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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1that was to have power over the tilth essence 01 this nature. world. For man was in one only essence [or substance], and there was also but one only man that God thus created, and he could have lived for ever. And although God had brought the stars again into their ether, and also had withdrawn the matrix of the elements, and the elements also, back into nothing, yet man would have continued still. Besides, he had the paradisical centre in him, and he could have generated again out of himself, out of his will, and have awakened the centre ; and so should have been able, in paradise, to generate an angelical 3 host, without misery or anguish, also 3 Or company, without tearing [rending or dividing of himself] ; and such a man he ought to have been, if he must 158 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 10 continue in paradise, and be eternal without decay ; for paradise is holy, and in that respect man also ought to have been holy, for the virtue [and power] of God and paradise consisteth in holiness. The deep Gate of the Soul.

213. The soul of man, which Go$ hath breathed into him, is out of the eternal Father ; yet understand it aright ; there is a difference, [to be observed, you must] understand, [that it is] out of his unchangeable will, out of which he generateth his Son and Heart from eternity, out of the divine centre, from whence the Fiat goeth forth, which maketh separation, and hath in 1 it all the essences of the eternal birth [or all manner of things which are in the eternal birth]. Only the birth of the Son of God, that very centre which the Son of God himself is, he hath not ; for that centre is the end of nature, and not creaturely. This is the highest centre of the fire-burning love and mercy of God, the perfection [or fulness]. Out of this centre no creature cometh, but it appeareth [or shineth] in the creature, viz. in angels, and in the souls of holy men ; for the Holy Ghost, and the omnipotence [or almightiness] which frameth the eternal will in the eternal Father, goeth forth out of this [centre]. 14. Now therefore the soul standeth in two gates, and toucheth two Principles, viz. the eternal darkness, and the eternal light of the Son of God, Ch. 10] THE CREATION OP MAN, AND HIS SOUL 159

3as God the Father himself doth. Now as God the Father l holdeth his unchangeable eternal will to J keepeth or generate his Heart and Son, so the angels and souls keep their unchangeable will in the Heart of God. Thus it [the soul] is in heaven and in paradise, and enjoyeth the unutterable joy of God the Father which he hath in the Son, and it heareth the inexpressible words of the Heart of God, and rejoiceth at the eternal, and also at the created images, which are not in essence [or substance], but in figure. 15. There the soul eateth of all the words of God ; for the same are the food of its life ; and it singeth the paradisical 2 songs of praise concerning 2 Hallelujahs, the pleasant fruit in paradise, which groweth in the divine virtue [or power] of the divine limbus, which is the food of the 3 body ; for the body eateth of 3 the heavenly , 7 . T ,.,.,.. i , , and eternal the Limbus, out ot which it is, and the soul eateth paradisical of God and of his Word, out of which it is.

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