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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1eat of their l essences, and make thee strong. l Orsubstance. Here the spirit of the soul (like a captive) must be obedient, and must reach with his essences, and fetch them forth. And then cometh the Fiat, and saith, No : thou 2 mightest [so] outrun me ; 2 Or mayest and [the Fiat] created the reaching forth, and** there came forth from thence, hands, and all other essences and forms, as it is before our eyes, and the astronomicus [astronomer] knoweth it well, yet he knoweth not the secrecy of it, although he can explain the 3 signs according to the constellation 3 marks or and elements, which qualify [and mingle] together in the essences of the spirit of the soul. 27. And now when the hands (in the will) reach after the children of the earth (which [reaching forth] yet is no other than a will in the spirit of the child in the mother's body) then the Fiat is there, and maketh a great room in the courts of the three elements, and a tough firm enclosure round about it, that they may not touch the flesh : For the flesh is afraid of the children of the earth, because the earth is thrown away (for its rough stinking darkness) and it trembleth for great fear ; and it looketh still about after the best [means] (lest the children of the earth should be too rough 270 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 14 for it, and might cause a stink) that so it might 1 outlet. have an l opening, and might cast away the stink

2and the filth, and [so] it maketh out of the court (which is the maw [or stomach]) an outlet and gate, and environeth the same with its tough [sour] harshness, and so there is a gut. 2 the stink. 28. But because the2 enemy is not yet in substance, but only in the will of the spirit, therefore it goeth away very slowly downwards, and seeketh for the port, where it will make an outlet and gate, that it may cast away the stink and filth, from whence the guts are so very long and 8 winding and 3 Crooked. folds. 29. Now when this conference (which is spiritual, between the three elements, fire, air, and water) was perceived by the spirit of the earth (viz. the * the spirit of essences in the region of the lungs) then 4it the earth. . cometh at last (when the habitation or the court was already built for the children of the earth) and saith to the three elements, Wherefore will you take the body for the spirit ? Will you take the children of the earth, and feed upon them ? I am their spirit, and am pure ; I can strengthen the essences of the soul with my virtue and essences, and uphold them well, take me in. 30. And they say, Yes, we will take thee in, for thou art a member of our spirit ; thou shalt dwell in us, and strengthen the essences of our spirit, that it may not faint ; yet we must also have the children of the earth (for they have our Ch. 14] BIRTH AND PROPAGATION OF MAN 271

3quality also in them) that we may rejoice. And the spirit of the lungs saith, Then 1 will live in you wholly, and rejoice myself with you. The Gate of the Sidereal, or l Starry Spirit. l Astral spirit 31. Thus now when the light of the sun, which had discovered and imprinted itself in the fire-flash of the essences of the spirit, and was shining in the fire-flash (as in a strange virtue, and not in the sun's own virtue), [when he] seeth that he hath gotten the 2 region, and that the 3 essences of the 2 rule, ..... . . ... . . ment, or pre soul (which are the worm or the spirit) as also the elements will rejoice in his virtue and splendour, and that the elements have made their four regions [or dominions] and habitations, for an everlasting possession, and that * he should be a king, and that 4 the sun. 5 they should serve at court (in the spirit of the6 the elements. essences) in the heart, and so exceedingly love him, and rejoice in their service, and have besides brought the 6 children of the earth, that the spirit 6 the fruits L of the earth. might present them (where then they will first be frolic and potent, and eat and drink of the 7 essences of the children of the earth), then 8 he 7 Or virtues. thinketh with himself, it is good to dwell here, thou art a king, thou wilt bring *thy kindred 9 the woridiyJ . wise, or the offspring, or generation] hither, and raise them children of the sun.

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