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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1136 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 9 man, the time is come for us to awake from the sleep of Antichrist. Christ cometh with the fair lily out of paradise in the valley of Jehosaphat : It is time for them to trim their lamps that will go to the marriage [of the Lamb]. The Gate [or the Exposition]. 18. Paradise consisteth in the power [and virtue] palpable. of God : It is not corporeal, nor l comprehensible ; but its corporeity or comprehensibility is like the angels, which yet is a bright, clear, visible substance, as if it were material ; but it is figured merely from the virtue [or power], where all is transparent and shining, where also the centre of the birth is in all things, and therefore the birth is without measure or end. 19. I give you a similitude in the mind of man, from which the thoughts are generated, which have neither number nor end, (for every thought hath a centre to generate again other thoughts), and thus is the paradise from eternity to eternity. But being the light of God is eternal, and shineth without wavering or hindrance, therefore also in the birth there is an unchangeable substance, wherein all things spring up in mere perfection, in great love. 20. For the spirit of knowledge intimateth this, that there are fruits and things that grow in paradise, as well as in this world, in such a form or figure, but not in such a source [or property] Ch. 9] OF PARADISE, ETC. 137

2and palpability. For the matter or body of it is power, and it groweth in the heavenly 1 limbus ; * soil or earth, its root standeth in the matrix, wherein there is neither earth nor stone ; for it is in another Principle. The fire in that [Principle] is God the Father ; and the light is God the Son ; and the air is God the Holy Ghost ; and the virtue [or power] out of which all springeth is heaven and paradise. 21. As we see that here out of the earth there spring plants, herbs, and fruits, which receive their virtue from the sun, and from the constellation : so the heaven or the heavenly limbus is instead of the earth ; and the light of God instead of the sun ; and the eternal Father instead of the virtue of the stars. The depth of this substance is without beginning and end, its breadth cannot be 2 reached, 2 fathomed, there are neither years nor time, no cold nor heat ; no moving of the air ; no sun nor stars ; no water nor fire ; no sight of evil spirits ; no knowledge nor apprehension of the affliction of this world ; no stony rock nor earth ; and yet a figured substance of all the creatures of this world. For all the creatures of this world have appeared to this end, that they might be an eternal figured similitude ; not that they continue in this spirit in their substance, no not so : All the creatures return into their 8 ether, and the spirit corrupteth [or fadeth], 8 receptacle. but the figure and the shadow continue eternally.

322. As also all words (both the evil and the 138 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 9 good) which were here spoken by a human tongue, they continue standing in the shadow and figured similitude, and the good reach paradise in the Holy Ghost ; and the false [evil] and wicked ones reach the abyss of hell. And therefore it is that Christ said, Man must give an account of every idle [or unprofitable] word ; and when the/ harvest cometh, then all shall be separated. For the Scripture saith also, That every one's works shall follow him, and all shall be tried by the fire of nature ; and all false [or evil] works, words, and deeds, shall remain in the fire of nature (which shall be the hell) ; at which, when the devils hear it, they tremble and quake. 23. All shall remain in the shadow, and every thing in its own source [or property] ; therefore it will be an eternal shame to the wicked, that they shall see in the eternity all their works and words, as a menstruous cloth, which shall stick full of the wrath of God, and shall burn, according to their essence, and according to their here-kindled source [or property].

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