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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1and this is after no other manner, than as when a man is dying, and soul and body part asunder ; for in the stifling [or stopping] of the blood by the [sour] harshness, the bitter death is also there ; and therefore 2 it is like a furious whirling wheel, 2 the bitter or swift horrible thought, which worrieth and vexeth prickle, itself: And here is a brimstone-spirit, a venomous [poisonous] horrible aching substance in the death ; for it is the worm to the springing up of life. 57. And now when the spirit of the stars and elements hath mingled [or figured] itself together in the incarnation, then the virtue [or power] of the stars and elements is together wheeled in this raging, where then (in this anguish) the spirit of the stars attracteth the virtue of the sun to it, and 3 manifesteth itself in the virtue of the sun, » or disfrom whence there ariseth a twinkling flash in this 254 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 13 raging, from whence the hard [sour] harsh anxiety is terrified, and sinketh down, and there the terrible 1 Or recep- tincture goeth into its * ether ; for the essence of tacle. ° the [sour] harshness in the Fiat is so mightily terrified at the flash, that it becometh [faiut] 2 openeth it- impotent [or feeble], and sinketh back, 2 expandeth self outwards. . i i • itself, and groweth thin.

258. And the terror [shriek], or flash of fire, is done in the bitter prickle ; and when it reflecteth itself back in the dark [sour or] harsh anxiety in the mother, and findeth her so very soft [gentle] and overcome, then it is much more terrified than the mother : But this terror happening thus in the soft mother, she becometh white and clear in the twinkling of an eye, and the flash remaineth in the anguish, in the root of the fire, and now therefore it is a shriek [or terror] of great joy, and it is as when water is thrown into the fire, where 8 source or the [sour] harsh 3 quality is then quenched, and the property. [sourness or] harshness is then so mightily overjoyed with the light, and the light with the mother, the [sourness or] harshness, wherein it is generated, that there is no similitude to [compare] it [with], for it is the birth and the beginning of the life. 0 Sol : All this which followeth is done in the entrance of the fourth month. 59. And as soon as the light of life appeareth in the [sour] harshness and soft mother, so that the [sourness or] harshness cometh to taste the light of Ch. 13] OF THE CREATING OF THE WOMAN 255

3life, [and findeth] that it is so meek, pleasant [lovely], and full of joy, then it exulteth with great delight [desire and longing] after the light, to l mix l infect, itself therewith, and apprehend it, so that its lust [or longing delight] and virtue goeth forth from it after the light ; which lust [or longing delight] is the virtue of the light ; and this out-going 2 lust in 2 delight, the love is the noble tincture, which is there new generated to be the child's own ; and the spirit which is generated out of the anguish in the flash of the fire, is the true [and real] soul which is generated in man. 60. Now here it is especially to be observed, where 3 it dwelleth, and whence heart, lungs, and3 the soul, liver come, especially the bladder and * guts, and 4 Or entrails, the brain in the head ; also the understanding and senses ; these I will here set down one after another : It cannot [well or] sufficiently be expressed by a human tongue, especially the order which is B observed in the twinkling of an eye in 6 done or per- , , . , -i -i formed. nature ; it would require a great volume to describe it in. And as the world accounteth us too 6 weak 6 simple, or . silly, and void to [be able to] describe it, so we account ourselves of undermuch weaker [and more unable]. And it is with unabieDg> us as Isaiah saith, / am found of them that sought me not, and known of them that were ignorant of me, and of such as inquired not after me.

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