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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1Of the first and second Principles, what God and the Divine Nature are ; wherein is set down a further description of the Sulphur and Mercurius. IECAUSE there belongeth a divine light to the knowledge and apprehension of this, and that without the divine light there is no comprehensibility at all of the divine essence, therefore I will a little represent the high hidden secret in a creaturely manner, that thereby the Reader may come into the depth. For the divine essence cannot be wholly expressed by the tongue; the spiraculum vitae (that is, the spirit of the soul which looketh into the light) only comprehendeth it. For every creature seeth and understandeth no further nor deeper than its mother is, out of which it is come originally. 2. The soul which hath its original out of God's first Principle, and was breathed from God into 1 Or in. man, * into the third Principle, (that is, into the 8 generating sidereal and elementary 2 birth) that seeth further of the stare. . T> • • i into the first Principle of God, out of, in and from, 10 Ch. 2] WHAT GOD AND THE DIVINE NATURE ARE 1 1 the essence and property of which it is proceeded. And this is not marvellous, for it doth but behold itself only in the rising of its birth ; and thus it seeth the whole depth of the Father in the first Principle.

23. This the devils also see and know ; for they also are out of the first Principle of God, which is the source of God's original nature. They wish also that they might not see nor feel it ; but it is their own fault that the second Principle is shut up to them, which is called and is God, one in essence, aud threefold in personal distinction, as shall be mentioned hereafter. 4. But the soul of man, which is enlightened with the Holy Spirit of God, (which in the second Principle proceedeth from the Father and the Son in the holy heaven, that is, in the true divine nature l which is called God), this soul seeth even * viz. The into the light of God, into the same second Principle of the holy divine 2 birth, into the heavenly 2 Or working, essence : But the 8 sidereal spirit wherewith the * astral, or soul is clothed, and also the elementary [spirit] which * ruleth the source, or springing and impulsion 4 Or hath. of the blood, they see no further than into their mother, whence they are, and wherein they live. 5. Therefore if I should speak and write that which is purely heavenly, and altogether of the clear Deity, I should be as dumb to the Reader, who hath not the knowledge and the gift [to understand it]. Yet I will so write in a divine, 12 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 2

3and also in a creaturely way, that I might stir up any one to desire and long after the consideration of the high things : And if any shall perceive that they cannot do it, that at least they might seek and knock in their desire, and pray to God for his Holy Spirit, that the door of the second Principle might be opened to them ; for Christ biddeth us to pray, seek, and knock, and then it shall be opened unto us. For he saith, All that you shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you : Ask and you shall receive ; seek, and you shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. 6. Seeing then that my knowledge hath been received by seeking and knocking, I therefore write it down for a Memorial, that I might occasion a desire in any to seek after them, and thereby my talent might be improved, and not be hidden in the earth. But I have not written this for those that are wise aforehand, that know all things, and yet know and comprehend nothing, for they are 1 That is, l fully satisfied already, and rich ; but I have wise in their . * *j own conceit, written it for the simple, as I am, that I may be and in their » , _. blindness refreshed with those that are like myself. think they see well enough. Further of the Sulphur, Mercurius, and Sal. 7. The word [or syllable] S U L, signifieth and is the soul of a thing ; for in the word it is the oil or light that is generated out of the syllable P H U K ;

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