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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1"The reader must know that all things consist in " Yes or No, whether Godly, devilish, earthly, or whatso- " ever it may be called. The One, as the Yes, is pure "power [virtue] and life, and is the truth of God, or " God Himself. But God would be unknowable to " Himself, and would have in Himself no joy, perception " or exaltation without the No. The No is the opposite " [antithesis] to the Yes or the truth. In order that the INTRODUCTION lix

2" truth may be manifest as a Something, there must be " a contrary therein " (Theosoph. Quest, iii. 2. 4). As the light of the sun is made visible by the dark pewter vessel, so can God manifest Himself only through contrariety in Himself. ' Boehme construes this contrariety or opposition by taking as starting-point the two fundamental attributes of Divine Being, as revealed in Holy Scripture, namely, the Wrath and the Love. These further branch out into the seven throne Spirits (Revel, i. 4 ; iv. 5), the first three of which represent God's wrath, and the last three, God's love ; while the central fourth constitutes the pivot-point of both worlds, being common to the wrath or darkness and to the love or light. These seven forms, to which Boehme constantly refers, and which he describes again and again as being his fundamental idea, are however not the basic powers of actual nature; but constitute what our philosopher calls "the eternal nature in God." Now he had of course to borrow the colours wherewith he pictures this eternal nature, from the world of our experience, and the difficulty to understand him arises from his ever renewed endeavours to describe each of these properties or forms and their inter-relation and operation ; whereby the picture becomes so overdone, so complex and variegated, that it is scarcely possible to follow the main conception. Indeed, it almost becomes doubtful at times, owing to the many variations of symbol and imagery, whether any main idea underlies the whole scheme as a unifying foundation. Thus, for instance, he describes the first form as the astringency, the hardness, the coldness, attraction, desire ; the second as motion, perception, sweetness, the sting, the fleeing; the third arises from both the others, and is called anguish, wandering, the wheel of life, etc. " In these first three forms consists " the essence of anger, of hell, and of all that is wrath- " ful." The fourth form is the fire, the origin of life, the desire ; and is a fire of anger in relation to the first three, and a love-fire in relation to the last three. And

3Ix THE THREE PRINCIPLES these last three forms which constitute God's eternal kingdom of joy are, (5) the light, love, (6) the sound, intelligent life, (7) the (ideal) loveliness, in no corporeal sense, but essential and manifest ; the eternal, substantial Wisdom of God ; the epitome of all forms, all colours and all beauty. The first four forms constitute the first Principle, corresponding to the " Father " ; the last four (beginning again from the fourth) constitute the second Principle, corresponding to the "Son." By the third Principle, Boehme understands, now the interaction of both Principles, as the Holy Spirit; now the corporeal nature derived from the seven forms.

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