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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13 think, or 47. And we must further 2 consider, that when the shriek [or crack] maketh its dwelling-house, in its strong breaking-through, out of the gate of the anxious darkness, viz. the tongue, that the shriek [or crack] hath not then yet seen the virgin ; but when it reflected [or shone] back again into the heart, into the opened darkness, and found her so habitable, there then first sprang up its joy, habitableness, and pleasantness, and it became paradisical, and desired not [to go] into the tongue again, but into the head, and [desired] there to have its region out of the source of the heart. Therefore the tongue ought not in all [or altogether] to be believed, for it sitteth not in the heavenly region, as the friendly pleasant virtue [doth] ; but it hath its region in the crack and flash, and the flash is as near the hellish region as the crack is, for they are conceive. Ch. 15] KNOWLEDGE OF THE ETERNITY 327 both generated in the Sharpness of the stars, in1 Or stem grim sharpthe essences, and the tongue speaketh both lies and ness. truth ; in which of the two the spirit armeth itself, according to that it speaketh : Also it many times soeaketh lies in 2 great men; when it is armed 2 Such as have esteem, authofrom the essences, then it speaketh in the crack, rity, and riches, or such like a rider in his [haughty, surly, vaunting state as are high minded, and or] high mindedness. stout, and hare the world at

2The Life of the Soul The Gate. wm48. Thus now when the virtue of the life and the spirit of the second Principle, 3 is generated in 3 Or was. the first originality of the first Principle (viz. in the gate of the deep darkness, which the will of the virtue of the virgin, in the fierce earnest flash of the fierce might of God, did break, and set itself in the pleasant habitation) then instantly the essences of the stars and elements, in the flash of the springing-up of the life, pressed in also, yet after the building of the pleasant habitation first [made]. 49. For the habitation is the element, and the virtue of the inward element is the paradisical love, which the outward elements (being generated out of the element) will have for their mother, and the sharp Fiat bringeth them into the habitation. And there the light of the life becometh rightly kindled, and all essences live in the habitation. For in the beginning of the life each Principle *taketh its light. «0rcatcheth. 328 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 15 50. The first Principle (viz. the darkness) taketh the fierce and sudden fire-flash ; and so when the 1 re-conceived, l re-comprehended will, in the first will of the first or re-purposed, attracted darkness of the harshness, discovereth itself, and breaketh the darkness in the flash, then the harsh dark fire-flash remain eth in the first will, and standeth over the heart, m the gall, and kindleth the fire in the essences of the heart.

351. And the second Principle retaineth its light 2 Or joy. for itself, which is the pleasant 2 habitation, which shineth there, where the darkness is broken [or dispelled], wherein the courteous loving virtue, and the pleasantness ariseth, from whence the shriek [or crack] in the strong might becometh so very joyful, 30raiiayeth and 3 turneth its forcible rushing into a joyful biingforjoy. trembling; where then the fire-flash of the first 4 the shriek Principle sticketh to 4 it, which causeth its trembling. or crack. . . .but its source [or active propertyj is pleasantness and joy, that cannot sufficiently be described; happy are they that find it [by experience]. 52. And the third Principle retaineth its light wholly for itself, which (as soon as the light of life springeth up) presseth into the tincture of the soul, 8 the inward to the 5 element, and reacheth after the element ; but it attaineth no more than to the light of the sun, which is proceeded out of the quinta essentia, out of the element. And thus the stars and elements rule in their light and virtue, which is the sun's, and qualify with the soul, and bring many distempers, and also diseases into the Ch. 15] KNOWLEDGE OF THE ETERNITY 329 essences, from whence come stitches, agues, swellings and [other] sicknesses, [as] the plague, etc. into those [essences], and at last their corruption and death.

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