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.

primarypage 165

116. For the region of the air must here drive the work through the throat, where then all the veins in the whole body tend and concur, and bring the virtue of the noble tincture thitherwards, and mingle themselves with the word ; and thither also all the three regions of the mind come, and mingle themselves with the distinguishing [framing, articulating, or separating] of words ; and there is a very wonderful form [or manner of work]. For every region [or dominion] will distinguish [or separate] the word according to its essences, for the sound goeth out of the heart, out of all three Principles. 17. The first will fashion it according to its fierce might and pomp, and mingleth therein prickly [stinging] sourness, wrath and malice. And the second Principle with the virgin standeth in the midst, and sheddeth its rays of loving meekness therein, and resisteth the first [Principle]. 2 the second And if the spirit be kindled in 2that, then the word is wholly gentle, friendly, and humble, and inclineth itself to the love of our neighbour ; it desireth not to seize upon any with the haughty sting [or prickle] of the first Principle, but it Ch. 16] THREEFOLD SPIRIT AND WILL 351 1 covereth the prickles of the thorns, and qualifieth 1 biunteth or , r , , . -, , . mollitieth.

2the word with clearness [ana plainness], and armetn the tongue with righteousness and truth, and it sheddeth abroad its rays, even into the will of the heart. And when the will receiveth the pleasant friendly rays of love, then it kindleth the whole mind, with the love, righteousness, chastity of the virgin, and the truth of all those things that are by all regions tried upon the tongue. And thus it together with the five senses maketh the tongue shrill, and [thereby] the dear image of God appeareth inwardly and outwardly, so that it may be heard and seen in the whole 2 abyss, what form it is of. 0 man ! behold what 2 Or deep of , , . , , . , 1 | the mind. the light of nature discoveretn to tnee. 18. Thirdly, there cometh the 'third regimen to 3 Or the third the imaging [or forming] of the word, from the spirit of the stars and elements, and it mingleth itself in the house and senses of the mind, and desireth to form the word from the might of its own self, for it hath * great power, it holdeth the 4 greatest. whole man captive, and it hath clothed him with flesh and blood, and it infecteth the will of the mind, and the will 5 disco vereth itself in the spirit Mooketh upon of this world, in lust and beauty, might and power, l riches and glory, pleasure and joy ; and on the contrary, in sorrow and misery, cares and poverty, pain and sickness : Also in art and wisdom ; and on the contrary, in folly and ignorance.

319. All this, the glimpse [or discovery] of the 352 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 16 senses bringeth into the will of the mind [and setteth it] before the king, before the light of the life, and there it is tried. And the king giveth it first to the eyes, which must see what good is among all these, and what pleaseth them. And here now beginneth the wonderful form [or framing] of man, 1 Or according 1 out of the complexions, where the constellation pierions. hath formed the child in the mother's body [or womb] so variously in its regions. For according to what the constellation, in the time of the 2 Or the 2 incarnation of the child, in the wheel that standeth child's be- . i i i • coming man. therein, and natn its aspect, (when the dwelling 3 Or the of the four elements, and the 3 house of the stars dwelling of . the senses and in the head, in the brains, are built by the Fiat), thoughts. .. 1-1 • • according to that is the virtue also in the brains, and so in the heart, gall, lungs, and liver ; and according to that is the inclination of the region of the air ; and according to that also a tincture springeth up, to [be] a dwelling of the life, as may 4 different be seen in the wonderful [* variety in the] senses and forms [or shapes] of men.

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.

primarypage 165

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