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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113. Thus it may very plainly be understood, that the light of God is a cause of all things, and you may hereby understand all the three Principles : For if the power, virtue, and light of God were not, then there would be also no attractive longing in 94 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 7 the dark eternity, and also the sour desire (which is the mother of the eternity) would be nothing at all ; and it may be understood, that the divine virtue shineth in everything, and yet it is not the thing itself, but the spirit of God in the second Principle ; and yet the thing is his ray [glance or lustre], which thus proceedeth from the longing, or attracting will. But now the Heart of God is in the Father, [in] the first will, and the Father is the first desiring or longing after the Son, and the Son is the virtue and l light of the Father, from whence the eternal nature becometh always longing ; and so from the Heart of God, in the eternal dark matrix, [it] generateth the third Principle. For 2 so God is manifest, but otherwise the Deity would remain hidden eternally.

214. Now therefore we say (as the Scripture informeth us) that God dwelleth in heaven, and it is the truth. Now mark, Moses writeth, that God created the heaven out of the midst of the waters, and the Scripture saith, God dwelleth in heaven ; therefore we may now observe, that the water hath its original from the longing of the eternal nature after the eternal light of God ; but the eternal nature is made manifest by the longing after the light of God, as is mentioned before ; and the light of God is present every where, and yet remaineth hidden to nature ; for nature receiveth only the virtue of the light, and the virtue is the heaven wherein the light of God dwelleth and is hidden, Ch. 7] THE FOUR ELEMENTS 95 and so shineth in the darkness. The water is the matema, or matter that is generated from the heaven, and therein standeth the third, which again generateth a life and comprehensible essence, or substance, out of itself, viz. the elements and other creatures.

315. Therefore, 0 noble man, let not Antichrist and the devil befool you, who tell you that the Deity is afar off from you, and direct you to a heaven that is situated far above you ; whereas there is nothing nearer to you than the heaven is. You only stand before the door of heaven, and you are gone forth with Adam out of the paradisical heaven into the third Principle ; yet you stand in the gate, do but as the eternal mother doth, which by great desiring and * longing after the kingdom l Or seeking, of God, attaineth the kingdom of heaven, wherein God dwelleth, wherein paradise springeth up ; do you but so, set all your desire 2 upon the Heart of 2 into. God, and so you will pass in by force, as the eternal mother doth ; and then it shall be with thee as Christ said, The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force : So you shall make to yourself friends in heaven with your unrighteous Mammon, and so you come to be the true similitude and image of God, and his proper own ; for all the three Principles, with the eternity, are in you, and the holy paradise is again generated in you, wherein God dwelleth. Then where will you seek for God ? Seek him in your soul only 96 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Cll. 7 that is proceeded out of the eternal nature, wherein the l divine birth standeth.

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