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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131. And God is immense [immeasurable], and the similitude is also immeasurable ; he is in the similitude, and the similitude comprehendeth him not ; the similitude is his work, and he is the Master- Workman thereof ; the constellation is his instrument, and the l matrix, with the elements, are i the create r -in /» i • i i heaven. the matena [matter or materials] out of which the 2 Master cutteth and fashioneth his work. 2 the Fiat. 32. Now the master always worketh on and on without consideration, what he lighteth upon that he maketh ; for the consideration is in the work. And therefore it is that the whole nature standeth in 120 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 8 anguish and longing, to be freed from the vanity ; as also the Scripture witnesseth. Because it tasteth the paradise in itself, and in the paradise the perfection, therefore it groaneth and lifteth itself up towards the light of God and paradise, and so bringeth forth in its anguish always something that is fairer, higher, and new ; as niay sufficiently be found and understood in the mind of man ; and it is very visible to a small understanding, that in works always some special thing is brought to light, and if you be not blind, you may see this in men, beasts, yea even in herbs and grass.

233. Thus on the fourth day, by the Fiat, out of the virtue, he prepared the similitude of his substance [and fitted it] to be a matrix, which should generate all whatsoever was a similitude of his substance, out of the wisdom which was in him from eternity ; that so all forms might be brought forth and become visible, which were from eternity in the matrix. And the similitude of the unsearchable manifold varieties and virtues are the stars, which altogether give [or send] their virtue into the matrix of the heaven, and the heaven giveth that same spirit to the creatures. This is the course of all creatures after the same essence [or substance], and they are formed after the same spirit, which is their virtue, spirit, and life. 34. When God had finished this on the fourth day, he saw it, and considered it, and it was good, as Moses writeth. Then God desired in his external Ch. 8] OF THE CREATION OF THE CREATURES 121 will, that this kingdom or Principle [of this world] should also be creaturely, like the perfect paradisical kingdom, that there should be living creatures therein. And the will set the virtue (that is, the Word) in the Fiat ; and then the matrix generated all manner of [living] creatures on the fifth day, every one after its kind. You must understand by the word kind, as many various [forms] as the matrix is [of] ; as you may observe it in the constellation. 35. Now I shall fall into the school of the master

3in his l Pontificalibus, who will ask out of what the J cornered cap beasts, fowls, fishes, and worms were made ; for he of his degree. will have it, that all of them were made out of the earth, and will prove it out of Moses, and he understandeth as much of Moses as of paradise, which he will have to be altogether corporeal. Therefore there is a gross deadness in the understanding ; and though I write plain enough, yet I shall be still dumb to that deadened soul which is void of understanding, and yet I cannot help it ; for it is said, You must be born anew, if you will see the 2 kingdom of God. Would you fain know [out of 2 the divine ... n -. . ._ region or wnat the beasts are made], then lay aside your government. 8 bonnet of pride that is in your mind, and walk 3 cap or hood i • i T • f 11 ofself-conalong into the paradisical garden of roses, and there ceited wisdom you shall find an herb ; if you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, so that you shall see and know what Moses hath written. 36. The * glosses that are put upon Moses from 4 and margi- * nal notes. reason, will not shew you paradise, much less the 122 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 8 Creator. The Prophets and Apostles learned more in the paradisical school in one hour, than the 1 the univer- doctors in their l schools in thirty years. One's own

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