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.

primarypage 131

1"excrement f>jat fa^f driveth it Out, and of its tOUgh [glutinous] sourness maketh an inclosure round about it, viz. a film, or gut, that it may touch neither the flesh nor the spirit, and leaveth the 8 condemneth. nethermost port open for it, and 3banisheth it eternally, because that impurity doth not belong to this kingdom ; as it happened also to the earth, 4 At the when the 4 Fiat thrust it out of the matrix in the creation. • i • i r i midst in the centre, upon a neap [as a luinpj, » in the incar- being it was unfit for heaven, so also 5here. nation. A , ., , 22. And we find greater mysteries yet in 6 testimony. 6 evidence of the horrible fall ; for after that the four elements had thus set themselves every one in a several region, then they made themselves lords over the spirit of the soul, which was generated out of the essences, and they have taken it into their enceCh. 14] BIRTH AND PROPAGATION OF MAN 267 power, and qualify with it. The fire, viz. the mightiest of them, hath taken it into its l region [or jurisdiction] in the heart ; and there it must 2 keep, and the a The spirit blossom and light thereof goeth out of the heart, and moveth upon the heart, as the kindled light of a candle, where the candle resembleth the fleshly heart, with the essences out of which the light shineth. And the fire hath set itself over the essences, and continually reacheth after the light, and it supposeth that it hath the virgin, viz. the

2divine virtue [or power]. 23. And there the holy tincture is generated out of the essences, which regardeth not the fire, but setteth the essences (viz. the soul) in its pleasant 3joy. Then come the other three elements 3 refreshment, out of their regions, and fill themselves also by force therein, each of them would taste of the virgin, receive her and qualify [or mingle] with her : viz. the water, that filleth itself by force also therein, and it tasteth the sweet tincture of the soul. And the fire saith, I would willingly keep the water, for I can quench my thirst therewith, and refresh myself therein. And the air saith, I am indeed the spirit, I will blow up thy heat and fire, that the water do not choke thee. And the fire saith to the air, I will keep thee, for thou upholdest my quality for me, that I also go not out. And then coraeth the element [of] (earth) and saith, What will you three do alone ? You will starve and consume one another ; for you depend all 268 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 14 three OD one another, and devour yourselves, and when you shall have consumed the water, then you extinguish ; for the air cannot move, unless it have some water ; for the water is the mother of the air, which generateth the air : Moreover, the fire becometh much too fierce [violent and eager] if the water be consumed, and consumeth the body, and then our l region is out, and none of us can subsist.

324. Then thus say the three elements (the fire, the air, and the water) to the earth, Thou art indeed too dark, too rough, and too cold, and thou art rejected by the Fiat : We cannot take thee in ; thou destroyest our dwelling, and makest it dark and stinking, and thou afflictest our virgin, which is our only delight and treasure wherein we live. And the earth saith, Yet pray take my 2 children in ; they are lovely, and of good esteem ; they afford you meat and drink, and cherish you, that you never suffer want. 25. Hereupon thus say the three elements : But so they may afterwards get a dwelling in us, and may come to be strong and great, and then we must depart, or be in subjection to them, and therefore we will not take them in either, for they may come to be as rough and cold as thou art : Yet this we will do, thou mayest let thy stonuuh and children dwell 3 in our courts and porches, and we ^ta- will come and be their guest, and eat of * their 4 the virtue of. ii«i • i i • v their fruit, fruit, and drink of their drink, else the water which Ch. 14] ^ BIRTH AND PROPAGATION OP MAN 269 is contained in the element would be too little for us. 26. Now thus say the three elements (fire, water, and air) to the spirit, Fetch us children of the earth, that they may dwell in our courts, we will

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.

primarypage 131

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