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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174. Now thus the infiniteness hath the possibility, while it is yet in the first essence [or substance], that it can 2 incline itself to him ; but here you must not understand it any more concerning the whole, for God only is the whole [totum universale], the great deep all over ; but this [which is] in the infiniteness is divided ; and it is in the appearing [flash or sparkling] of the plurality [or multiplicity], where the whole, in and through himself in the eternal impregnated darkness, [sparkleth, or] discovereth itself in infinitum [or infinitely]. This discovery, [or 3 these sparklings], stand altogether in the originality of the fire-flash, and may again, in the impregnated darkness (viz. in the 4cold sourness, and in the flash of the fire), discover [flash or sparkle] and 5 give up themselves, or again conceive a will out of the darkness, to go out of the anxiety of the mind (through the sharpness in the flash) 6in the meekness, to God. 75. For the sharpness in the flash is always the centrum [or centre] to the regeneration in the second Principle ; to which now the worm in the spark inclineth [or uniteth] to generate itself [in], whether it be in the eternal cold out of the sharp essence through the flash in the fierceness [or sternness] of the fire, or. out of the sharpness in the regeneration of the meekness to God ; therein it standeth, and there is no 7 recovery [back from Ch. 14] BIRTH AND PROPAGATION OF MAN 295

2thence]. For, the meekness goeth not back again into the dark, fierce, and cold essence, in the first attracting, which from eternity is before the recomprehended [or re-conceived] will ; but it cometh to help that [darkness], and enlighteneth whatsoever cometh to it out of the strong might of God, and this liveth in the virtue, and in the light eternity with God. 76. And the deep of the darkness is as great as the habitation of the light ; and they stand not one distant from the other, but together in one another, and neither of them hath beginning or end ; there is no limit or place, but the sharp regeneration is the mark [stroke, bounds] or limitation between these two Principles. 77. Neither of them is above or beneath, only the regeneration out of the darkness in the meekness is said to be above ; and there is such a [bar or] l firma- l clift, door, ment between them, that neither of them both doth comprehend the one the other ; for the [bar or] mark of limitation is a whole birth or Principle, and a firm centre, so that none of them both can go into the other, but [only] the sharp fire-flash, the strong might of God, that standeth in the midst in the centre of the regeneration, and that only looketh into the worm of the darkness ; and with its terror in the darkness maketh the eternal anguishing source, the rising-up in the fire, which yet can reach nothing but only the anguish, and in the anguish the fierce [stern] flash. And so now

3296 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 14 whatsoever becometh corporized there, in the stern [fierce or strong] mind, in the sparkling [or shining] of the infiniteriess, and doth not put its will (in the corporizmg) forward, into the centre of the regeneration, in the meekness of God, that remaineth in the dark mind, in the fire-flash. 78. And so that creature hath -no other will in itself, neither can it ever make any other will from anything ; for there is no more in it, but [a will] to fly up in its own un -regenerated might above the centre, and to rule [or domineer] in the might of the fire over the meekness of God, and yet it cannot reach it. 79. And here is the original [cause] that the creature of the darkness willeth to be above the Deity, as the devil did ; and here is the original 2 Or fountain, of self-pride ; for such as the * source in the creature is, such also is the creature. For the creature is [proceeded] out of the essence ; and on the other side, the 2 source (viz. its worm) is [proceeded] out of the eternal will of the dark mind. 80. And this will is not the will of God, neither 8 re-purposed, is it God ; but the 3 re-conceived will 4 to meekness in the mind, is God's regenerated will, which standeth there in the centre of the birth in the sharpness of the breaking [or destroying] of the » Or well-do- darkness, and in the pleasant 5 loving kindness in&>

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