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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1ness remaineth overcome and feeble, which is now the water-spirit ; and the materia, or matter of the harshness, henceforth is like the brimstone-spirit, very thin, raw, aching, vanquished, and the sting in it is trembling; and it drieth and sharpeneth itself in the flash ; and being so very dry in the flash, it becometh continually more horrible and fiery, whereby the harshness or astringency is still more overcome, and the water-spirit continually greater. And so it continually refresheth itself in the water-spirit, and continually bringeth more matter to the fire-flash, whereby it is the more kindled ; for (in a similitude) that is the l fuel of1 Or wood, the flash or fire-spirit. 12. 2 Understand aright the manner of the 2 Or consider . -I •» *- -ri r» • seriously, obexistence of this Mercunus. ihe word M E R, is serve, or first the strong, tart, harsh attraction ; for in that word (or syllable Mer) expressed by the tongue, you understand that it jarreth [proceeding] from the harshness, and you understand also, that the bitter sting or prickle is in it ; for the word MER is harsh and trembling, and every word [or syllable] is formed or framed from its power or virtue, [and expresseth] whatsoever the power or virtue doth or suffereth. You [may] understand that the word [or syllable] C U, is [or signifieth] the rubbing or unquietness of the sting or prickle, which maketh that the harshness is not at peace, but 8 heaveth * Or boiieth.

2and riseth up ; for that syllable [thrusteth itself or] presseth forth with the virtue [or breath] from the 8 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 1 heart, out of the mouth. It is done thus also in the virtue or power of the prima materia [or first matter] in the spirit, but the syllable C U having so strong a pressure from the heart, and yet is so presently snatched up by the syllable R I, and the whole understanding [sense or meaning] is changed into it; this signifieth and is the bitter prickly 'Orgeniture. wheel in the l generating, which vexeth and whirleth itself as swiftly as a thought : The syllable U S is [or signifieth] the swift fire-flash, that the materia, or matter, kindleth in the fierce whirling between the harshness and the bitterness in the swift wheel ; where you may very plainly understand [or observe] in the word, how the harshness is terrified, and how the power or virtue in the word sinketh down, or falleth back again upon the heart, and becometh very feeble and thin : Yet the sting or prickle with the whirling wheel, continueth in the flash, and goeth forth through the teeth out of the mouth ; where then the spirit hisseth like a fire a-kindling, and returning back again strengthened itself in the word.

313. These four forms are in the originalness of nature, and from thence the mobility doth exist, as also the life in the seed, and in all the creatures, hath its original from thence ; and there is no comprehensibility in the originalness, but such a virtue or power and spirit. For it is a poisonous 2 being, es- or venomous, hostile or inimicitious 2 thing : And sence, or . . t substance. it must be so, or else there would be no mobility, Ch. 1] FIRST PRINCIPLE OF THE DIVINE ESSENCE 9 but all [would be as] nothing, and the source of wrath or anger is the first l original of nature. _ _ _ _ or originality. 14. Yet here 1 do not altogether Lmean °r] understand the Mercurius [mercury or quicksilver] which is in the third Principle 2of this created2 or. world, which the apothecaries use (although that hath the same virtue or power, and is of the same essence), but I speak [of that] in the first Principle, viz. of the originalness of the essence of all essences, of God, and of the eternal beginningless nature, from whence the nature of this world is generated. Although in the originalness of both of them there is no separation ; but only the outward and third Principle, the sidereal and elementary kingdom [region or dominion] is generated out of the first Principle by the Word and spirit of God out of the eternal Father, out of the holy heaven. 'B THE SECOND CHAPTER

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