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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18 well-doing, and it is the beauty or the 2 welfare of a thing, that or flourishing, . . * or beneficial- which is lovely and dearest in it : In a creature it Ch. 2] WHAT GOD AND THE DIVINE NATURE ARE 13 is the light by which the creature seeth [or perceiveth] : and therein reason and the senses consist, and it is the spirit which is generated out of the PHUR The word or syllable PHUR, is the prima materia [or first matter], and containeth in itself in the third Principle the l macrocosm, from x Or great which the elementary dominion, or region, or essence is generated : But in the first Principle it is the essence of the most inward birth, out of which God generateth or begetteth his Son from eternity, and thereout the Holy Ghost proceedeth ; understand out of the S U L and out of the P H U R. And in man also it is the light which is generated out of the sidereal spirit, in the 2 second centre of a Or second , . ground of the the microcosm ; but in the spiraculum and spirit of little world, the soul, in the most inward centre, it is the light of God, which that soul only hath which is in the love of God, for it is only kindled and blown up from the Holy Ghost. 8. Observe now the depth of the divine 3 birth ; 3 Or of the 011 r* • • if eternal divine

2there is no oulphur in Uod, but it is generated from working, him, and there is such a virtue or power in him. For the syllable P H U R is [or signifieth] the most inward virtue or power of the original source or spring of the anger of the fierce tartness, or of the mobility, as is mentioned in the first chapter, and that syllable PHUR hath a fourfold form [property or power] in it, as first, harshness [or astringency], and then bitterness, fire, and water : the harshness is attractive, and is rough, cold and sharp, and 14 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 2 maketh all hard, hungry, and full of anguish ; and that attracting is a bitter sting or prickle, very terrible, and the first swelling or boiling up existeth in the anguish ; yet because it cannot rise higher from its seat, but is thus continually generated from beneath, therefore it falleth into a turning or wheeling, as swift as a thought, irf great anguish, and therein it falleth to be a twinkling flash, as if a steel and flint, or stone, were strongly struck together, and rubbed one against another. 9. For the harshness is as hard as a stone [or flint], and the bitterness rusheth and rageth like a 1 as the wheel l breaking wheel, which breaketh the hardness, and striketh fire stirreth up the fire, so that all falleth to be a terrible round™1 2 crack of fire, and flieth up ; and the harshness or !iromiblhlig' or astringency breaketh in pieces, whereby the dark thunderclap. » J

3tartness is terrified and sinketh back, and becometh as it were feeble or weak, or as if it were killed and dead, and runneth out, and becometh thin, and yieldeth itself to be overcome : But when the 'Orreflecteth. strong flash of fire 3shineth back again upon or into the tartness, and is mingled therein, and findeth the harshness so thin and overcome, then it is much more terrified ; for it is as if water were thrown upon the fire, which maketh a crack : Yet when the crack or terror is thus made in the overcome harshness, thereby it getteth another source [con4 Or shriek, dition or property], and a 4 crack, or noise of great joy, proceedeth out of the wrathful fierceness, and riseth up in fierce strength, as a kindled Ch. 2] WHAT GOD AND THE DIVINE NATURE ARE 15 light : For the crack, in the twinkling of an eye, becometh white, clear, and light ; for thus the kindling of the light cometh in that very moment, as soon as the light (that is, the new crack of the fire) is infected or x impregnated with the harshness, l Or filled. the tartness or astringency kindleth, and shrieketh, or is affrighted by the great light that cometh into it in the twinkling of an eye, as if it did awake from death, and becometh soft or 2 meek, lively and 2 Or lovely. joyful ; it presently loseth its dark, rough, harsh, and cold virtue, and leapeth or springeth up for joy, and rejoice th in the light ; and its sting or prickle, which is the bitterness, that triumpheth in

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