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. But the time is coming, when the Aurora or Day- Spring will break forth, and then the beast, that evil child [or child of perdition] shall stand forth naked and in great shame ; for the judgment of the whore of the great beast goeth on. Therefore awake and fly away, ye children of God, that you bring not the mark of the great evil beast upon your forehead with you, before the clear light ; or else you will have great shame and confusion of face therewith. It is now high time to awake from sleep, for the bridegroom maketh himself ready to fetch home his bride, and he cometh with a clear shining light ; they that shall have oil in Ch. 3] OF THE ETERNAL NATURE 23 their lamps, their lamps shall be kindled, and they shall be guests ; but those that shall have no oil, their lamps shall continue dark, and they shall sleep still, and retain the marks of the beast till the sun rise, and then they shall be horribly affrighted, and stand in eternal shame ; for the judgment shall be executed ; the children of God shall observe it, but those that sleep shall sleep till day. Further of the Birth.

29. The birth of the eternal nature is like the [thoughts or] senses in man, as when a [thought or] sense is generated by somewhat, and afterwards propagateth itself into infinite many [thoughts], or as a root of a tree generateth a stock and many buds and branches, as also many roots, buds, and branches from one root, and all of them from that one first root. Therefore observe what is mentioned before, whereas nature consisteth of six forms [or properties] so every form generateth again a form out of itself of the same quality and condition of itself, and this form now hath the quality and condition of all the forms in itself. 10. But l observe it well: the first of the six'Orunderforms generateth but one 2 source like itself, after consider it the similitude of its own fountain-spirit, and not ^ budding like the first mother the harshness, but as one twig i)r°P«rty' or branch in a tree putteth forth another sprout out of itself. For in every fountain-spirit there is but one centre, wherein the fire-source or fountain 24 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 3 ariseth, and the light ariseth out of the flash of the 1 Or springing fire, and the first sixfold form is in the l source or property. . fountain.

311. But mark the depth, in a similitude which I set down thus : The harsh spring in the original is the mother out of which the other ^five springs are generated, viz. Bitterness, Fire, Love, Sound, and Water. Now these are members of this birth [of their mother], and without them there would be nothing but an anguishing dark vale [or vacuum], where there could be no mobility, nor any light or life : But now the life is born in her by the kindling of the light, and then she rejoiceth in her own property, and laboureth in her own tart sour quality to generate again ; and in her own quality their riseth a life again, and a centre openeth itself again, and the life cometh to be generated again out of her in a sixfold form, yet not in any such anguish as at the beginning, but in great joy. 12. For the spring of the great anguish, which was in the beginning before the light, in the [tart] harshness, from which the bitter sting or prickle is generated, that is now in the sweet fountain of the love in the light changed from the water-spirit, and from bitterness or prickliness is now become the fountain or spring of the joy in the light. Thus now henceforth the fire-flash is the father of the light, and the light shineth in him, and is now the only cause of the moving birth, and of the birth of the love. That which in the beginning Ch. 3] OF THE ETERNAL NATURE 25 was the l aching source, is now SUL, or the oil1 Or lake of torment

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