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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138. But now, nothing corrupteth [or is transi- :! Or the toryl but only the spirit in the will, and 3 its body body that , «. T i „ subsisted in the Fiat ; and the figure reinameth eternally through the „ Word. m the shadow. And this ngure could not thus have been brought to light and to visibility, that it might subsist eternally, if it had not been in the 4 Or sub- 4 essence; but now it is also incorruptible, for in the figure there is no * essence : The centre in the 8 Or working B source is broken asunder, and gone into its ether property. [receptacle, or air] ; and the figure doth neither good nor evil, but it continueth eternally to the [manifestation of the] deeds of wonder and the glory of God, and for the joy of the angels. 39. For the third Principle of the material world shall pass away, and go into its ether, and then the shadow of all creatures will remain, also of all growing things [vegetables or fruits], and of all that ever came to light ; as also the shadow and figure of all words and works, and that incomprehensibly ; also without understanding or knowledge, like a nothing, or shadow, in respect of the light. 40. This was the unsearchable purpose of God Ch. 9] OF PARADISE, ETC. 147 in his will ; and therefore he thus * created all > Brought things; and after this time there will be nothing in

2but only light and darkness ; where the source [or property] remaineth in each of them (as it hath 8D been from eternity), where the one shall not comprehend the other, as it hath also not been done from eternity. 41. Yet whether God will create anything more after this [world's] time, that my spirit doth not know ; for it apprehendeth no further than [what is] in its centre wherein it liveth, in which the paradise and the kingdom of heaven standeth ; as you may read [afterwards] about the creation of man. 42. And so now the angels and blessed men [will] remain in the birth of the light ; and 2 the 2 the spirits ".. f i • /• T i i that were spirits oi alteration out ot light into the source turned out of [or torment], together with the spirits of the darkness. wicked men, [will remain] in the eternal darkness, where no recalling is to be found ; for the spirits cannot go into the corruptibility [or transitoriness] again. They are created out of the slimbus of 8 divine power God, out of the harsh matrix, out of which the light of God existeth from eternity ; and not like the beasts out of the 4 out-birth, which went forth 4 Or proout of the limbus of the conceived purpose of God, which is finite [or taketh an end], and hath been [or appeared] here, only that it might be an eternal shadow and figure. 43. The eternal will is incorruptible [or intran148 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 9 1 Or the spirits of the working nature. 2 into resignation.

3sitory] and unchangeable [or unalterable] ; for the Heart of God is generated out of it, which is the end of the nature and of the willing. If the Spirits of the source [or torment] had put their imagination and their desiring will 2 forward into *^e %nt °^ meekness, into the end of nature, they would have continued angels ; but- seeing they out of pride would fain be above the meekness, and above the end of nature, and awakened the centre, they found nothing more ; for from eternity there had been nothing more [than the end of nature] ; :! Or ground of and therefore they awakened the 'centre of the properties. source [or torment] in themselves. The same they now have, and they were thrust out of the light into the darkness. 44. If you be born of God, then you [may] thus understand God, paradise, the kingdom of heaven and hell, and the entrance in, and end of, the i creatures, [and] the creation of this world ; but if not, then the veil is as well before your eyes as it was upon Moses. Therefore saith Christ, Seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you : No son asketh his father for an egg, that he should give him a scorpion : Also, My Father will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask it. 45. Therefore, if you do not understand this writing, then do not, as Lucifer did in taking the spirit of pride, presently fall 4a-mocking and deriding, and ascribe it to the devil ; but seek of 4 mocking yo? understand not.

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