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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1Ch. 22] THE NEW REGENERATION IN CHRIST 611 but an anxious source [or property] ; and if anything else were to be in it, then the first will (in the eternal band) must conceive another will in itself, to go out of the dark source [or property] into a joyful habitation without a source. 57. If now the first eternal will doth thus •conceive another will, then it breaketh the source of darkness, and dwelleth (in itself) in the joyful habitation, and the darkness remaineth darkness still, and a source [or working property] in itself, but toucheth not the reconceived will, for that dwelleth not in the darkness, but in itself; thus we understand the soul's own power [to be], which God breathed into Adam, out of the gate, the breaking through, in himself into the light of the habitation of joy. 58. This soul (being clothed with the pure elementary and paradisical body) severed its will, [which came] out of the Father's will, which tendeth only to the conceiving of his l virtue [or1 Or Son power], from whence he is impregnated to beget his Heart, [and severed it] from the Father's will, and entered into the lust of this world ; where now (backward in the breaking [or destruction] of this world) there is no light ; and forward there is no comprehensibility of the Deity ; and there was no counsel [or remedy], except the pure will of the Father enter into it again, and bring it into his own will again, into its first seat, that

2612 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 22 so its will may be directed again into the Heart and light of God. 59. And now if it is to be helped again, then the Heart of God with its light (and not the Father) must come into it ; for it standeth in the Father, however, yet turned away from the entrance (to the birth of the Heart of God) backward into this world, where no light is to be comprehended, either behind or before it ; for the substance of the body breaketh, and then the poor soul standeth imprisoned in the dark dungeon ; and here the love of God towards the poor imprisoned soul is [made] known : Consider thyself here, 0 dear mind. 60. Here was no remedy now, neither in God,, nor in any creature ; only the mere Deity of the Heart of God must enter in Temarium Sanctum [into the holy Ternary], viz. into the BarmhertzigJceit [the mercifulness], which is from eternity generated out of his holiness, wherein the eternal wisdom, which [coming] out of the speaking of the Word, through the Holy Ghost, standeth as a virgin before the Deity, and is the great wonder, and a spirit in the Barmhertzigkeit [the mercifulness] ; and the mercifulness maketh the holy Ternary, (the holy earth), the essences of the Father, in the attracting to the Word, viz. the holy constellations, as may be said in a similitude. 61. And as we perceive that in this world there are fire, air, water, and earth, also the sun and thestars, and therein consist all the things of

3Ch. 22] THE NEW REGENERATION IN CHRIST 613 world, so you may conceive, by way of similitude, that the Father is the fire of the whole [holy] constellations, and also in the [* holy] element ; » and that the Son (viz. his Heart) is the sun, which setteth all the constellations in a light pleasant habitation ; and that the Holy Ghost is the air of the life, without which neither sun nor constellation would subsist ; and then that the concreted spiritus majoris mundi [or spirit of the great world] is the chaste virgin before God ; which spirit of the great world, in this world, giveth to all creatures, mind, sense, and understanding, through the influence of the stars ; and so also [doth the chaste virgin] in the heaven. 62. The earthly earth is like the holy Ternary, wherein is the heavenly 2aquaster (viz. in the2 Or waterheavenly earth, which I call the [one holy] element) §E which is pure. Thus God is a spirit, and the pure element is heavenly earth, for it is substantial ; and the essences in the heavenly earth are paradisical buds [or fruits] ; and the virgin of wisdom is the great spirit of the whole heavenly world, in a similitude, and that not only openeth the great wonders in the heavenly earth, but also in the whole deep of the Deity. 63. For the Deity is incomprehensible, and invisible, yet 3 perceptible ; but the virgin is visible 8 findabie, or like a pure spirit ; and the [one holy] element is

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