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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1the turning wheel for great joy. 10. Here observe, the shriek or crack of the fire is kindled in the anguish in the brimstone-spirit, and then the shriek flieth up triumphantly ; and the aching, or anxious harshness, or brimstonespirit, is made thin and sweet by the light. For as the light or the flash becometh clearer or brighter from the crack of the fire in the vanquished harsh tartness, and loseth its wrathful fierce 3 property, so ' dominion, or the tartness loseth its authority by the infection or mixture of the light, and is made thin or transparent and sweet by the white light : For in the original the harshness or astringency was altogether dark, and aching with anguish, by reason of its hardness and attracting ; but now it is wholly light, and thereupon it loseth its own quality or property, and out of the wrathful harshness there cometh to 16 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 2 1 Or springing be an l essence that is sharp, and the light maketh substance. the sharpness altogether sweet. 2 The divine The 2 Gates of God. everlasting Gates or \\, Behold now, when the bitterness, or the Doors, by which we bitter sting for prickle] (which in the original was have entrance J v

2to the Deity, so very bitter, raging and tearing, 'when it took its original in the harshness) attain eth this clear light, and tasteth now the sweetness in the harshness, which is its mother, then it is so joyful, and cannot rise or swell so any more, but it trembleth and rejoiceth in its mother that bare it, and triumpheth like a joyful wheel in the birth. And in this triumph the birth attaineth the fifth form, and » Or loving- then the fifth source springeth up, viz. the 3 friendly love ; and so when the bitter spirit tasteth the sweet water, it rejoiceth in its mother [the sour tart harshness], and so refresheth and strengtheneth 4 with, or for. itself therein, and maketh its mother stirring 4 in great joy ; where then there springeth up in the sweet water-spirit a very sweet pleasant source or fountain : For the fire-spirit (which is the root of the light, which was a strong [fierce rumbling shriek, crack, or] terror in the beginning) that now riseth up very lovely, pleasantly and joyfully. 12. And here is nothing but the kiss of love, and wooing, and here the bridegroom embraceth his beloved bride, and is no otherwise than when the pleasing life is born or generated in the sour, tart, or harsh death ; and the birth of life is thus, Ch. 2] WHAT GOD AND THE DIVINE NATURE ARE 17 in a creature. For from this l stirring, moving, or x Or wnggling.

3wheeling of the bitterness in the essence of the harsh astringent tartness of the water-spirit, the birth attaineth the sixth 2 form, viz. the sound or 2 property, • • virtue, °r noise of the motion. And this sixth form is power. rightly called Mercurius ; for it taketh its form, virtue, and beginning, in the aching or anxious harshness, by the raging of the bitterness ; for in the rising it taketh the virtue of its mother (that is, the 3 essence of the sweet harshness) along with 3 The substance that it, and bringeth it into the fire-flash, from whence springeth or , • 1 r buddeth outof

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