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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1similitude, and they now which received the will, they became angels, for they set their imagination, in the will, in the heart of God, and they did eat of the Verbum Domini [of the Word of the Lord] ; but they that set their imagination in the dark mind, as Lucifer [did, that he might] fly out above the Deity and meekness in the might of the fire in the flash, in the sharp might of God, and be lord alone, they became devils, and they have that name from their being thrust [or driven] out of the light ; for they were in the light when the Fiat created them, for the Fiat which created them stood in the light. 6. Thus the devil is the fault, and guilty of his own fall, for he suffered himself to be moved by the matrix of the 2 sternness [fierceness, sourness, or 2 Or gnmness. wrath], whereas he yet had his own will to take hold of light or darkness. And Lucifer was a throne (that is, a 3 source [or fountain] of a great 3 a fountain essence) from whence went forth all his servants many veins, [or ministers], and they did like him ; and so they with many were thrust back into the darkness, for the light of God goeth not into the [grimness, wrath or] fierceness. 7. And there the Fiat (which created the fierce [wrathful or grim] devils, in hope that they would of devils become angels, who set their imagination therein, that thereby they might domineer over God and the kingdom of heaven) was infected in 20 306 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 15

2the figuring of the similitudes ; and so instantly kindled the element in the similitude, viz. in the out-birth [or procreation], in the speculating [or beholding], so that the essence hath generated to the highest essences, from whence go forth the four elements of this world, of the third Principle ; and the sharp Fiat of God (which" stood in the outbirth [or procreation]) hath created the out-birth, out of which the earth and stones are proceeded. 8. For when the Fiat kindled the element in the out-birth, then the kindled materia [or matter] became palpable [or comprehensible], this was not now fit for paradise, but it was ex-created, [or made external]. Yet that the element with its out-birth might no more generate thus, therefore 1 the one pure God created the heaven out of the 1 element, and [caused or] suffered out of the element (which is the heavenly limbus), the third Principle to spring up ; where the spirit of God again discovered [or revealed] itself in the virgin, viz. in the eternal wisdom, and found out, in the out-birth, in the corruptible substance, the similitude again. And the discovering stood in the sharp attraction of the Fiat, and the Fiat created it so that it became essential [or substantial] ; and the same are the stars, a mere quinta essentia, an extract of the Fiat's, out of the limbus of God, wherein the hidden element standeth.

39. But that the sharp and severe essence with the attraction might cease, therefore God generated Ch. 15] KNOWLEDGE OF THE ETERNITY 307 a similitude according to the fountain of the Heart of God, viz. the sun ; and herewith sprang up the third Principle of this world, and that [viz. the sun] put all things into meekness and 1 well-fare. 1 well-doing, 10. Seeing then that the eternal wisdom of God °r kindne88' (viz. in the chaste virgin of the divine virtue) had discovered itself in the Principle of this world, in which place the great prince Lucifer stood in the heaven, in the second Principle, therefore the same discovering was eternal, and God desired to shed forth the similitude out of the essences, which the Fiat created according to the kind of every essence, that they should (after the breaking [or dissolution] of the outward substance) be a figure and image in paradise, and a shadow of this substance. 11. And that there should go nothing in vain out of the substances of God, therefore God created beasts, fowls, fishes, worms, trees and herbs out of all essences; and besides [created] also figured spirits out of the quinta essentia, in the elements, that so, after the fulfilling of the time (when the out-birth [shall] go into the ether) they should appear before him, and that his eternal wisdom in his works of wonder might be known.

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