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. And we know (in our deep knowledge) that 1 they have rightly taught and written, that there is one only God, which is threefold in personal distinction, as is before mentioned. And we also know that he is the creator of all things ; that he hath generated all out of his own 2 substance, both light and darkness, as also the thrones and 3 dominions of all things. Especially we know (as the Holy Scripture witnesseth throughout) that he hath created man to his own image and similitude, Ch. 22] THE NEW REGENERATION IN CHRIST 591 that he should eternally be, and live, in the kingdom of heaven in him. 11. And then- we know also, that this world (wherein we now are and live) was generated out of the eternal original in time (through the pure element) in the Fiat, and so created ; and so, l it 1 the world is not the substance of the holy pure element, but elements. an issue [or out-birth] out of the eternal limbus of

2God, wherein the eternal element consisteth, which is before the clear Deity, wherein consisteth paradise, and the kingdom of heaven ; and yet the limbus, together with the pure element, is not the pure Deity, which is alone holy in itself, and hath the virtue of the eternal light shining in it, but hath no essences (in the light of the clarity) in it ; for the essences are generated from the virtue, 2 according to the light, as a desire ; and 2 Or o£ the desire attracteth to it, from whence the essences proceed, as also the eternal darkness in the source, as is before mentioned. 12. Seeing then God is all in all, and hath created man to his image and similitude, to live with him eternally in his love, light, joy and glory, therefore we cannot say, that he was merely created out of the corruptibility of this world, for therein is no eternal perfect life, but death, and perplexity, anguish, and necessity ; but as God dwelleth in himself, and goeth through all his works incomprehensibly to them, and is hindered by nothing, so was the similitude before him out 592 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 22 of the pure element ; it was indeed created in this world, yet the kingdom of this world should not comprehend that [image], but the similitude (man) should mightily, and in perfect [power or] virtue, rule through the essences (with the essences out of the pure element of the paradisical holy limbus) through the dominion of this world.

313. Therefore he breathed into him the living soul out of the eternal will of the Father (which will goeth thither only to generate his eternal Son) ; and out of that will he breathed into man ; the same is his eternal soul, which must set its regenerated will in the eternal will of the Father, merely in the * Heart of God, and so it receiveth ^ne 2 virtue of the Heart of God, and also his holy eternal light, wherein paradise, the kingdom of heaven, and also the eternal joy springe th up ; and in this virtue [or power] it goeth through all 3 hurteth, or things, and 3 breaketh none of them, and is mighty over all [things], as God himself is ; for it liveth in the virtue [or power] of the Heart of God, and eateth of the Word [that is] generated out of God. 14. Thus also we know, that the soul is a spirit, generated out of God the Father, in the throne and entrance out of the recomprehended [or reconceived] will, out of the darkness into the light, to the generating of the Heart of God ; and that 4 above the [soul] is free to elevate itself above 4it in the Heart of God, .«".,, , . , .„ „ , -~ , as TMrifer did. will, or in the meekness in the will of the x1 ather, 1 Or Son of God. 2 Or power. Ch. 22] THE NEW REGENERATION IN CHRIST 593 to comprehend and incline itself to the birth of the Heart of God the Father.

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