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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165. Seeing then the eternal will, which is thus generated, getteth in the anxiety a mind after somewhat else, that it might escape the sourness Cll. 14] BIRTH AND PROPAGATION OF MAN. 289 [or fierceness], and exult in the meekness, and yet it cannot otherwise be done than out of itself, therefore the mind generateth again a will to live in the meekness ; and the originality of this will ariseth out of the first will, out of the anguishing mind, out of the dark sourness, which in the stirring maketh a breaking wheel ; where the recomprehended will discovereth itself in the breaking wheel in the great anxiety, in the eternal mind, where somewhat [must] be which stood in the meekness. And this appearing [or discovery] in the anxious breaking wheel, is a flash of a great swiftness, which the anguish sharpeneth thus in the sourness, so that the sharpness of the flash is consuming, and that is the fire-flash, as it is to be seen in nature, when one x hard substance striketh * A flint and against another, how it [grindeth or] sharpeneth stee1' itself, and generateth a flash of fire, which was not before. And the re-comprehended mind 2 compre- « Or conhendeth the flash, and discovereth itself now in the °eiveth' sourness; and the flash with its strong [or fierce] sharpness consumeth the comprehended sourness, which holdeth it [viz. the will in the mind] captive in the darkness ; and now it is free from the darkness.

266. Thus the sourness receiveth the flash, and goeth in the terror [shriek or crack] backwards, as it were overcome, and from the terror [shriek or crack] becometh soft ; in which meekness the flash discovereth itself, as in its own mother. And from 19 290 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 14 1 Or bright. ^appropriateth, or iuclmeth. 3 sparkleth. 4 infinitely. 6 Or for, or before itself. * centre or Principle. the meekness it becometh l white and clear : And in the flash there is great joy, that the will therein is delivered from the darkness. 67. Thus now the eternal mind 2uniteth itself in the re- comprehended [or re-conceived] will, in [or unto] the meekness of the deliverance out of the darkness of the anxiety ; ancT the sharpness of the consuming of the eternal darkness stayeth in the flash of the meekness ; and the flash 3 discovereth itself in the anxious mind in many thousand thousands, yea, 4 without end and number. And in that discovery the will and the inclination [or yielding up itself] discover themselves always again in a great desire to go forth out of the darkness ; where then in every will the flash standeth again to [make an] opening, which I call the centrum [the centre] in my writings all over in this book.

368. Thus then the first longing and desiring (viz. the fierce [or stern] generating in the first will) with the dark mind, continueth 6in itself, and [hath] therein the discovering of the always enduring fire-flash in the dark mind ; and the same dark mind standeth eternally in anguish, and in the flash, in the breaking, attracting, rising up, and desiring without intermission [to be] over the meekness, when as in the breaking, with the fireflash, (in the sharpness of the flash), in the essence, the attracting springeth up like a 6 centrum or Principium. Ch. 14] BIRTH AND PROPAGATION OF MAN 291 The Gate of God the Father. 69. And thus now in the sharpness of the fireflash, the light in the eternal mind springeth up out of the re-comprehended will to meekness and light, that it might be freed from the darkness; and so this freedom from the darkness is a meekness and l satisfaction of the mind, in that it is free i well-doing, from the anxiety, and standeth in the sharpness of the fire-flash, which breaketh the sour darkness, and maketh it clear and light in its [first glimpse, shining, or] appearing. 70. And in this [shining or] appearing of the sharpness, standeth the all-mightiness [or omnipotency] ; for 2it breaketh the darkness in itself, and . the appearmaketh the joy and great meekness, like that when ing or flash> a man is come out of an anguishing [or scorching]

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