath its original from the gall, and kindleth the tincture the heart) is choked ; where then the tincture th the shadow of man's substance goeth into the ier, and remaineth standing with the shadow in the root of the one element; from which [one lement] the four elements were generated and gone forth ; and therein only consisteth the woe m the breaking, where one source-house is broken ofl from the soul. 478 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 19

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