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.

primarypage 66

116. 0 that I had but the pen of man, and were able therewith to write down the spirit of knowledge. I can but stammer of the great mysteries like a child that is beginning to speak ; so very little can the earthly tongue express what the spirit comprehendeth and understandeth ; yet I will venture to try whether I may procure some to go about to seek the Pearl, whereby also I might 2 labour in the works of God, in my paradisical garden of roses ; for the longing of the eternal 3 matrix driveth me on to write and exercise myself in this my knowledge. 17. Now if we will lift up our minds, and seek after the heaven wherein God dwelleth, we cannot say that God dwelleth only above the stars, and hath inclosed himself with the firmament which is made out of the waters, in which none can enter except it be opened (like a window) for him ; with which thoughts men are altogether befooled [and bewildered]. Neither can we say (as some suppose) that God the Father and the Son are only with angels in the uppermost inclosed heaven, and rule only here in this world by the Holy Ghost, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son. All these thoughts are void of the very knowledge of God. For then God would be divided and circumscriptive, like the sun that moveth aloft above us, and sendeth its light and virtue to us, Cll. 7] THE FOUR ELEMENTS 97 whereby the whole deep becometh light and active all over.

218. Reason is much befooled with these thoughts ; and the kingdom of Antichrist is begotten in l these x which posthoughts, and Antichrist hath by these opinions of straying set himself in the place of God, and meaneth to be God upon earth, and ascribeth 2 divine power to 2 divine authohimself, and stoppeth the mouth of the spirit God, and will not hear him speak ; and so strong delusions come upon them, that they believe the spirit of lies, which in hypocrisy speaketh strong delusions, and seduceth the children of hope, as St Paul witnesseth. 19. The true heaven, wherein God dwelleth, is all over, in all places [or corners], even in the midst [or centre] of the earth. He comprehendeth the hell where the devils dwell, and there is nothing without God. For wheresoever he was before the creation of the world, there he is still, viz. in himself ; and is himself the essence of all essences : All is generated from him, and is originally from him. And he is therefore called God, because he alone is the good, the heart, or [that which is] best ; understand, he is the light and virtue [or power], from whence nature hath its original. (20. If you will 3 meditate on God, take before 3 think, or you the eternal darkness, which is without God ; anything of for God dwelleth in himself, and the darkness cannot in its own power comprehend him ; which darkness hath a great [desire of] longing after the 98 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 7

3speculating light, caused by the light's l beholding itself in the darkness, and shining in it. And in this longing Or active or desiring, you find the 2 source, and the source taketh hold of the power or virtue of the light, and the longing maketh the virtue material, and the material virtue is the inclosure to God, or the heaven ; for in the virtue standeth 'the paradise, whereiu the spirit which proceedeth from the Father and the Son worketh. All this is incomcieature, or prehensible to the 3 creation, but not impossible to aturalman. be found in the mind ; for paradise standeth open in the mind of a holy soul. 21. Thus you [may] see how God created all things out of nothing, but only out of himself; that which an(i yet the * out-birth is not from his essence for i procreated, iz. the four substance], but it hath its original from the darklements. J & Or springing ness- The 6 source of the darkness is the first principie) and the virtue [or power] of the light is the second Principle, and the out-birth, [generated] out of the darkness by the virtue of the light, is the third Principle ; and that is not called God : God is only the light, and the virtue of the light, and that which goeth forth out of the light is the Holy Ghost.

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.

primarypage 66

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