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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1Ch. 8] OF THE CREATION OF THE CREATURES 127 at that time (when the [creature] draweth breath) [first in its mother's body], whether [the essence] be in evil or in good, [inclined] to biting, worrying and striking, or to meekness [or loving kindness and gentleness] ; all as the l heaven is at that time, » or the so will also the spirit and the beast be. THE NINTH CHAPTER Of the Paradise, and then of the Transitoriness of all Creatures; how all take their Beginning and End ; and to what End they here appeared. The Noble and most precious Gate [or Exposition] concerning the reasonable Soul. 1. 1VTO money, nor goods, nor art, nor power, •A-i can bring you to the eternal rest of the eternal soft meekness of paradise, but only the noble knowledge ; into that you may wrap up your soul. That is the Pearl which no moth can eat, nor thief can steal away ; therefore seek after it, and then you will find the noble treasure. 2. Our wit [skill and understanding] is so very 1 cold, frozen, hard 1 knit up, that we have no more any knowledge of paradise at all. And except we be again born anew by water and the Holy Ghost, the veil of Moses lieth continually before our eyes when we read his writings, and we suppose that was paradise whereof Moses said : GOD placed 2 Adam. 2 him in the Garden of Eden which he had planted, that he might till it. 128 Ch. 9] OP PARADISE, ETC. 129

23. 0 beloved man, that is not paradise, neither doth Moses say so ; but that was the Garden in Eden, where they were tempted; the exposition whereof you may find about the fall of Adam. The paradise is the divine joy ; and that was in their mind, when they were [standing] in the love of God. But when disobedience entered, they were driven out, and saw that they were naked ; for at that instant the spirit of the world caught them, in which there was mere anguish, necessity, turmoil, and misery, and in the end corruptibility and death. Therefore it was of l necessity that the l needful, eternal Word did become flesh, and bring them into the paradisical rest again ; whereof you shall find [the exposition] in its due place, about the fall of Adam. 4. Paradise hath another Principle ; for it is the divine and angelical joy, yet not without the 2 place 2 «*«* locum. of this world. Indeed it is without the virtue and source [or active property] of it ; neither can the spirit of this world comprehend it, much less a creature ; for it stand eth not in the anguishing 3 birth. And although it thus taketh its original, 8 operation. yet it consisteth in exact perfection, mere love, joy, and mirth ; wherein there is no fear, neither misery nor death : No devil can touch it, and no beast can * reach it. « Or attain it 5. But when we will speak of the source [or fountain] and joy of paradise, and of its highest substance, what it is, we have no similitude of it

39 130 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 9 in this world, we stand in need of angelical tongues and knowledge to express it ; and though we had them, yet we could not express it with this tongue. It is well understood in the mind, when the soul rideth in the chariot of the bride, but we cannot express it with the tongue ; yet we will not cast 1 that little away the * A> B, C, but prattle [or stammer] with which we can , , ., , ... , ,, '. express of it. the children, till another mouth be given us to speak withal. 6. When God had created the beasts, he brought them to Adam, that he should give them their names, every one according to its essence and kind, as they [the beasts] were qualified [or according to the quality and condition they were of]. Now Adam was in the Garden of Eden in Hebron, and also in paradise at once, yet no beast can come 20rhabita- into paradise ; for it is the divine 2joy, wherein tion, or re- . . ' freshment. there is no unclean thing, also no death or corruptible 3 therefore [or transitory] life ; 3 much less is there the knowthe Garden of -I-I-IT-I,*- • i /• • Eden is not ledge ot good and evil. Yet Moses writeth of it, paradise. 1-1^1 /• -n i i im that in the Garden of JLden there was the Tree of Temptation, which bore the knowledge of good and evil ; which indeed was no other tree than like the 4 Or in the trees we now eat of, in the 4 corruptibility ; neither transitory body. was it any other garden, than such as we now have,

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