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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1THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 5 1 ether in the end of this 2 enumeration, as the Scripture witnesseth. 11. And then all in this third Principle remaineth again in the first matrix ; only that which hath been sown in this Principle, and that hath its original out of paradise, out of heaven, and out of the second Principle, (viz. man), that continueth eternally in the matrix. And if he have in this [life's] time attained the second Principle, so that he is born therein, it is well with him ; but if he have not, then he shall remain still eternally in the matrix, yet not 3 reach the light of God. 12. Now I know very well, that I shall not only in part be as it were dumb or obscure to the desirous Reader, but also tedious, and he will be somewhat troubled at me, in that I have written of the eternal mother (wherein the divine essence standeth) ; and that I now write, that this matrix is * inanimate and void of understanding, out of which also a Principle void of understanding is generated ; as is plain before our eyes, that in this world there is no true understanding, either in the stars, or in the elements ; and also in all its creatures there is but an understanding to qualify [or to operate], to nourish itself, and to increase, as the matrix in itself is.

213. Hereupon you are to know, that the matrix in the second Principle (which yet hath its original and eternal root in the first Principle) is but merely an eternal, beginningless, soft [or meek] spirit, Ch. 5] OF THE THIRD PRINCIPLE 71 which hath no such fiery intolerable light, but all l Or light that cannot be enthere is pleasant and cheerful, and the eternal dured, as is in , , i 1 1 r *^e matrix of original matrix is not known there ; but the sott the first light of the Heart of God maketh all courteous and o cheerful. 14. Therefore also the spirit which goeth forth in the soft matrix is the Holy Ghost ; and God dwelleth in himself, and he calleth himself an angry, zealous [or jealous] God, only according to the most original matrix, which is not manifested in paradise ; and in the beginning also it was forbidden to man to eat of the fruit [of] good and evil, from the most original matrix. Neither should man have known this most original matrix, if he had not imagined [thought or longed] after it, and eaten of the fruit thereof, whereby the matrix presently took hold of him, captivated him, [acteth or] qualifieth in him, nourisheth and also driveth him, as is plain before our eyes.

315. And thus you are to know, that the second Principle hath it [in its power], and there only is wisdom and understanding ; also therein now is the omnipotence [almightiness]. And this third Principle is the second's proper own, not separate, but one essence in it [and with it] all over, and yet there is a birth between them, as may be seen by the 2 rich man and Lazarus, the one being in 2 Luke xvi. paradise, and the other in the most original matrix, or hell. 16. And therefore God [created or] generated 72 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 5 made known the third Principle, that he might be l manifested menDge by the material world : He having created the angels and spirits in the second Principle in the paradisical world, they could thereby understand 2 generating, the eternal 2 birth in the third Principle, also the begetting. wisdom and omnipotence of God, wherein they could behold themselves, and set their imagination 3 Or into. merely 3upon the Heart of God; in which* form 1 Or condition. ^y couj^ remain m paradise, and continue to be angels ; which the devils have not done, but they meant to rise up in the matrix, and domineer in great power over paradise, and all angelical 8 principal*- 6 regions, upon which they fell out of paradise, and ties, thrones, « . . -,. ,, / 7 \ anddomi- besides were driven out of their place (or Locus) into 6 restraint, so that the matrix of this world also holdeth them captive.

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