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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147. But being the Fiat is the mightiest among them all, (for it is as it were a spirit, and although it be no spirit, yet it is the sharp essence), therefore it attracteth the seed to it, and desireth the limbus of God in paradise, out of which Adam's body was created by the Fiat, and l would create an Adam 1 will, out of a heavenly limbus ; and then the spirit of the great world insinuates himself and supposeth, [and saith], The child is mine, I will rule in the virgin ; and he always filleth it with the elements, from whence the tincture becometh full and very 248 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 13 thick [gross, swelled, or impregnated] ; and there then the tincture getteth a loathing against the fulness ; for the tincture itself is clear, and the Fiat with the elements is thick [gross and] swelled; 1 Or are im- from whence women (when they 1 grow big [with pregnated or with child, childj) know well enough, that many of them loathe some meats and drinks, and long still after some strange thing [to eat], for the tincture cometh to have a loathing of all that the spirit of this world with his elements filleth in, and willeth to have somewhat else ; for this virgin doth not relish them, but becometh [discontented and] sorry, and 2 Or own forsaketh them, and goeth into her 2 ether, and Principle. cometh not again.

248. And then the spirit of the sun, stars, and elements of this world, supposeth with itself [saying], Now thou art in the right, the child is thine, the foundation is laid, thou wilt bring it up, the virgin must be thine, thou wilt live therein, and have thy joy [delight, and habitation] in her, her ornament must be thine ; and thus [he] attracteth always to himself in his great lust, by the Fiat, which in eternity goeth not away ; and [he] supposeth that he hath the virgin. b Saturnus : This is done in the first month. 49. And there the blood of the mother (wherein the tincture of the mother is) is drawn into the seed. And when the [sour] harsh Fiat hath tried, [and perceiveth] that to be sweeter than its own essence, Ch. 13] OF THE CREATING OF THE WOMAN 249 then it frameth [imageth or representeth] itself with great earnestness [or longing] therein, and becometh sharp in the tincture, and will create Adam, and so severeth the materia [or matter] ; and then the spirit of the stars and elements is in the midst, and ruleth mightily in the Fiat. y. Jupiter : This is done in the second month. 50. And then the materia [or matter] is severed according to the wheel of the stars, as they (viz. the planets) stand in order at this time, and which of them [all] is predominant, that (by the Fiat) figureth the matter most, and the child getteth a form, after the kind of that [planet]. $ Mars : All this which f olloweth is done in the third month.

351. Thus the matter (by the Fiat) is severed into members. And now when the Fiat thus attracteth the blood of the mother into the matter, then l it is stifled [or choked] ; and then the tincture » the blood, of the blood becometh false, and full of anguish ; for the [sour] harsh essence (viz. the Fiat) is terrified, and all the joy (which the sour [harsh] Fiat gat in the tincture of the blood) withdraweth ; and the Fiat beginneth to tremble in the terror, in the sour [harsh] essence ; and the terror goeth away like a flash, and would fain depart and fly away out of the essence, and yet is withheld by the Fiat, which [terror] is now turned hard, and made 250 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 13 tough by the essence, which now closeth the child about ; this is the skin of the child. And the tincture flieth suddenly, flashing upwards in the terror, and would be gone ; yet it cannot either (for it standeth in the out-birth [or procreation] of 1 stretcheth the essences) but l riseth up suddenly in the terror, and taketh the virtue [or power] of all the essences with it. And there the spirit of the 2 represented, stars and elements 2 figureth itself also therein, and filleth itself also therein, in the flight, and supposeth that it hath the virgin, and will go along with it ; and the Fiat gripeth it all, and holdeth it [fast], and supposeth that the Verbum Domini [the Word of the Lord] is there in the 3 huriyburly, 3 uproar, that will create the Adam ; and it

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