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 84

132. Now as is mentioned before, when the joy riseth up from the mother, as the light cometh into her (which yet she cannot l comprehend) then the » Or take joy (in the ascending will) hath a centre in it again and generateth out of itself again a very soft and pleasant source [or fountain], an humble, amiable source, which is immaterial ; for then there can be generated nothing that is more pleasant and full of joy [and refreshment], therefore here is the end of nature ; and this is the warmth of the Barm, or as 1 may say the Barmhertzigkeit [the mercifulness]. For here nature neither seeketh nor desireth further any 2 birth more : it is the perfection. * Or working. 144 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 9 33. Now in this pleasant source, the moving spirit (which in the original, in the kindling, was the bitter aching spirit) springeth forth very joyfully without removing, and it is the Holy Ghost ; 1 well-spring, and the sweet l source [or fountain] which is generated in the centre from the light, is the Word or Heart of God ; and in this joy is the paradise ; and the birth is the eternal Trinity : In this you must dwell, if you will be in paradise ; and the same must be born [or generated] in you, if you will be the child of God, and your soul must be in it, or else you cannot enjoy nor see the kingdom of God. 3 sure, or 34. Therefore the 2 stedfast faith and confidence thus bringeth us into God again : For it getteth

28 to the. the divine centre 3of regeneration in the Holy Ghost, or else there is nothing that availeth: Other 4 works. matters which men do here, are but 4 essences, which follow him in the shadow, wherein he shall stand ; for as there is the birth in the holy Deity, which in the original standeth in the willing [desiring] and aching property, before the light [breaketh forth], so also must thou, 0 man (that art gone forth out of paradise), in anguish, longing, and in a desirous will, go into the birth again, and so thou shalt attain paradise again, and the light of God. 35. Behold, thou reasonable soul, to thee I speak, and not to the body, thou only apprehendest it : When the birth is thus continually Ch. 9] OP PARADISE, ETC. 145 generated, then every form hath a centre to the regeneration ; for the whole divine essence [or substance] standeth in continual and in eternal generating (but unchangeably) like the mind of man, the thoughts being continually generated out of the mind, and the will and desirousness out of the thoughts. Out of the will and desirousness [is] the work [generated] which is made a substance, in the will, and then the mouth and hands go on to perform what was substantial in the will.

336. Thus also is the eternal birth, wherein the virtue [or power] is continually generated from eternity ; and out of the virtue the light ; and the light causeth and maketh the virtue. And the light shineth in the eternal darkness, and maketh in the eternal mind the [desiring] attracting will ; so that the will in the darkness generateth the thoughts, the lust and the desirousness, and the desirousness is the attracting of the virtue, and in the attracting of the virtue is the mouth that expresseth the Fiat, and the Fiat maketh the materia [or matter], and the spirit separateth it, and formeth it according to the thoughts. 37. Thus is the birth (and also the first original) of all the creatures ; and 2 it standeth yet in such « th a 8 birth in the essence ; and after such a manner creatures. it is, out of the eternal thoughts (viz. the wisdom 5 Or working. of God) by the Fiat, brought out of the matrix ; but being come forth out of the darkness, out of 10 146 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 9 1 Or out of the 1 out-birth, out of the centre, (which yet was substance. generated in the time, in the will), therefore it is not eternal, but corruptible [or transitory], like a thought ; and though it be indeed material, yet 2 Or working every 2 source taketh its own into itself again, and property. . . . . . , „ , maketh it to be nothing again, as it was before the beginning.

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 84

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