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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1Ch. 1] FIRST PRINCIPLE OF THE DIVINE ESSENCE 5 [anxious or vexed]. For example, in man, when he is enraged, how his spirit attracteth itself, which maketh him bitter [or sour] and trembling ; and if it be not suddenly withstood and quenched, we see that the fire of anger kindleth in him so, that he burneth in malice, and then presently a * substance * an essential, or whole essence cometh to be in the spirit and Son,™*81 mind, to be revenged. 10. Which is a similitude of that which is in the original of the generating of nature : Yet it must be set down more intelligibly [and plainly]. Mark what Mercurius is, it is harshness, bitterness, fire, and brimstone- water, the most horrible 2 essence ; 2 being, snb- , . , . . stance, or

2yet you must understand hereby no matena, thing. matter, or comprehensible thing ; but all no other than spirit, and the source of the original nature. Harshness is the first essence, which attracteth itself; but it being a hard cold virtue or power, the spirit is altogether prickly [stinging] and sharp. Now the sting and sharpness cannot endure attracting, but moveth and resisteth [or opposeth] and is a contrary will, an enemy to the harshness, and from that 8 stirring cometh the first mobility, which 3tOr wriggis the third form. Thus the harshness continually attracteth harder and harder, and so it becometh hard and tart [strong or fierce], so that the virtue or power is as hard as the hardest stone, which the bitterness [that is, the harshness' own sting or prickle] cannot endure ; and then there is great anguish in it, like the horrible brimstone spirit, THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 1 1 Or astringent attraction. 8 Or senselessly and madly. and the sting of the bitterness, which rubbeth itself so hard, that in the anguish there cometh to be a twinkling flash, which flieth up terribly, and breaketh the l harshness : But it finding no rest, and being so continually generated from beneath, it is as a turning wheel, which turneth anxiously and terribly with the twinkling flash 2 furiously, and so the flash is changed into a pricking [stinging] fire, which yet is no burning fire, but like the fire in a stone.

311. But seeing there is no rest there, and that the turning wheel runneth as fast as a swift thought, for the prickle driveth it so fast, the prickle kindleth itself so much, that the flash (which is generated between the astringency and bitterness) becometh horribly fiery, and flieth up like a horrible fire, from whence the whole materia or matter is terrified, and falleth back as dead, or Or eagerly, overcome, and doth not attract so 'strongly to itself any more, but each yieldeth itself to go out one from another, and so it becometh thin. For the fire-flash is now predominant, and the materia, or matter, which was so very harsh [astringent or attracting] in the originalness, is now feeble, and as it were dead, and the fire-flash henceforth getteth strength therein, for it is its mother; and the bitterness goeth forth up in the flash together with the harshness, and kindleth the flash, for it is the father of the flash, or fire, and the turning wheel henceforth standeth in the fire-flash, and the harshCh. 1] FIRST PRINCIPLE OF THE DIVINE ESSENCE 7

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