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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1no nearer way for him to come to the knowledge of the third Principle, than by considering the new birth, how the soul is new born by the love of God in the light, and how it is translated out of the prison or dungeon of darkness into the light by a 64 Ch. 5] OF THE THIRD PRINCIPLE 65 second birth. And now if you consider that darkness wherein it must be without the new birth ; and consider what the Scripture saith, and what every one findeth by experience, that falleth into the wrath of God, and whereof there are terrible examples ; that the soul must endure irksome torment in itself, in the birth of the life of its own self, so long as it is in the wrath of God ; and then that if it be born again, exulting great joy ariseth in it ; and thus you find very clearly and plainly two Principles, as also God, paradise, and the kingdom of heaven. 3. For you find in the root of the original of the spirit of the soul, in itself, in the substance of the eternal birth and incorruptible eternal band of the soul, the most exceeding horrible inimicitious irksome l source, wherein the soul (without the light J Or torment, of God) is like all devils, wherein their eternal property, source consisteth, being an enmity in itself, a will striving against God [and goodness], it desireth nothing that is pleasant or good, it is a climbing

2up of pride in the strength of the fire, a bitter [fierce, odious malice, or] wrathfulness against paradise, against God, against the kingdom of heaven ; also against all creatures in the second and third Principles, lifting up themselves alone [against all this], as the bitterness 2 in the fire doth. 2 in wrath, or 4. Now the Scripture witnesseth throughout, ai and the new-born man findeth it so, that when the soul is new-born in the light of God, then on 5 66 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 5 the contrary it findeth, how very humble, meek, courteous, and cheerly it is ; it readily beareth all manner of crosses and persecution ; it turneth the body from out of the way of the wicked ; it regardeth no reproach, disgrace, or scorn, put upon it from the devil, or man ; it placeth its confidence, refuge, and love, in the Heart of God ; it is very cheerful ; it is fed by the Word of God, in which there is a paradisical exulting and triumph ; it cannot be [hurt, or so much as] touched by the devil. For it is in its own substance (wherein it stands in the first Principle of the indissoluble band) enlightened with the light of God ; and the Holy Ghost, who goeth forth out of the eternal 1 generation, l birth of the Father in the Heart, and in the light working.' of the Heart of God, he goeth forth in it, and establisheth it the child of God.

35. Therefore all that it doth (seeing it liveth in the light of God) is done in the love of God ; the devil cannot see that soul, for the second Principle, wherein it liveth, and in which God and the kingdom of heaven stand, as also the angels, and paradise, is shut up from him, and he cannot get to it. 6. In this consideration you may find what I understand by a Principle. For a Principle is nothing else but a new birth, a new life : Besides, there is no more than one Principle wherein there is an eternal life, that is, the eternal Deity. And that would not have been manifested, if God had Ch. 5] OF THE THIRD PRINCIPLE 67 created no creatures in himself (viz. angels and men), who understand the eternal and indissoluble band, and l how the birth of the eternal light is in l Or the /-. j manner. (jrOd. 7. Thus now herein is understood how the divine essence in the divine Principle hath wrought in the root of the first Principle, which is the begettress, matrix, or genetrix in the eternal birth in the 2 limbus, or in the original water-spirit ; by which 2 Limbus sig- . , . r> i nifieth a seed,

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