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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19. The third day God, by the Fiat, divided the waters upon the earth, and created them for several places, that there might be a dwelling upon the earth, and so the earth became dry. Now when this was done, then God did seek the creature, and the eternal Father spake (that is, he wrought through the Son, who is his Heart and glance) [or lustre] in the Fiat, in the earth ; and there budded the life through death ; and grass, herbs, and all manner of trees and plants sprang up, every one according to the eternal l source, as it had been i fountain. before. Thus every essence became visible, and God manifested his manifold virtue with the manifold herbs, plants, and trees, so that every one that doth but look upon them, may see the eternal power, virtue, and wisdom of God therein ; if he be born of God he may know in every spire of grass his Creator, in whom he liveth. Thus in this time sprang up all that grew [or was] in the Earth. 110 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 8 This was 'ound written n the inanucript copy ipart by itself, \o that it is wt known chether it be he author's, 1 If men would not be blind, they might here see the Mystery of the Man Christ's remaining in Death till the third Day, and his bringing of Life out of the Earth.

210. And the matrix of the earth stood still till the third day, as it were in death/ in respect of the great storm : But in the Fiat the life sprang up through the death, and the eternal virtue [or power] and wisdom of God (which hath formed itself together in the Fiat) discovered itself on the blossoming earth, where the similitude of the paradisical world may be clearly seen. 11. For although many thousand several herbs stand one by another in one and the same meadow, and one of them is fairer and hath more virtue than another, yet one of them doth not grudge at the form of another, but there is a pleasant refreshment in one 2 mother : So also there is a distinct variety in paradise, where every creature hath its greatest joy in the virtue and beauty of another ; and the eternal virtue and wisdom of God is without number and end ; as you found before in the third chapter concerning the opening of the centres of the eternal life. You shall find no book wherein the divine wisdom may be more searched into, and found, than when you walk in a flowery fresh springing meadow, there you shall see, smell, and taste the wonderful power and virtue of God ; though this be but a similitude, and the divine Ch. 8] OF THE CREATION OF THE CREATURES 111 virtue in the third Principle is become material ; and God hath manifested himself in a similitude. But [this similitude] is a loving schoolmaster to him that seeketh, he shall there find many of them.

312. On the fourth day, God took the place of this world rightly at the heart : For therein he created the l wise master out of his eternal wisdom l Or the wise in the third Principle, viz. the sun and stars ; or teachers! herein men may first rightly see the Deity, and the eternal wisdom of God, as in a clear glass, though indeed the essence or substance that is visible to the eye is not God himself, but it is the goddess in the third Principle, which in the end goeth into her ether again, and taketh her end. 13. Though men must not cast the Pearl in the way that the beasts may tread it under foot, much less must men throw it among the grains [or husks] to be devoured by the swine ; (for that would not be beneficial to the wanton world, because that seeketh nothing thereby but to misuse itself therewith ; for the devil whom the world serveth, doth teach it, that when it learneth the ground of the heaven, and of the stars, to will presently to be a god, as Lucifer did) : Yet I will write somewhat of the beginning and virtue or power of the stars, (because man and all creatures live in the virtue, working, and essences of them, and that every creature receiveth its property from them), for the sake of him that seeketh, who would willingly fly from the bestial man, and would fain 112 THE THREE PRINCIPLES' [Ch. 8

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