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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1mi minister, or look after it, they must answer for it. Thus the learned, who take upon miud carelessly passes it over, like a whirlwind or them euro, f • i • i ^(L • ^ -j animarum. stream of water ; concerning which Christ said, The devil stealeth the word out of their hearts, that they do not apprehend it, nor believe it, that they might be saved ; so that it taketh no root. 33. Or else if the Pearl should grow, and the lily bud forth, 4 he should be revealed, and then 4 the devil. every one would fly from him, and he should stand in great shame. This trade he hath driven ever since the beginning of the world : And though he resisteth never so vehemently, yet a lily shall grow in his supposed kingdom, whose smell reacheth into the paradise of God, in spite of all his raging and tyranny ; this the spirit of God doth witness. 34. Behold, thou child of man, if thou wilt easily 168 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 10 draw near to this knowledge, take but thy mind before thee, and consider it, and therein thou wilt find all. You know, that out of it proceedeth joy and sorrow, laughter and weeping, hope and doubting, wrath and love, lust to a thing and hate of the thing : you find therein wrath and malice, also love, meekness, and well-doing.

235. Now the question is, May not the mind stand in one only will (viz. in mere love) like God himself? Here sticketh the mark, the ground, and the knowledge : Behold, if the will were in one only essence, then the mind would also have but one quality that could give the will to be so, and it should be an immovable thing, which should always lie still, and should do no more but that one thing always : in it there would be no joy, no knowledge, also no art or skill of anything at all, and there would be no wisdom in it : also if the quality were not in infinitum, it would be altogether a nothing, and there would be no mind nor will to anything at all. 36. Therefore it cannot be said, that the total God in all the three Principles is in one only will and essence ; there is a distinction [or difference to be observed] : Though indeed the first and the third Principles be not called God, neither are they God, and yet are his essence [or substance], out of which from eternity the light and Heart of God is always generated, and it is one essence [or being], as body and soul in man are. Cll. 10] THE CREATION OF MAN, AND HIS SOUL 169

337. Therefore now if the eternal mind were riot, out of which the eternal will goeth forth, then there would be no God. But now therefore there is an eternal mind, which generateth the eternal will, and the eternal will generateth the eternal Heart of God, and the Heart generateth the light, and the light the virtue, and the virtue the spirit, and this is the Almighty God, which is one unchangeable will. For if the mind did no more generate the will, then the will would also not generate the Heart, and all would be a nothing. But seeing now that the mind thus generateth the will, and the will the Heart, and the Heart the light, and the light the virtue, and the virtue the spirit, therefore now the spirit again generateth the mind ; for it hath the virtue, and the virtue is the Heart ; and it is an indissoluble band. The Depth. 38. Behold now, the mind is in the darkness, and it conceiveth its will to the light, to generate it ; or else there would be no will, nor yet any 1 birth : This mind standeth in anguish, and in a l working, longing [or is in labour] ; and this longing is the will, and the will conceiveth the virtue ; and the virtue fulfilleth [satisfieth or impregnateth] the mind. Thus the kingdom of God consisteth in the virtue [or in power], which is God the Father, and the light maketh the virtue longing to [be] the 170 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 10

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