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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1** -* » v/r r6scrv stand for the children of the lily-rose ; they are ^l?686 . * J Mystenes. 8 wise, and have the noble tincture * in the light ; the lustre of the driver will be no more so esteemed, for the guests of this world have that [government] knowledg* in hand. 15. Thy proud horse [or beast], thou shameful whore, shall ride no longer alone over the bended knees; in that time it will no more be said, The power [might or authority] sticketh in my chest of money ; that mineral [or metal] becometh a blossom in the light ; and the tincture standeth in the blossom of the lily ; stones are of as much worth [as that metal is] ; 5 the clothing of the virgin is 5 Or the brighter than thy pride. How finely doth the ornament of this world stand on modesty and the fear w of God, if the heart be humble? How doth thy silken and golden clothes adorn thee ? Dost thou not appear in God's deeds of wonder ? Who will call thee a false woman, if thou be so very chaste ? Dost thou not stand to the honour of the great God ? Art thou not his work of wonder ? Is there not a friendly 6 laughter before thee ? Who can 6 mirth or i * i n mi cheerfulness.

2say that thou art a wrathful woman ? Ihy modest countenance shineth over 7 mountains and valleys. 7 high and Art thou not at the end of the world, and [will not] thy glance [or lustre] be espied in paradise ? Wherefore standeth thy mother in 8 Babel, and is s Or in so very malicious ? 0! thou shameful whore ; get jangling. 508 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 20 1 with wrath, thee out, for Babel is J on fire, or else thou wilt be or with the . devouring burnt thyself. 16. Or dost thou suppose that we are mad? If we did not see thee, we would be silent. Thou boastest now (by thy flatterers) of a golden time ; but they are most of them wolves of Babel ; when the day breaketh, then they will be known. Or should I not tell thee this, thou proud whore ? Behold, when thou with Adam and Eve wentest out of paradise into the spirit of this world, then thou wast as a god in the spirit of this world ; thou mightest seek all Mysteries, and use them for thy ornament. If thou hadst always gone clothed in silk and purple [or scarlet], yet thou hadst not [thereby] offended God ; but thou hadst gone [in them] to the honour of the great God in his deeds of wonder. Wherefore hast thou forsaken 1 Or God and the2love, and art become a murderer? Was not goodness. 1 , ,_. covetousness thy sin, in that thou afford est not thy members so much as thyself? Thou desirest to be only fine thyself alone. Thy way only

38 Or must. 8 should be holy. Wherefore was the fratricide between Abel and Cainl The self-honouring pride brought it about, so that Cain envied 4 honesty. A bel's 4 uprightness, for the sake of which he was so much beloved of God. Wherefore was not Cain also humble and pious? 17. Wilt thou say, The devil beguiled him ? Yes indeed, and he beguileth thee too, so that thou enviest the comeliness and beauty of others. Hath Ch. 20] ADAM AND EVE*S GOING OUT OF PARADISE 509

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